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| BBC ALBANIAN.com | BBC WORLD SERVICE | LEARNING ENGLISH | ||
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Lesson 20 It's something good in his voice and, really, if you do feel down, just listen to some of Elvis's gospel music - ballads, rock 'n' roll even, you know, and it makes you feel better and that's what he wanted to do, he just wanted to entertain, he just wanted to make people feel - their worry's over, for that hour, two hours and if he achieved that, he was happy and it really kept him going, I think. The first time I heard Elvis was on Radio Luxembourg. In Britain in 1956 you didn't have pop music stations - in fact, hardly anywhere in the world. I'm sure even in America it wasn't very big. But all of a sudden you were trying to get Radio Luxembourg, and at the time it was all what I call wimp music - Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, all wishy washy songs with no teeth - no bite. He brought this whole range of hits - one after the other, after the other. It's strange 'cos I was so young, I was only eleven, but more and more and more songs would come out. They were all great numbers; every single one of them could have got to number one. Amazingly people don't realise that Elvis never made it to number one with 'Heartbreak Hotel', because Pat Wimp, singer Pat Boone, beat him to it. In those days to get to number one was fantastic. These days it means nothing. But Pat Boone kept Elvis Presley off the top spot. And it wasn't 'til 'All Shook Up' came out that Elvis actually, finally got to number one. |
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