There was a certain sameness to Elvis Presley's movies. A prime example is "Double Trouble," which premiered on this day in 1967.
Now, you know when you watch an Elvis movie that you aren't going to be watching something that was nominated for an Oscar for anything — even the music, which was the reason for it all.
But the movies and the music didn't always fall as short of the mark as they did with "Double Trouble."
There was a symbiotic relationship between Elvis' records and movies. Elvis movies existed primarily to promote Elvis' latest records — and, since just about anything with Elvis' name on it was guaranteed to make money, there doesn't seem to have been much thought given to many of the albums he made or the films that were made to promote them.
One could say many things about Elvis Presley, but one thing you could say about him that would encounter virtually no dissent would be the assertion that Elvis did not record concept or theme albums.
The main concern seems to have been to grind it out as quickly as possible and move on to the next one. In many years, Elvis made two, three, even four movies.
Plot? What plot? Plots were flimsy at best. Sometimes they were (ostensibly) dramatic stories, and sometimes they were (again, ostensibly) comedies. "Double Trouble" was a comedy. Ostensibly.
He had an attractive co–star (Annette Day). His co–stars were always attractive, though. The story was set in Europe, but Elvis' movies were set all over the world. They say it's good to be King.
There were better Elvis movies. Most of them, in fact.
Elvis made more than 30 movies, three of them in 1967, which was probably his weakest year on the big screen.
"Double Trouble" was arguably the weakest of the three. The soundtrack album the movie spawned was clearly the weakest of the three that hit music stores that year.
Nevertheless, the movie was the No. 58 moneymaker at the box office, and Presley's album reached No. 47 on the Billboard charts despite the absence of any true hits.
As I say, anything with Elvis' name on it made money.
But ...
If you see "Double Trouble" listed in your TV listings, do yourself a favor.
"I'll stick with you, baby, for a thousand years
Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years."
The older I get, the more aware I become of the uselessness of many skills I had when I was younger.
Some of those skills were skills I learned in school — like how to process film (in my college photography class). In the digital age, dark rooms simply do not exist. As a result, that knowledge has no value anymore.
Other skills were useless even at the time. For example, I mastered the timing of the snapping of fingers and the clapping of hands at the beginning of David Bowie's "Golden Years," which made its debut on this day in 1975. I was proud of that at the time, but it has had zero value in my job searches over the years.
Employers simply aren't interested in whether someone can snap fingers and clap hands in time with the background singers on "Golden Years," and it is a skill that is incredibly difficult to work into one's resume.
It is even more difficult to work into a conversation.
But, anyway.
"Golden Years" never really seemed like it belonged on Bowie's "Station to Station" album, which came out in January 1976. Musically, I suppose it had more in common with the "Young Americans" album that was released earlier in 1975. It had kind of a funky, soul–like quality to it. It even had a touch of disco in it — but not much, really.
It was just out of place on "Station to Station." To me, "Station to Station" always seemed to have more of an edge.
Want another kick in the head? Bowie has said he offered the song to Elvis Presley, but Elvis turned him down. Can you imagine "Golden Years" sung by Elvis?
"Station to Station" was an extension of Bowie's journey into funk and soul, I guess, but "Station to Station" had more of a synthesizer sound than the "Young Americans" album — or "Golden Years," for that matter.
Bowie was in a transitional phase when "Golden Years" was released. As I understand it, his cocaine addiction was at its worst at that time, too, and he has said that he remembers little of the "Station to Station" recording sessions.
I knew nothing about his cocaine dependency when "Golden Years" was being played frequently on the radio. In my rather sheltered hometown talk of things like cocaine really didn't exist in 1975. Conversations about marijuana were about as hardcore as it got.
I don't really think about it when I hear that song now, either. But I do think of what my life was like in 1975 and the line in Bowie's song that goes, "Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years."
And I think of all the people I knew, all the people I went to school with, my parents and their friends, my grandmothers (both of whom were still living at that time). The image is frozen in my memory as if we were all posing for a group photo. Many of those people I knew are gone now. Something obviously did touch them in the intervening golden years.
But I've been lucky, I suppose. I've had my share of setbacks, and I haven't had perfect health, but nothing has touched me that dramatically or directly. I have been touched indirectly, I guess — when I have lost people I cared about.
I recall once many years ago when I lost a friend to cancer. At the time, I was working as a teaching assistant at the school where I was completing my work on my master's degree. When I came home after the funeral, one of my students came up to me and asked me how I was doing.
"I'm all right," I told her. "If you live long enough, these things are bound to happen. You will lose people you care about."
I don't know. At the time, I guess I thought I was sharing some special wisdom with her, but it really isn't wisdom. It's something anyone can figure out — provided one lives long enough.
I've had far too many opportunities to reflect on that conversation in the years since. Many of the people I cared about are gone now. When I heard David Bowie singing "Golden Years," it never occurred to me which of my friends and family members I would lose in my lifetime. It just wasn't something I thought about. Of course, I don't remember giving much thought to the lyrics, either.
Yep, I've been lucky. I've lived all these years, these golden years, and nothing has touched me. One day, it will. It happens to everyone. It has already happened to many.
So Bowie wasn't entirely correct, was he? Something will touch us. Sometime.
What is the greatest Elvis Presley song ever recorded?
You can get compelling arguments from his fans for maybe 100 of the King's recordings. He was a unique talent, of that there is no doubt, and he changed American pop culture forever.
Some will make the case that the single he released on this date in 1960, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" was his greatest recording, and that is hard to dispute. It was definitely a big hit. But one thing that made it different from many of Elvis' hits is the fact that it wasn't a new song. It was written and published more than 30 years earlier — nearly a decade before Elvis was born, in fact.
Elvis' version wasn't the first to be recorded, nor was it the first to show up on the music charts. But it's the one people remember.
And I guess it is the one that I most associate with him.
As it is with any great recording artist, though, listeners can associate Elvis with many songs. He definitely could not be described as a one–trick pony.
Elvis recorded "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" in the predawn hours of April 4, 1960 as a favor to his manager, Col. Tom Parker. For what appears to be the only time, Parker influenced one of Elvis' recording sessions. Parker asked Elvis to record "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" because the song was Parker's wife's favorite.
The recording was done with Elvis and acoustic guitar, drums, bass and the backup group. Everyone else was asked to leave. With the lights turned out, Elvis performed the song with the iconic spoken portion. Not satisfied with the first effort, Elvis did a second take, then told the producer to discard it because "I can't do it justice."
Instead, they did a third take — which became the recording that was released on this date in 1960.
RCA Records delayed the release by nearly seven months, fearing the song didn't complement Elvis' new post–service style (which was largely his old style enhanced by recent technological developments).
The listening public had no doubts. The song debuted at #35 on Billboard's Top 40 and was #1 before the end of November. It remained in the top position until January 1961. Three months after its release, the recording exceeded sales of 2 million worldwide and was certified gold. It was certified double platinum in 1992.
"Are You Lonesome Tonight?" became Elvis' third–best–selling single ever — behind "It's Now Or Never" and "Jailhouse Rock."
Whether it was Elvis' greatest recording is a matter of personal opinion, I suppose, but its success with the record–buying public is beyond question.
It was a good thing RCA Records reconsidered its original decision and released the single.
In the last two decades of his life, everything Elvis Presley did made news. If he was making a movie, it was in the news. If he recorded a new song, it was in the news.
When he was inducted into the Army, it was in the news.
There was kind of a news blackout on Presley for a couple of years while he was in the Army — although he did have ten top 40 hits between his induction in 1958 and discharge in 1960 so I guess some people hardly knew he'd been away — but once he was discharged from the service in March 1960, his career roared back to life. He had barely been discharged when he was rushed into the studio in the spring of 1960 and recorded two of his biggest hit singles, one of which — "It's Now or Never" — was released on this day in 1960.
It was an interesting thing, that song. It was conceived in almost a casual way. The melody was inspired by "O sole mio," an Italian standard from the 19th century, but the theme of the song was inspired by a recording that had been a modest hit a decade earlier, and the lyrics were written in half an hour by Aaron Schroeder and Wally Gold — who were assigned the task of writing the lyrics because they were the only songwriters in the music publisher's office when he arrived one day.
Yet the song wound up selling more than 20 million copies and is second only to "Hound Dog" on the list of Elvis' top–selling songs.
In January, on what would have been Elvis' 80th birthday, Swide.com wrote about Elvis' Italian legacy and listed the Italian–influenced songs he recorded.
That was an impressive argument, but more persuasive than any song in Presley's musical library, even "It's Now or Never," was this observation:
"Elvis, especially in the second phase of his career — from the '60s on — fell in love with the 'Bel canto,' became a balladeer and between his vocal influences he incorporated Italian tenors Enrico Caruso and his heir, Mario Lanza."
There isn't really a doubt in my mind that his vocal style was suited for Italian ballads, and it was especially obvious, I thought, in his post–Army recordings.
Early in his career, it was often noted that Elvis sounded like a black singer — due, no doubt, to the musical influences of his Mississippi roots — which gave him enormously lucrative cross–over appeal. I don't know if that is true, but the numbers don't lie. He had three dozen #1 hit recordings in his career and made nearly as many movies.
He never really lost that — for lack of a better phrase — black sound, but it didn't seem to dominate his work as it had before.
Much of his work was accomplished after his return from the service, and it is clear to me that his performing style was toned down, less the Delta influence and more the Italian crooner style. He wasn't stationed in Italy, but maybe he was influenced by music he heard on radios in the barracks or live in the clubs of Germany, where he was stationed.
I'm not enough of an Elvis fan to know about that — but I do know that, around the time he recorded "It's Now or Never," Elvis appeared on The Frank Sinatra Timex Show. In addition to his Italian lineage, Sinatra's disdain for rock 'n' roll was well known; long before they appeared on television together, Sinatra said of Elvis' staying power, "Only time will tell. They said I was a freak when I first hit, but I'm still around. Presley has no training at all. When he goes into something serious, a bigger kind of singing, we'll find out if he is a singer. He has a natural, animalistic talent."
Sinatra may well have influenced the second phase of Elvis' career before the first phase had ended.
During his lifetime, Elvis' fans probably would have bought anything that he recorded and, even though the quality of his music tended to suffer after his time in the service, in all likelihood because of the his movie career, it is clear from even a casual listening that the style of his music was different, possibly due to a different ethnic influence than the one he had at the beginning.
He continued to sell records, as always, but they were different. Even "It's Now or Never" was different from what had come before. True, it became Elvis' second–best–selling recording — but it had none of the in–your–face quality of "Hound Dog."
Sixty years ago today, 19–year–old Elvis Presley recorded "That's All Right (Mama)" at Sun Studio in Memphis.
It was the first commercial recording of Presley's career, and it launched him to superstardom.
There are stories of some noteworthy recordings that were made at Sun Studio, which opened 4½ years before Elvis recorded "That's All Right (Mama)" there and changed everything for himself and the studio, but the studio struggled at first, and, apparently, it would record anything in its early years.
In fact, the studio's slogan was "We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime." That included recording special events like weddings and baptisms and graduations, and anyone could walk in off the street and make a record — for a fee. That's what Elvis did.
It wasn't his first #1 hit — that was "Heartbreak Hotel" about 18 months later. In fact, it wasn't even the first recording he made at Sun. But it was released a couple of weeks later and went on to become a reasonably big regional hit.
Elvis was really before my time. In fact, I have rarely owned an Elvis album in my life.
I have to give all credit for my first such purchase to my friend Brady, who shared with me his recording of Elvis' Sun sessions — and told me a bit about Elvis' history with Sun. Until that time, I don't think I had heard "That's All Right (Mama)" — or "Blue Moon of Kentucky," the other noteworthy song he recorded 60 years ago.
But I liked them well enough that I went out to get a copy of that record.
It was in August 1953 when Elvis, a recent high school graduate, first walked through the doors of Sun Studio and met a receptionist, who asked him about his musical style. What kind of music did he play? "I sing all kinds," he replied. The receptionist repeatedly asked him who he sounded like. "I don't sound like nobody," he kept saying.
On that occasion, he recorded two songs ("My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin"). The receptionist made a note that he was a "good ballad singer."
Nothing came of it. Nor did anything come from a second session in January 1954, when Elvis recorded "I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You."
Sam Phillips, the original owner of the studio, was looking for a white singer who sound like he was black; he thought such a performer would be a huge success. He invited Elvis to record some songs on this night in 1954, but the session yielded little until near the end. Elvis started playing "That's All Right (Mama)," a hyped–up version of a 1949 blues number by Arthur Crudup, and the studio musicians who had been working with him that night joined in.
Phillips asked them to start over, and he recorded what they played. It wound up being the demo that he shopped around to local DJs and led to a single that was released on July 19, 1954 — with "Blue Moon of Kentucky," originally a Bill Monroe bluegrass tune that Presley gave a rock 'n' roll makeover, on the B side.
Sixty years ago today, Bill Haley and His Comets first released "Rock Around the Clock" — their signature song.
Several versions of this song have been recorded, but Haley's version is the one that comes to mind for most folks.
It wasn't the first recording. It wasn't even the first recording for Haley, who started out as a country/western yodeler. After he made his transition to rock 'n' roll, he and his band came to be regarded by many as being as influential on the youth of their day as the Beatles and Rolling Stones were 10 years later.
In fact, the anniversary of the release of Haley's recording seems to have reignited — in some quarters — the debate over whether Haley is the father of rock 'n' roll.
That is a debate I have been hearing much of my life.
When I was growing up, I was under the impression that Elvis Presley was the father of rock 'n' roll. Presley, of course, was born and raised in Mississippi, and he made his adult home about 100 miles away — in Memphis.
I grew up in the neighboring state of Arkansas; being a good Southern boy, it wasn't hard for me to accept that premise — especially since I always believed Southern blues strongly influenced rock 'n' roll, and Presley's style was obviously influenced by the blues.
But, while Presley did make some demo recordings in 1953, they leaned toward ballads. He didn't record his first real rock 'n' roll song until July 1954 — and, by that time, Haley had already released "Rock Around the Clock."
(In fact, the top–selling recording artists of 1954 were Doris Day, Jo Stafford and Eddie Fisher.)
If Presley wasn't the father of rock 'n' roll, I figured it had to be Chuck Berry. Similarly, Berry started out singing the blues. His first rock 'n' roll single, "Maybellene," was recorded and released in 1955.
According to Margaret Moser in the Austin Chronicle, Haley died "haunted, embittered, and neglected" in 1981.
"Haley bought into the pointless argument of who invented rock & roll," Moser wrote, "believing he deserved the title. He had a legit claim, too, having recorded the genre's first bona fide anthem, 'Rock Around the Clock.' The other firsts he deserves credit for have been marginalized along with his memory."
As Moser observed, "Rock Around the Clock" has been credited with being an anthem for the youth of the '50s, but, for a song that supposedly had such an influence on that generation, Rolling Stone only ranked it #159 on its list of the top 500 songs of all time while other songs from the '50s — Elvis' "Hound Dog," "Heartbreak Hotel," "Jailhouse Rock," "Mystery Train," "Suspicious Minds" and "That's All Right" and Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene," "Roll Over Beethoven," and, ironically, "Rock & Roll Music" — were praised more prominently.
Those songs may be better known, but they all came along after "Rock Around the Clock."
The song got its first real exposure when it was played as part of the opening credits for "The Blackboard Jungle" starring Glenn Ford, Anne Francis and Sidney Poitier. With the help of that movie, it shot to the top of the charts, where it stayed for eight weeks.
I think the first time I ever heard it was when it was used as the original theme music for the Happy Days TV show. Haley's recording was part of the soundtrack for the movie "American Graffiti," too, but I don't think I saw that movie until it was shown on TV years later.
(There was no special reason why I didn't see it sooner, I suppose.)
My first exposure to "Rock Around the Clock" came to me courtesy of Happy Days. Being young and naive, I thought it was an original song written for the TV show. I had no idea who Bill Haley and His Comets were.
"Tonight, the whole country is waiting to hear England's Beatles."
Ed Sullivan
Feb. 9, 1964
The Ed Sullivan Show introduced America to many performers who went on to become icons, bestowing a kind of legitimacy on them, but, even for a show on which that was routine, today is the 50th anniversary of something that was truly special — and is still regarded as a milestone in the story of U.S. culture — America's introduction to the Beatles.
Lots of people — including Sullivan himself — expected it to be a repeat of the Elvis Presley experience. Elvis made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show to much media fanfare nearly eight years earlier, but it wasn't his first appearance on American TV. He had previously been on shows that were hosted by Steve Allen and Milton Berle.
Fifty years ago tonight, however, was the Beatles' very first live appearance on American television, and it drew an audience of 73 million — a number that has been exceeded several times since but was a record at the time.
The Beatles played five songs in their Ed Sullivan Show debut. They sang "All My Loving," "Till There Was You" and "She Loves You" in the first half of the show, then they played "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" in the second half.
A two–hour CBS special, "The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles," will be shown tonight at the same time as the original show. I plan to watch it. I wonder if it can capture the Beatles' "endearingly goofy" personae, to quote Andrea Peyser in the New York Post.
I work with college journalism students, who do seem to appreciate the Beatles' music, but I don't think they fully grasp what happened 50 years ago today, and I am skeptical that a TV program will change that.
"It is almost impossible to convey to anyone under 50 the immense impact and import of that event," writes Mark Hendrickson in Forbes, "because nothing comparable to it has ever happened."
Most of the time, it is my policy to write in my blogs about anniversaries that end in a five or a zero.
Nevertheless, I always write about the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Every year.
I'm not sure why that is so — except for the obvious reason, that Elvis truly is one of the undisputed superstars of rock 'n' roll. Even now, more than three decades after his death.
The Washington Post reports that Presley's ex, Priscilla, and their daughter, Lisa Marie, unexpectedly joined fans at the Graceland mansion for a candlelight vigil on the eve of the anniversary.
Elvis' heyday was really before my time, but his presence was constant when I was growing up, overshadowing everything else even if Elvis wasn't pushing a new record at the time. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones — along with others — took over the weekly top spot in record sales, but Elvis was always there, always the standard against which others were judged.
No one — except perhaps those closest to him who knew of his dependence on drugs — could have expected him to die at the age of 42.
When he died on this day in 1977, the outpouring of grief I witnessed was unlike anything I had ever seen and was really matched by only a few celebrities since — John Lennon, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson.
(It could truthfully be said, though, that John Lennon, Princess Diana and Michael Jackson died due to the actions of others — whereas Elvis brought about his own death. It almost certainly wasn't intentional, but it is an important distinction between Elvis and those other three.)
In many ways, the grieving never stopped. Maybe it was a sense of unfulfilled potential — even though Elvis had a couple of decades to make his mark whereas people like Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had only a handful of years.
There are probably people out there who make their livings impersonating Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin — but there are many, many more who impersonate Elvis and make pretty good livings at it, too.
I have often wondered, in fact, if many of those "Elvis sightings" — you know, reports of seeing Elvis in convenience stores and walking along roads — were not hallucinations but rather sightings of Elvis impersonators.
The real thing, of course, is always with us in recordings and movies — and you can see the King in some of his better movies today on Turner Classic Movies.
As I wrote several times last spring, I thought the inaugural season of the reincarnation of Twilight Zone in 1985–86 was impressive.
I wasn't too keen on the season finale, but I felt the series had some momentum going for it as the second season approached, and I had high hopes when that season began 25 years ago tonight.
I was not disappointed.
The opening segment was one of those "what–if" tales from history that Twilight Zone — both the original series and the reincarnation — did so well — and far too infrequently, as far as I was concerned.
It reminded me of episodes from the original series that dealt with historical events like Lincoln's assassination, Custer's last stand and Hitler and the Holocaust.
And in "The Once and Future King," viewers were encouraged to fantasize about the prospect that maybe — just maybe — Elvis Presley wasn't who we thought he was.
In the story, an Elvis impersonator is driving at night when he encounters another person driving erratically. The impersonator swerves to avoid hitting the other car and flips his own car in the process. When he regains consciousness, it is daylight — but it is the 1950s, not the 1980s.
He hitches a ride with the driver of an old pickup truck, who turns out to be Elvis Presley (in one of the delightful lines from the story, the real Elvis tells the Elvis impersonator "you look all shook up") — and it turns out to be just before his recording session that changed the course of American pop music history.
But the Elvis impersonator was disappointed in the real Elvis, who was planning to record a rather mundane song instead of "That's All Right," which was the first single Presley released. And the real Elvis dismisses the impersonator's selections and the provocative dance moves he suggests as the devil's work and concludes that the impersonator must be the devil himself.
A fight breaks out, and the real Elvis is killed. The Elvis impersonator then decides he must take the place of the real Elvis and live his life for him.
Most likely, you wouldn't recognize anyone in the cast. Jeff Yagher played both Elvis and the Elvis impersonator. He's done some film and TV work, but nothing that most people probably would remember.
Lisa Jane Persky, who played his agent, might be marginally more recognizable. When you see her face, you might think that you have seen it before. And, if you were watching this episode when it first aired 25 years ago tonight, you probably would be right. She did co–star with Robert Duvall in 1979's "The Great Santini."
One cast member you might have recognized was Red West, who played Elvis' boss. He had a memorable performance as Red in "Road House," but that wasn't his most impressive credential for this particular project.
In high school, West was a friend of Elvis' and later worked for him, first as a driver and then as a bodyguard. He was fired by Elvis' father the year before Elvis died for saying Elvis needed help with his dependence on prescription drugs.
Shortly before Elvis died, West co–wrote the first book that discussed the singer's drug addiction. Elvis reportedly read it and was upset by it; some people asserted that the book played a role in his death.
At this stage, I'm sure, that can only be speculation. It is almost certainly the kind of thing that cannot be proven.
Nor, for that matter, can it be proven whether Elvis really was Elvis — or an impersonator from the future.
If you're old enough to remember the 1950s or the 1960s — or just the 1970s — was that Elvis you saw in the movies and on TV?
Today is the anniversary of his birth. That much is beyond dispute. But it seems to me that "birthday" is really a term that is reserved more for the living, perhaps mostly for children. It implies candles and cake and ice cream and gifts. It suggests games and the ritualistic singing of "Happy Birthday to You" — to someone who can hear it and appreciate it, not someone who is buried in the ground or whose ashes have been scattered somewhere.
Conspiracy theorists and Elvis sighters notwithstanding, the man is dead. The anniversary of his birth is interesting for most of us to mark — it is always intriguing to think of what a person who died young might be like at an advanced age — but he isn't 76 years old, any more than Ronald Reagan will be 100 years old next month — or Abraham Lincoln was 200 a couple of years ago.
Nevertheless, January 8 remains special to Elvis' fans and those who appreciate the role he played in the evolution of popular music. I suspect it will always be so.
But it seems there is less and less to say about the man with each passing year.
Well, less that is new, I suppose. The old observations continue to be recycled.
Power Line, for example, reran a piece it first posted eight years ago about the day that Elvis met President Nixon.
And, when old observations can't be made, other spins are offered.
In Chicago, the ABC affiliate encourages people to mark the occasion by attending a tribute performance.
And the Huffington Post urges folks in New York to "chow down on some of his favorite foods, NYC–style."
While it isn't exactly a new spin on this old theme, I give Melissa Bell of the Washington Post credit for getting her readers involved and asking them to nominate their favorite Elvis songs.
There are so many to choose from, so many genres to consider. There are the smash hits, the well–known titles that redefined popular music, and there are the lesser–known but equally influential (in their own way) songs, all of which have their defenders.
I guess it depends on your point of view — a thought that prompted me, in a hyperlink kind of way, to remember a movie I saw many years ago.
The movie, "Touched By Love," was supposedly based on a true story of a morose young girl who was afflicted with cerebral palsy. Her nurse, in an attempt to connect with her, encouraged her to start a pen pal relationship with Elvis, her favorite singer, which she did. Elvis replied to her letter, and the two reportedly exchanged letters until she died.
In truth, it was a tearjerker of a movie, a little too obvious at times. That may not have been the fault of the performers — or even the girl upon whom the tale was based. It may have been the fault of the writers.
For example, I recall a scene in which the nurse asked the girl why she admired Elvis, and the girl replied, in rather incredulous tones, something to the effect of "He can move!" or "He can dance!" (Forgive me for not being more precise. It's been many years since I've seen the movie.)
I guess there's no denying that. Elvis definitely could move/dance — at least, when he was young and trim. The Las Vegas, jumpsuited version was another matter. Too many fried–peanut–butter–banana–bacon–and–honey sandwiches, I suppose.
But, anyway ...
It's the sort of story that sounds like it certainly could be true. There have been all kinds of stories over the years of Elvis' remarkable generosity, how he gave Cadillacs and houses to people — sometimes to people he barely knew, if at all.
Thus, a movie about Elvis having a pen–pal relationship with a sick girl on whom he lavished gifts and cards as well as letters doesn't sound farfetched at all.
Is it farfetched today? I don't know. Perhaps it is for most celebrities. But not for all.
Take New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, for example. Last month, he met an 11–year–old boy who was dying of a rare cancer. Meeting Sanchez was one of the boy's two wishes, and Rich Cimini of ESPN reports that the boy lit up like a Christmas tree when he was introduced to Sanchez.
They became close friends. When the Jets defeated Pittsburgh a few days later, Sanchez sent the game ball to the boy.
A few days before the Jets' season finale, the boy died. The Jets remembered him with a moment of silence before their game with Buffalo, and this week, as Cimini writes, Sanchez began preparing for today's playoff game in Indianapolis with a heavy heart.
The boy was buried this week.
I don't know if, like the girl in the movie, he was drawn to his idol because that person could move — or, maybe, because he could do something of a physical nature that illness prevented the boy from doing.
But I will be interested in seeing if Sanchez has a career day in honor of his friend.
There may be no better time for him to do that than Elvis' birthday.
I was about to begin my senior year in high school when Elvis Presley died on this day in 1977.
In fact, I remember that we had a special assembly of the members of the senior class at the high school in my hometown that day. Seems to me the assembly was in the late morning, and it ran for about an hour or so, but I could be a little off on that.
At any rate, Elvis hadn't died when I left my house that day, but he was gone by the time I got home. Now, how long it took me to get home, I couldn't tell you. See, in those days, I was dating a girl who was a year behind me in school — but her family was hosting a foreign exchange student who happened to be in the senior class. So I took the exchange student to the assembly for the seniors and introduced her to people until her head was reeling.
Then we returned to my girlfriend's home, where we found my girlfriend, her mother, her sister and her brother watching TV. Until that time, I had seldom seen a family that enjoyed TV as much as that one did, but watching TV in the middle of a summer weekday was really unusual for them. Ordinarily, weekday television meant game shows in the mornings and soap operas in the afternoons.
But I was a teenage boy who was in love. I was blind to just about everything around me. So I didn't give it much thought at first. I just focused my attention on my heart's beloved. But my attention soon shifted.
In 1977, we didn't have cable TV. We just had the three traditional networks — and each one was zeroed in on those almost iconic gates on Presley's property, waiting for the hearse carrying the King's body to emerge.
It was "breaking news" long before 24–hour news networks popularized the phrase. To that point in my life, there had been relatively few events that had been considered so important that all three networks covered them live — the Apollo 11 moon landing (and the launches of the manned space missions that preceded it), the departure of President Nixon (and the Senate and House hearings that preceded it) and (although I was too young to remember it at the time) the John F. Kennedy assassination.
I don't know how long I stayed at my girlfriend's home that afternoon. None of us could have been called Elvis fans, but we watched the news reporters, who rapidly ran out of "news" to report and descended on the crowd outside Graceland's gates, asking insipid questions. At some point, I left.
When I got home that afternoon, a similar scene greeted me. My mother was watching the news reports, and the screen showed the streets of Memphis lined with people of all ages, all colors. Mom wasn't close to being an Elvis fan, but she was transfixed by what was happening.
I don't remember anything special about the weather on the day Elvis died. I guess it must have been hot. It was mid–August, after all, and Elvis was in Memphis, which is about two hours due east of the Arkansas town where I grew up. I don't recall any heat records being set in the summer of 1977, but it would be a safe bet to presume that it was hot on that day — simply because it always is.
It probably wasn't as hot as it has been lately — and I'm not going to suggest that it's been nearly as hot as it was in the summer of 1998 or the granddaddy of hot summers, the summer of 1980 — but it's been hot enough.
Christopher Blank of the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports that a candlelight vigil proceeded as planned last night in spite of a heat index of 118 degrees.
The vigil drew 15,000 people. The P.R. director for Elvis Presley Enterprises said that was a typical turnout for the vigil.
Not bad, you say?
Well, to put it in perspective, Graceland attracts about 600,000 visitors every year. I don't know if it is open every day, but let's say it is closed on Sundays. That would mean that average daily attendance is about 1,900 people. If it is only open on weekdays, average daily attendance would be nearly 2,300.
And if it is open every single day — except Christmas, New Year's and Thanksgiving — daily attendance would be around 1,600.
The big events — the anniversaries of his birth (in January) and his death — could be expected to bring in more visitors than usual.
But does that explain why a candlelight vigil on a blisteringly hot summer night in Memphis lured seven times the typical daily attendance for the 33rd anniversary of Elvis' death?
In many ways, Elvis is receding into cultural history. His death may always be shrouded in mystery, but, if there is still a sizable contingent of folks who think Elvis faked his own death, they haven't been reporting many "sightings" in recent years.
I guess, if Elvis did fake his death, he's getting a little old to be wandering along highways and stopping in at convenience stores.
But his popularity endures. All you have to do is look at Graceland on a hot August night.
Today, in case you weren't aware of this fact, is Elvis Presley's 75th birthday.
I knew this day was coming up. I grew up about two hours or so west of Memphis, which is, of course, the site of Graceland, Elvis' home. Elvis' birthday always draws a crowd to Memphis, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote today about special observations that were planned for Presley's 75th birthday. It's a pretty big deal, and I spent a lot of time wondering what I should say.
But, in the end, it occurred to me. What can one say about Elvis Presley that hasn't already been said in countless ways? The man has been dead for more than 30 years. He was in his early 40s when he died, an event that was comparable in its impact on that generation to Michael Jackson's death nearly 32 years later.
It is indeed ironic — as we have been told many times since Jackson died last summer — that Jackson was briefly Presley's son–in–law, even though Presley didn't live to see it.
In spite of the apparently bogus "sightings" of Elvis, which seem to have tapered off in recent years, he remains a "what if" from another time. When Elvis' name is mentioned, one asks the same thing one asks about John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix: What do you suppose he would have done if he had not died?
I once heard Ringo Starr speculate that Lennon "would have been quite a force" if he hadn't been killed in 1980. I assume the same would have been true, at least for a little while, of Presley if he hadn't died in 1977.
Perhaps he wouldn't have been as much of a force as he was in his 20s. I can't say I was ever an Elvis Presley fan — the Beatles performed the music of my childhood — so I can't say I'm an expert on his career, but I did have a copy of the "Sun Sessions" album, a collection of his early recordings like "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky." My impression is that Elvis was a singer and a musician, not a composer, so it seems unlikely that we would have heard many (if any) new Elvis compositions. But I'm sure he would have continued to tour and probably record songs written by others.
I assume that, at this stage of his life, he would have given up touring, but he might still have been recording in the studio, possibly at Graceland. He might have recorded some duets with his daughter.
When someone dies young, like Elvis did, there is a sense of wasted potential. We will never know what Elvis might have done in his 50s, 60s, even his early 70s.
It seems to me that may be why many folks report seeing Elvis in convenience stores or walking along a lonely stretch of highway.
They are still reluctant to permit that potential to slip away forever.
Today would have been John Lennon's 69th birthday.
That really amazes me, and I'm not sure why. I mean, I know he was 40 when he was killed. And I know it has been nearly 30 years since that happened. But when I add those two numbers together, I have a very hard time picturing John Lennon — the John Lennon I remember — on the brink of his 70s.
But that isn't so remarkable. I mean, can you picture John F. Kennedy at 92? Or Marilyn Monroe at 83? Or Martin Luther King at 80? Or James Dean at 78? Of course not. But that's how old all those people would be if they were alive today. In our memories, they are eternally young.
And, since Lennon had only been 40 for two months when he was killed, our memories are of him in his 30s — or, if one thinks of him in his Beatles days, in his 20s.
Anyway, in honor of the occasion, I have attached a video (which is really an audio with text on the screen) of the Beatles' "Birthday," which was part of "The Beatles" album (informally known as The White Album).
In fact, that song was released as a single a few days before my birthday (I won't say which birthday that was!).
Today is an appropriate day for that song, though, because several people who were/are linked to the music industry were born on this date.
For example, Judy Tyler had some training in song and dance, but she was mostly an actress who co–starred with Elvis Presley in "Jailhouse Rock."
Tyler was born on this date in 1932, and she never saw the film she made with Elvis. After filming was complete, she and her husband went on a vacation, during which they were both killed in a car accident. Tyler was only 24. Elvis always said he couldn't watch that movie because Tyler's death upset him so much.
John Entwistle of The Who was born on this date in 1944. Jackson Browne was born on this date in 1948. Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's wife, was born on this date in 1952. And Lennon's son Sean was born on this date in 1975.
In fact, a lady for whom I worked for several years had a daughter who was born on this date. I don't know what kind of work will appeal to her, but it would be fitting if it had at least some connection to music.
People is promoting its "Photo Exclusive" of Lisa Marie Presley and her three-month-old twin daughters, Finley and Harper.
Presley, the daughter of American icon Elvis Presley, tells People she wanted to have these babies but had several miscarriages because her blood was too thick. Once she started taking blood thinners, she claims, she conceived — and the result was the twins.
Elvis' fans know that Elvis himself was a twin, but his twin brother was stillborn.
Maybe having twins is a family trait. There's no way to be sure that I know of. Lisa Marie was Elvis' only child.
It isn't exactly a milestone, but today would have been the 74th birthday of Elvis Presley — if he hadn't died more than 31 years ago.
"The King" still has millions of admirers, many of whom will mark the anniversary of his birth in their own ways.
For some, according to CMT News, Presley's birthday is an occasion to visit his birthplace in Tupelo, Miss.
The "shack" where Presley was born was constructed by his father, with help from Presley's grandfather and uncle, in 1934, says CMT News. The house was purchased by the city and restored — in fact, just about everything about the house is better than it was in 1935, when Elvis and his stillborn twin brother were delivered. It even has a bathroom and electricity now.
Everyone seems to be getting into the act for Presley's birthday.
A blood drive will be held today, says New Mexico Business Journal, observing that Presley was "a regular blood donor."
The Los Angeles Times reports that Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills will be offering "a banana peanut butter cupcake" today only — a tribute to what was (reportedly) Elvis' favorite sandwich filling.
Turner Classic Movies is marking the occasion by broadcasting six of his movies, followed by a 93-minute program from 1972 that shows highlights of Presley in concert.
Then, tonight, TV Land will air a couple of programs that feature Presley.
Priscilla Presley, Elvis' ex-wife, will be at Elvis' Graceland home in Memphis tonight and will share her thoughts on CNN at 8 p.m. (Central).
What about Elvis' only child, Lisa Marie? Well, lately, she's been busy defending her friends, John Travolta and Kelly Preston (following the death last week of their 16-year-old son) and her faith, Scientology, in her blog. I haven't heard whether Lisa Marie (who turns 41 next month) will be at Graceland tonight.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
