The King

In his memoir, If I Can Dream, Larry Geller, who later became Presley’s hairdresser and “spiritual advisor” (somehow for one man to fulfill both of those roles in Presley’s life seems perfectly appropriate), writes convincingly about being a teenager in 1956 and hearing Elvis for the first time. “I still think of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ as a record that came out of nowhere. There was nothing like it before.”

From Will Friedwald’s A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers