Sam Phillips, the producer at Sun Records who first recorded him in 1954, remembered Elvis, even at the outset, as having “the greatest inferiority complex of any person, black or white, that I had worked with. He was a total loner. He kind of felt locked out.”
At school, Presley was teased by his fellow classmates; they threw "things at him - rotten fruit and stuff - because he was different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama's boy.
Presley is said to have been so nervous during this show that his legs shook uncontrollably. His wide-legged pants emphasized his leg movements, apparently causing the young women in the audience to go 'crazy'. Though initially uncertain about what caused the fans to scream, Presley consciously incorporated similar movements into future shows.
Franks advised Presley to "Let it all go!" House drummer D.J. Fontana, who had worked in strip clubs, was able to use beats to accentuate Presley's movements.
The shy, polite, mumbling boy gained self-confidence with every appearance, which soon led to a transformation on stage. People watching the show were astounded and shocked, both by the ferocity of his performance, and the crowd’s reaction to it..
Sam Phillips.... recalled: "The white disc-jockeys wouldn't touch what they regarded as Negroes' music and the Negro disc-jockeys didn't want anything to do with a record made by a white man."
Ironically, hillbilly singer Mississippi Slim, one of Presley's heroes, was one of the singer's fiercest critics.
To some, Presley had undoubtedly "stolen" or at least "derived his style from the Negro rhythm-and-blues performers of the late 1940s." But some black entertainers, like Jackie Wilson claimed: "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis."
Frank Sinatra opined: "[Presley's] kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac. It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people."
With regard to having sex, Guralnick concurs with others: "he wasn't really interested."
A queue of women tell similar stories of arrested development, openness and naivety....Sheila Carter tells Guralnick: “He was into the romance. We would go out onto the balcony and he would sing songs to me. We had sex, but what he liked best was the petting, the kissing. It was adolescent.”
Priscilla undoubtedly would have received the same treatment. When she left her husband in 1971 for Mike Stone she said publicly that her new beau was “a real man” who treated her “like a woman”.
Elvis.... unsurprisingly freaked... Maybe this public humiliation explains his distaste for performing one of his biggest latterday hits, I’m just a hunka hunka burning love. Teddy Bear would have seemed more appropriate.
