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How do you get a knighthood? Sir Elton John did it by selling over 250 million records. And he sold them with style. Elton (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight) has been recording piano albums of pop rock gems since the 60's. Young Elton knew he was musically gifted when he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music at age 11. He'd been introduced to rock acts like Elvis and Bill Haley, as well as classics like Sinatra and Nat King Cole via his parents' extensive record collection. In class, he would wow his friends by imitating Jerry Lee Lewis' frantic piano playing at school functions. His earliest musical career saw the prodigy playing folk ballads and traditional tunes in pubs, but things changed when he answered an ad in the UK industry paper NME. It took Elton a couple tries to work out his sound?if anything, he was guilty of underestimating the taste of the record-buying public, who rejected his early discs of cheesy love songs but started paying attention when he layered complex orchestration over rock and gospel chords. His self-titled debut, Elton John, even hit big in the states. Elton recorded at an intense pace, releasing two LPs a year for nearly a decade. In 1972 he put out the classic Honky Chateu which featured the single "Rocket Man" and made it to #1 in the US. His 1970's records only got bigger, Don't Shoot the Piano Player charted on top in America. Many consider 1973's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road to be John's masterpiece, containing one of his best pop-rock tunes and his best ballad?and almost every track was a hit?"Benny And the Jets," "Candle In the Wind" and "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting." These days, Elton John is extensively involved in charity work and is also a successful composer, having scored Disney's smash Broadway musicals The Lion King and Aida.

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