This week marks 40 years since Elvis Presley died an inglorious death in the admittedly plush toilet of his Graceland home. That the little boy's room within which Elvis drew his last breath may have been the height of lavatorial splendour matters not, for he still died in the bog. What a sad end for a legend that still burns bright (arguably burns brighter then ever) today. Elvis was just 42 years of age.
The official cause of death was heart attack, but it has since become clear that it was a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs that killed the King of Rock and Roll -
'The painkillers Morphine and Demerol.Chloropheniramine, an antihistamine. The tranquilizers Placidyl and Valium.Finally, four drugs were found in "significant" quantities: Codeine, an opiate, Ethinamate, largely prescribed at the time as a "sleeping pill," Quaaludes, and a barbituate, or depressant, that has never been identified.
I was 12 years old when Elvis died - I can still remember the report coming over the television, what I was doing at the time. They say everyone can remember where they were when they heard President Kennedy had been assassinated, well the King was my generation's Kennedy. Everyone remembers what they were doing when the news broke of Elvis Presley's sad and untimely passing. And now 40 years later in 2017, the ripples that young man made back in the mid 1950's, when he visited Sun Records to cut his first disc are still being felt today. These days Elvis fandom sometimes borders on the absurd; there are some people that even worship the man and attend one of the many Churches of Elvis...I kid you not..
When auditors looked into Elvis Presley's finances after his death they were shocked to find that his total worth was less than 10 million dollars - and yet in his lifetime he'd generated many hundreds of millions. To put this into perspective when John Lennon died he left more than a hundred and fifty million dollars...then again Lennon's finances were being looked after by Yoko Ono, the daughter of a Japanese banker, while Elvis had old carnie Tom Parker in charge of his money. Of course Elvis has made much much more since his death - in 2016, an album of Elvis songs backed by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra sold over a million copies. In fact it is estimated that now, 40 years after his death, Elvis pulls in over $50 million a year for his estate.
"There are now at least 85,000 Elvis’s around the world, compared to only 170 in 1977 when Elvis died. At this rate of growth, experts predict that by 2019 Elvis impersonators will make up a third of the world population."
The quote above, although intended humorously does make a good point - Elvis Presley continues to touch people's lives, even today. But amongst all this ridiculous nonsense, the jump suited middle aged men (and women) who claim to channel the spirit of Presleyinto their performance it is often forgotten just how groundbreaking Elvis truly was. His first album, 1956's Elvis Presley, is still an incredible listen and remains one of the finest rock albums every recorded.
The Elvis Presley industry is kind of distasteful - like a rock and roll Disneyland, and it's all about the money, not the sublime artist who actually drives it. Though in fairness his back catalogue has been given some respect with some great box sets available - every fan needs to own the 50's, 60's and 70's sets that came out from RCA several years back.
For all the heights in the Presley story there are so many missed opportunities - if only he'd given Tom Parker the elbow, if only he'd taken a few years off mid-seventies, if only he'd continued in the vein of his excellent 1968 comeback performance, if only he'd recorded a pure blues album, if he'd made less of those corny movies and actually paid attention to what he was recording in the studio.
You know I'm a fan, always have been and always will be, and whenever I think of the Elvis Presley story I realise that for all the fame, all the riches, it is actually one of the saddest stories ever told.
John Wilkinson was more than just a band member backing up legend Elvis Presley and the two men became firm friends
John Wilkinson became a guitarist in The King's TCB band. He passed away on Friday at the age of 67 after a long battle with Cancer.
At the age of 10, John famously snuck into Elvis
Presley's dressing room before a show at the Shrine Mosque in
Springfield, telling Elvis, 'you can't play guitar worth a damn'. Elvis
was amused and impressed with this kid and predicted they would meet
again.They did and years later John played with Elvis in the concert documentaries That's The Way It Is (1970) and Elvis On Tour (1972). He also appeared in the Aloha From Hawaii
television event - which celebrates its 40th anniversary on Monday.
However, Wilkinson is most prominently featured in the television
special Elvis In Concert (1977) while playing the guitar solo on 'Early
Morning Rain'. In addition to his live work with Elvis, Wilkinson played
for him in 1972 and 1975 sessions at RCA’s Hollywood Studio as well as in 1976 sessions at Graceland.
'We offered our deepest sympathy to his family. John and the beautiful
music he made with Elvis will live forever in our hearts'. Priscilla Presley and Lisa Marie Presley
It's that time again - today is the Porthcawl Elvis Festival - and once again the small Welsh seaside town will be taken over by hundreds upon hundreds of Elvis Presley's. There will be Elvis events in most of the clubs and pubs and the promenade will be invisible beneath the quiffs and spangled jumpsuits.
The Porthcawl Elvis Festival sees the town swamped with fans,
lookalikes and tribute acts all enjoying the atmosphere and the
various concerts and events throughout the area.
The festival is centred on the historic Grand Pavilion, a
traditional sea front theatre which is host to the main concerts
but the whole town gets in on the act with various events happening
throughout the resort all weekend.
The highlight of the weekend is the big Elvies award ceremony
where the best Elvis impersonators are rewarded for their work. Porthcawl is only a twenty minute or so drive from the Archive's throbbing nerve centre so I hope to pop down and get some snaps of the events for your enjoyment.
And so in tribute we leave you with some essential Elvis.
Tragically he died far too young and one can only speculate what kind of man he would be were he still with us. Now though Elvis Presley has become a product like any other, but this belies the fact that he did more than most to change the face of what we call popular music.
I
was only twelve years old when Presley passed over - and I was
something of a fan in those days. I remember one school summer holidays
there was a season of Presley movies on BBC1, jammed between the morning
cartoons and I think Star Trek. Now as a kid I didn't see anything
wrong with those films, admittedly few are watchable as an adult but
Presley, unlike all those greasy long haired rockers, seemed an ideal to
aim for. And even now, two years older than Presley was when he died,
I'm still a fan of most of his early stuff as well as some of his later
more assured performances. After all no one could deliver Suspicious
Minds the way Presley did. And that first LP, Elvis Presley, is still
one of the best rock/blues albums ever pressed.
Buying Presley material today is an awkward things since many albums
duplicate tracks from other albums but there are several essential buys
for anyone interested in the King. The DVD's Elvis 56 and the 1968
comeback performance are must haves and several of his feature films -
King Creole, Jailhouse
Rock, Flaming Star and if pushed GI Blues are amazingly good. On the CD
front Elvis Presley, Elvis,the 68 show, Elvis Country are excellent.
And out of the compilations the current Elvis 75 is a good option though
I would plump for the two collections Elvis Number ones and Elvis
Second to none as these contain the infectious remixes of A Little Less
Conversation and Roustabout.
The tracks he cut with Sun records defined all the music that would follow.
I
also think Elvis was a far better actor than he is often given credit -
this list of missed opportunities in a badly managed film career sadden
me. And it's terrible that for many young people their image of Elvis
is the fat, flamboyant performer he became in his later years, a kind of butch Liberace. It's
criminal that he was allowed to continue to perform in 1976-1977 when he
was obviously ill. Those around him at the time must have some weight
to carry over this.
The Beatles may have eclipsed him musically -
Presley never really wrote his own material.Though it can be argued
that Elvis had a greater effect on popular culture than the Beatles and
the way he delivered those early blues and country standards is still
awesome and has never and will never be bettered. Familiarity breeds
contempt but try and listen to Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog or I got a
Woman with fresh ears - there is something magical going on within that
voice.
One of the first Elvis
LP I owned was even an Elvis LP proper. It was called Tribute to the
King and had some forgotten Elvis sound-alike crooning his greatest
hits. Later I got a few of the real LP's and I realised that this was
the real thing. In fact I remember having a record player for Christmas
one year - one of those with an hinged lid that looked like a suit-case
and the three LP's I had with it all came from Woolworths - a tribute to
The Beatles, that Elvis sound-alike and Elvis' Christmas Album. You
know I still think the Elvis Christmas album is the best Christmas set
ever recorded - he slams through Santa Bring me Baby Back and almost
cries out Blue Christmas. And whilst Mama Liked the Roses may be vomit
inducing it is still a mighty fine holiday album.
John Carpenter's Elvis: The Movies was okay in a TV-movie kind of way, but all the other movies that attempted to show the life of the King seem to languish in afternoon tele-movie Hell. However a planned new Elvis movies is making ripples and leaving Elvis fans all shook up.
John Scheinfeld, the filmmaker known for his insightful and inspiring Harry Nilsson and John Lennon documentaries (The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Who is Harry Nilsson?), has announced plans to write and direct a new feature film about the life of Elvis Presley titled Fame & Fortune.
The forthcoming film will expose Elvis’ relationship with his best friend, Sonny West, and will take a more personal approach to Presley as a friend, not a performer. The movie will be based on the book Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business, a 2007 book written by West.
In an interview earlier this week, filmmaker Scheinfeld said, “We’re
not doing his full life. We’re not doing everything that ever happened
to him. We’re taking the audience on a journey of this friendship and
everything that it went through over 17 years.”
He goes on to say,”The press tends to focus on his last few years.
They forget what an extraordinary artist he was and how influential he
was. What I would like to do is take him out of the tabloid world,
where he has been for far too long, and replace the caricature with a
fully realized, 3D human being.”
But who will play the King?
"I have in mind that we’d have to do a worldwide sort-of Scarlett O’Hara
search to find the best guy for this,” Scheinfeld says. “My feeling is that we
need to cast an unknown.”
Because they can’t start filming until they find their Elvis, the film has no release date.
Incredible that it's been 34 years since Elvis Presley died - and he's still as popular as ever, more so in fact and although much of the Elvis industry is tacky there is no disputing the importance of Elvis as a performer and a truly innovative one at that.
"Before Elvis there was nothing." John Lennon
As a kid I used to think Elvis was the epitome of cool and would even watch those movies which were always playing on TV during the school holidays, but as I grew older and discovered other forms of music I turned away from the music of Elvis Presley, considering it trite, mediocre - and a great deal of it was. Those costumes he wore on stage made him look like a strutting peacock and every time he was featured on the news he seemed to have gained yet another chin. The world had moved on and Elvis, it seemed, had been unable to move with it and now well into middle age he was still belting out those songs that had sounded fresh coming from a slightly raw kid, but seemed like parody coming from the middle aged fat man.
I remember the first record player I ever owned - it was a Dansette which was shaped like a suitcase, carrying handle included on the side. I got this for Christmas when I was ten years old and I had two LP records with it - Elvis's Christmas Album and a tribute to the Beatles. I didn't really like the Beatles one at the time, as it wasn't the real Beatles but some tribute band, and besides all I knew of the Beatles when I was ten was that it was some group my Dad would mention from time to time. But the Elvis one was played to death.
Then in 1977 Elvis Presley died, but I was twelve years old at the time, just discovering punk music and Elvis had long ceased to matter to me. Why should I, a snobby nosed kid from the black Welsh Valleys, give a shit about a middle of the road American icon?
It was only in later years that I began to rediscover Elvis and although there is still a large ratio of trash amongst his canon, there is much that is as important as any music ever recorded by anyone. Almost all of his tracks for Sun are indispensable, as are his first two RCA albums. Elvis is Back, his first album after leaving the army, is also excellent and showed a maturity both in choice of songs and the performance itself. It all went wrong shortly afterwards with Elvis becoming a star in a string of bad movies with inane soundtrack albums. The Elvis that came back from military service was not the hip cat who first put on the uniform. Indeed the few Elvis movies that can be considered classic came from the first period of fame before he was drafted into the army. The military it seemed did something to Elvis - tamed him,perhaps.
There were though later triumphs - the excellent 68 comeback special and a string of albums such as Elvis in Memphis, Elvis Country, Back in Memphis and That's The Way It Is spring to mind.
It's not surprising really that Elvis in his afterlife has become even more of a product than he was when alive. He was used as a commodity throughout the movie years and even beyond with the gruelling Vegas shows. And that's a shame because it often obscures the fact that Elvis was a truly great artist, as important in the development of popular music as anyone. In life he became wrapped up in his own myth and lost himself beneath all the trappings of showbusiness and in death the real Elvis is buried deeper still. It's not about the flashy suits and saccharine ballads, but about those first few years, back when the world was black and white, when the young man revolutionised music and changed the world. He truly did, you know.
These days I know I was wrong to discount Elvis and am a born again fan and so in honour of the King, on this anniversary of his death, here are my choice of five essential Elvis albums.
Elvis Prelsey (1956) This is the first album for RCA Records. As famous for it's pink and green lettering and its cover design, as for the music itself. This is punky rockabilly Elvis with not a bad track among the set. Listen to Elv's take on Ray Chares's I got A Woman and prepare to be rocked.
Elvie (1956) The second RCA album was more polished that the previous volume and much of the rawness taken away. But mawkish Old Shep aside this is still a great record.
Elvis Sunrise (1975) This compilation contains all of the tracks the young Elvis laid down for Sam Phillips and Sun records. And it's absolutely excellent - this is Elvis at his best. Raw, bluesy and magnificent. The video embedded below comes from these sessions.
Elvis is Back (1960) Elvis launched himself into recording this album directly after leaving the army, acting as producer and having free reign on the choice of tracks. The work shows a more rounded side of Elvis with the singer flirting with jazz as well as the more usual blues and rockabilly. After this master-work came the soundtrack to GI Blues and the real Elvis seemed lost forever.
From Elvis in Memphis (1969) Perhaps the last truly great album Elvis would ever make. Producer Chips Moran pushed Elvis every step of the way and this resuled in some of the greatest emotion ever heard in that remarkable voice. Excellent.
Elvis had that sinking feeling and was left slippin' an' sliding as the King of Rock and Roll with a dirty, dirty feeling- wait a minute. Wrong Elvis - still it's a great little story so here goes.
Elvis has a dedicated team of British firefighters to thank for his rescue after sinking up to his neck in a mud pit.
Elvis would have drowned had he sunk just another few centimetres in the bog.
Elvis' grateful owner, Maggie Hill, was over the moon at the success of
the two-hour rescue effort, saying she thought she was going to lose her
horse.
"I cannot praise the crews enough for what they did. I didn't think
there was any chance they'd manage to pull him out alive but they did."They were absolutely brilliant, true gentlemen and I am extremely grateful to them."
Fire crews from the West Midlands Fire Service specialist technical
rescue team found the 14-hand pony up to his neck when they turned out
to the call.
Specialist crews first arrived on scene at Hillfields Farm, Allesley,
Coventry, at 12.28pm on Wednesday to find Elvis in serious trouble
.
Watch manager Pete Drummond, who was first to the scene, said: "I left
the vehicle and ran the quarter-mile distance through woodland tracks to
get to the horse, as we heard from the owner that he was now almost
fully submerged.
"With the assistance of my crew, three potential rescue plans were put
in place. The horse was clearly in distress and it was crucial that we
acted quickly to get him out alive."
Technician James Halton donned a dry suit and jumped into the 20-metre
square mud pit and, assisted by colleagues, technicians McGreavy,
Deadman and Howard managed to shovel away enough mud from around the
horse to fit strops in place underneath his stomach and around his front
legs.
Purists will be appalled but this CD based on the stage show, Viva Elvis by Cirque Du Solei is a worthy release of classic Elvis material with a little modern twist. It's much like they did with The Beatles, Love album several years ago and even ardent Beatle fans took to that remix, which made the much heard classics kind of fresh again.
The Canadian producer, Erich van Tourneau had exclusive access to Elvis Presley’s extensive catalog, more than 900 recordings. His mission was daunting: Select choice cuts, deconstruct them, add new elements and put them back together while maintaining the integrity of the originals. “It was a mix of pain and pleasure,” van Tourneau said. “I had to listen to everything he did. It was really important to do that, to understand the nuances of the catalog and the changes. Elvis changed a lot during his career.”
Van Tourneau’s reimagined productions of classics such as “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Love Me Tender” and others appear on “Viva Elvis – The Album,” the soundtrack to the Las Vegas show by Cirque Du Soleil.
The stage show is one thing, though but how does it work as an album? Well, mostly very well - the up-tempo numbers especially work well and Blue Suede Shoes and Suspicious Minds are excellent. Of course they'll never replace the originals but then that's not what they are intended for and instead offer a new and fun way to listen to the greatest voice there ever was.
TRACK LISTING
Blue Suede Shoes
That's All Right
Heartbreak Hotel
Love Me Tender
King Creole
Bossa Nova
Burning Love
Memories
Can't Help Falling in Love
You 'll Never Walk Alone
Suspicious Minds
To fully appreciate this album one needs to treat it as a whole and not just a collection of tracks. It covers all Elvis eras from the hillbilly cat of 'That's All Right' to the jump-suit clad showman of 'Suspicious Minds .
his isn't just a lock or strand of the King's trademark pompadour. This "large quantity" of hair originated in the collection of Elvis' personal barber, Homer Gilleland. Gilleland gave this hair to his friend Tom Morgan, of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, who was a close friend of the barber, as well as The King. The hair is expected to bring as much as $20,000. Bidding has already reached $13,000.
This lot includes a notarized Letter of Authenticity, confirmed by Morgan and John Reznikoff of University Archives, a known and trusted expert in the field.
This has got to take the awards for the most ghoulish rock star memorabilia ever offered -
CHICAGO — Instruments used in Elvis Presley's autopsy and embalming are going up for auction in Chicago, including the "John Doe" toe tag used after the original was stolen amid the chaos at the hospital following his death.
Leslie Hindman Auctioneers will hold the auction Aug. 12, four days before the 33rd anniversary of Presley's death.
The auction house said Tuesday that all of the items used in the autopsy and funeral preparations will be available, from rubber gloves and forceps to a comb and eye liner. Even the coffin invoice and the hanger used to hold Presley's burial suit will be sold.
The items were saved by the senior embalmer at the Memphis Funeral Home, which prepared the singer's body.
The items will be auctioned in two sets valued at up to $6,000 and $8,000.
This film sounds mad enough to make it big - Tom Cruise is to play Elvis Presley in the movie, Big Boss Man - apparantly the movie is based on the premise of Elvis as an FBI agent going up against drug dealers in the New York of the 1970's The movie suggests that Elvis went into the witness protection program after the events told in the movie and is, in fact, alive today.
In real life Elvis did indeed have an FBI badge - it was presented to him by Tricky Dicky Nixon when the musician offered his services to help solve the youth drug problem.
When I first started to develop a serious interest in the blues, I stumbled about listening to the more well known names - Muddy Waters, B B King and perhaps a little Robert Johnson. And it wasn't until I caught the excellent Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues series that I started to get more adventurous in my listening.
From there it was back to the founding fathers - the Ledbelly's, that Howling Wolf guy, the Ivory Joe Hunter's and Blind Willie's. I sampled differing styles - Delta Blues, Piano Blues, slide blues, Chicago Blues and just about every variety there was. I learned of the lives of people like Son House, Charley Patton, Skip James, Little Walter and Charley Patton - some of these guys lived lives as mournful as any blues number! A great and inexpensive way to build a comprehensive blues collection is to buy the CD's in the Complete Blues collection from Snapper Music. They are uniformly designed and look great side by side on the shelf and cover pretty much everything from the early days of the wandering bluesman to the rock/blues hybrids of modern day.
Each disc also comes with a booklet with an essay relating to the relevant artist or blues style.
"Elvis Presley was the white guy who sang black, the man who thrust the bare wires of the blues and country together and created a power surge called rock and roll that the world has never recovered from."
The Blues roots of Elvis Presley is one of the releases in the collection and it collects together 21 of the numbers that influenced Presley's formative years. Many of the songs featured here were later recorded by Presley and it's great to listen to early versions of such classics as Blue Moon of Kentucky, See See Rider Blues and Milk Cow Blues. Jimi Rodgers original Frankie and Johnny shows clearly that this was one song Presley murdered but Wynonnie Harris' Good Rocking Tonight showed how Presley nailed the number. Some of the tracks featured on this collection are more raw country than blues but as Johnny Cash said, country is the white man's blues.
There are two predominant images of Elvis Presley's in the public psyche - the beautiful young rocker, virile and dangerous and then there is the bloated Elvis, the victim of tasteless excess. There was a million miles between the revolutionary force the young Elvis was and that parody of later years. As brilliant as he was, Elvis died a sad pitiful wreck of a man - someone who had been chewed up and spat out by the money men of show business.
I've written in the past about my admiration for Elvis but I've always been more tuned to the early period, the blues and rockabilly mesh ups like Mystery Train, That's All Right and I forgot to remember to forget, belted out by the prototype punk. I still think those songs he cut with Sun Records are among the best songs ever recorded.
I usually avoid those latter tracks, those tacky ballads and over produced show-tunes. But lately I've been listening to a lot of the later work and discovering that I had been too harsh - even in the comedy jump-suit days Elvis could rock when he truly wanted to. For every person who thinks Elvis was a revolution, there is another who considers him a joke. But can anyone realistically deny that he was not the single most important voice in the history of modern music? I think not.
If you use your ears rather than the years of prejudices to listen to Heartbreak Hotel then you'll feel that magic, that brilliance, that genius in the voice. And the same goes for later day classic such as Separate Ways and Way Down.
As John Lennon said, before Elvis there was nothing.
The Archive's pointless and tacky award goes to a new book that sets out to sensationalise Elvis Presley's love life but tells us nothing we didn't already know.
Alanna Nash biography on Presley titled Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women who Loved Him, suggests that Beaulieu might not have been a virgin when she married the rocker. (you don't say!)
The author tells that on the evening Elvis was introduced to Beaulieu, who was still a schoolgirl, he was found kissing her against a wall.
Also, people at the house claimed that the music legend had disappeared with Beaulieu at 8.30 p.m., only to arrive from his bedroom at 1a.m.
Joe Esposito, one of Presley's friends, said: "He was attracted to women who reminded him of his mother, as Priscilla did with [her][ dark hair and beautiful eyes."
Esposito recalled: "Every night we were out chasing showgirls, partying with them all night, going to all the different lounges ... and finally going to sleep in the morning. Then we'd wake up in the afternoon and start all over again."
"We talked, smoked grass, drank, went for late swims and even had orgies."
The tome further throws light on an affair between Presley and Sandy Ferra, 14, whom he met while filming GI Blues.
The affair lasted for six years, even while he was seeing other women. The singer's friends even made jokes about "little Elvis", referring to his penis, and unselfish approach to sex.
The book has been published in America and will come out in Britain in May
Were he alive today Elvis Presley would be celebrating his 75th birthday, quite probably with a slap up meal of peanut butter and hamburgers. Tragically he died far too young and one can only speculate what kind of man he would be were he still with us.
I was only twelve years old when Presley passed over - and I was something of a fan in those days. I remember one school summer holidays there was a season of Presley movies on BBC1, jammed between the morning cartoons and I think Star Trek. Now as a kid I didn't see anything wrong with those films, admittedly few are watchable as an adult but Presley, unlike all those greasy long haired rockers, seemed an ideal to aim for. And even now, two years older than Presley was when he died, I'm still a fan of most of his early stuff as well as some of his later more assured performances. After all no one could deliver Suspicious Minds the way Presley did. And that first LP, Elvis Presley, is still one of the best rock/blues albums ever pressed.
Buying Presley material today is an awkward things since many albums duplicate tracks from other albums but there are several essential buys for anyone interested in the King. The DVD's Elvis 56 and the 1968 comeback performance are must haves and several of his feature films - King Creole, Jailhouse Rock, Flaming Star and if pushed GI Blues are amazingly good. On the CD front Elvis Presley, Elvis,the 68 show, Elvis Country are excellent. And out of the compilations the current Elvis 75 is a good option though I would plump for the two collections Elvis Number ones and Elvis Second to none as these contain the infectious remixes of A Little Less Conversation and Roustabout.
The tracks he cut with Sun records defined all the music that would follow.
I also think Elvis was a far better actor than he is often given credit - this list of missed opportunities in a badly managed film career sadden me. And it's terrible that for many young people their image of Elvis is the fat, flamboyant performer he became in his later years. It's criminal that he was allowed to continue to perform in 1976-1977 when he was obviously ill. Those around him at the time must have some weight to carry over this.
The Beatles may have eclipsed him musically - Presley never really wrote his own material.Though it can be argued that Elvis had a greater effect on popular culture than the Beatles and the way he delivered those early blues and country standards is still awesome and has never and will never be bettered. Familiarity breeds contempt but try and listen to Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog or I got a Woman with fresh ears - there is something magical going on within that voice. And Elvis' 1956 cut of Blue Moon is probably the most ethereally beautiful track ever cut to record, Elvis' voice seems to be coming from beyond the grave. The track is embedded as a video below.
One of the first Elvis LP I owned was even an Elvis LP proper. It was called Tribute to the King and had some forgotten Elvis sound-alike crooning his greatest hits. Later I got a few of the real LP's and I realised that this was the real thing. In fact I remember having a record player for Christmas one year - one of those with an hinged lid that looked like a suit-case and the three LP's I had with it all came from Woolworths - a tribute to The Beatles, that Elvis sound-alike and Elvis' Christmas Album. You know I still think the Elvis Christmas album is the best Christmas set ever recorded - he slams through Santa Bring me Baby Back and almost cries out Blue Christmas. And whilst Mama Liked the Roses may be vomit inducing it is still a mighty fine holiday album.
The newspaper pictured here is the Daily Mirror from August 17th 1977 ( click on the images for a larger version) and the headline is, as it was all over the world, detailing the death Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll. I was a few months short of twelve years old at the time but I can remember this clearly.
The newspaper reports that radio stations all over the world were playing Elvis songs as a mark of respect - Radio Luxenberg even went as far as cancelling all adverts for the night in respect to the King.
Other news being very much overshadowed in the newspaper was a report on a lucky couple who bought a £9.000 dream cottage and then when renovating it they found 99 old Gold sovereigns under the floor that were valued at £20.000. The lucky couple Michael and Sue Whitmore were hoping they would be able to keep the money.
I wonder what happened there? There was also a report that a petition had gone to the Queen, asking that Windsor Castle be turned over as a refuge for battered women and their children. The organisers of the petition, a woman's aid group in Sheffield were confident their request would be granted. I guess the Queen must have told them to get on their bike.
On prime time TV that night BBC 1 were showing, It AIn't Half Hot Mum at 8pm followed by something called A Roof over my Head. BBC2 offered Brass Tacks and ITV had Coronation Street followed by A Night out a London Casino which was then followed by the best cop show ever made anywhere, The Sweeney. Channel Four were showing nothing because they hadn't been invented yet.
There was also much in the newspaper about The Battle of Brum as they were calling the recent riots in Birmingham. The riots started off with a confrontation between The Socialist Workers party clashed with The National Front.
Below thanks to the power of the internet is an actual news clip from the day Elvis died.
August 1977, the world is in shock – Elvis Presley, the worlds most popular recording star in history is dead. The worldwide outpouring of grief is incredible and radio stations and TV channels in every corner of the globe sounded out with the unmistakable Presley baritone. The Presley image, sometimes young and viral, more often middle aged and bloated sat beneath the headlines of newspapers everywhere. The King of Rock and Roll was gone, his legacy would be his music but few mentioned the films that Presley had left behind and his own peculiar contribution to the acting field. He made 31 films, not including a couple of concert movies, and not all of them were as bad as you remember.
Elvis famously told interviewers in 1971 that every dream he had ever dreamed had come true a hundred times. There was however one unfulfilled ambition that burnt away behind his public image, the desire, sadly never realised, to become a serious dramatic actor. Even as late as 1977 sources close to Elvis have revealed that the singer was considering giving up touring and getting back into acting. In 1956 Elvis himself told reporters that acting was his greatest ambition and that all his life he had wanted to be an actor, like his idols, Tony Curtis and James Dean.
In fact much has been made of the young Elvis’ love of roots blues music and of him lugging a guitar about at Humes High School in Memphis, it was by Elvis’ own admission that as a child he dreamed of being Tony Curtis. He also claimed that when he became a cinema usher in 1951 it was not only for the much-needed money but also to see all the movies for free. Childhood friends of Elvis have said that the young singer was a huge fan of Rudolph Valentino who actually died some nine years before Elvis was born. Billy Smith, a cousin of Elvis’, said that the young Presley was fascinated with the way Valentino projected so many emotions with his eyes. And of course the teenage Elvis modelled his hairstyle on that of Tony Curtis.
When Elvis went to Hollywood, arriving on Friday August 17 1956, to make his first film, The Reno Brothers, eventually re-titled Love me Tender, for Hal Wallis he was under the impression that he would act and not sing in his films. The previous year Presley had read for Hal Wallis and had believed he was being lined up to play alongside Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn in The Rainmaker.And as strange as it may now seem there were hopes that Presley would be the next James Dean – the singer idolised Dean and by his own admission had seen Rebel without a Cause 44 times. Later when Presley met the film’s director, Nicolas Ray he reportedly got down on his knees and recited entire chunks of Rebel’s script. He had memorised not just Dean’s lines but also those of everyone else, a habit Presley would keep for his entire movie career.
‘I have no problem memorising,’ Presley told a reporter on the set of his first film. ‘I once memorised General Macarthur’s farewell address and I can still reel off Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech which I learned in school.’
As soon as shooting began on The Reno Brothers the now familiar media circus went berserk.When Elvis had arrived at the airport thousands of fans had gathered, many of them holding up banners that proclaimed, “Elvis for President” but that was only the tip of the iceberg and day after day fans and journalist lay siege to the film studios. Security was set at an all time high - Elvis was in town and no one in Hollywood, no stranger to big stars, had ever seen anything quite like it.
The first recording session for the soundtrack took place on the second day of filming. That first day Elvis cut the ballad that was to be a running theme throughout the movie. The song was a rewrite of the Civil War ballad, “Aura Lee” and everyone was amazed at the way Elvis nailed it – at that point he was known for belting out rock and roll songs and the tenderness with which he sang this beautiful little number was refreshing. The song, Love me Tender, would become the name of the movie after the original Reno Brothers tag was dropped.
When the film was released the critics were not impressed – “Elvis is an obscene child.” Cried out the Hollywood Reporter while Time famously compared him to a goldfish and a sausage. The New York times were also under whelmed by the film but impressed with the vigour of the young singer, saying that he went at his role as if it were Gone with the Wind. In fairness the film is no worse than a lot of B-western made around the time and a lot better than most. Presley, while often awkward on screen, proved his ability in several key scenes.
Elvis was quickly into his second movie and this time it would be better suited to his image. Loving you, 1957, was a thinly veiled autobiography of the actual Elvis story. In the movie Elvis plays Deke Rivers, a singer who is manipulated from the top by his press agent, Miss Glenda, played with relish by Lizabeth Scott. Colonel Tom Parker was furious when he saw some of the dailies, feeling that the press agent was a deliberate swipe at himself. However Elvis’s screen managers would all follow this blueprint. In Jailhouse Rock, his cellmate tricks him into singing away fifty per cent of all future earnings. In the dismal Fun in Acapulco, a 12-year-old character gets half of the singer’s earnings for securing spots at a nightclub. And in King Creole, arguably the singer’s greatest film, Walter Matthau plays a darker version of the Parker/Svengali figure.
Jailhouse Rock followed in 1957 and with this grim prison melodrama Elvis hit his stride and was given some meaty material to play around with. The result was the best Elvis acting experience to date.
“A dreadful film. An unsavoury nauseating, queasy making film, to turn even the most insulated stomachs.” Said the UK newspaper, The Daily Mirror.
The newspaper missed the point though. All the characters are sleazy, no one is wholly good and everyone has a hidden agenda. But that is the point in this grim and gritty movie, which could in face be termed, Rock and Roll Noir. Elvis plays Vince Everett, a young man sent to jail for manslaughter. While there he is cell mated with a one-time country singer who tutors Elvis and after he appears on a prison TV special he becomes a huge star. Course Elvis knows nothing about this as his cellie, a trustee bribes someone in the mail room to hide all the fan mail. When Elvis is finally released he realises what a sensation he is and quickly turns his back on everyone until the inevitable redemption at the end of the film.
Jailhouse Rock grossed $4 million at the box office and fans rioted in the cinemas. Today, along with King Creole and Flaming Star, this stands as one of the three truly great Elvis movies.
King Creole followed in 1958 and represents Elvis’s best ever screen performance – on times he even manages to sulky intensity of his idol, James Dean. Based on the novel, A Stone For Danny Fisher, the film turned the main character from an up and coming boxer to a signer but retained the gangland milieu.
Elvis knew he was involved in a quality project here and he quickly read the book upon which the film was based in order to get a hook on the character. If Jailhouse Rock had touched on a noir sense of style then King Creole took it all one step further and the world of Danny is one of failed ambitions and a weary cynicism. Elvis rebels against his screen father, horrified with the way the man is able to swallow anything so as not to rock the boat and sees mobster, Walter Matthau as a kind of surrogate father. And for once the critics were impressed.
“Elvis can act.” Said the New York Times.
“The part gives him (Elvis) the scope to stop acting like a baboon and to act like a human being. Which he does with a new skill, a new restraint and a new charm.” Said The News Chronicle.
However following the film the army beckoned for Elvis and his films would never hit these heights again. One wonders what would have happened if Elvis had been able to carry on with films as multi layered as King Creole but, as Colonel Parker noted, it might have been a fine picture but it took less at the box office than later films like, Tickle Me. For Parker it was always about the fast buck, art was secondary, and sadly Elvis never quite managed to break away from the man who had made him what he was but would ultimately destroy the raw and unique talent. Within a few short years Elvis Presley was merely a sad parody of his former self. There were still occasional flashes of brilliance to come, both on the screen and on record, but to paraphrase John Lennon, “Elvis died when he went into the army.”
The first post-army film was GI Blues, a flimsy plot that saw the new wholesome image of Elvis Presley, it was an unwelcome transformation from youthful rebel to all round family entertainer – one critic even likened this new Elvis to a youthful Bing Crosby. The films was a massive success and would set the blueprint for most of the moviesthat followed – part travelogue, part fashion show, part family comedy and all set around a set of songs designed to fill a soundtrack and give a couple of singles. With the exception of 1960’s Flaming Star, a serious western directed by Don Siegel each film would get progressively worse but none of them lost money. However true fans must have rejoiced when in 1969 Elvis turned his back on Hollywood after the dire, Change of Habit. This movie wasn’t even released to the cinema in the UK and made it’s debut on television.
The Elvis motion pictures in full
Love me Tender
Loving you
Jailhouse Rock
King Creole
GI Blues
Flaming Star
Wild In the Country
Blue Hawaii
Follow that Dream
Kid Galahad
Girls, Girls, Girls,
It Happened at the World’s Fair
Fun in Acapulco
Kissin Cousins
Viva Las Vegas
Roustabout
Girl Happy
Tickle Me
Harum Scarum
Frankie and Johnny
Paradise Hawaiian Style
Spinout
Easy Come, Easy Go
Double Trouble
Clambake
Stay Away Joe
Speedway
Live a Little, Love a Little
Charro
The Trouble with Girls
Change of Habit
Those Elvis Films that Never were
Things might have been very different if Elvis had gotten the role of the emotionally disturbed Jimmy Currie with Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn in The Rainmaker in 1956. Elvis tested successfully but Parker insisted on Love me Tender being his star’s cinematic debut. Later in 1958 Elvis saw his hopes of starring with Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road dashed because the colonel once again intervened, saying this was not the kind of role for his boy. Elvis was then linked with director, Elia Kazan to star in Walk on the Wild Side. But the colonel enraged over one of the characters being a lesbian forced Elvis out of the project.
Later after his successful 1968 television comeback performance Elvis was linked with the Sundance Kid part in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and also as the gigolo in Midnight Cowboy. The Colonel was not happy with either role, Elvis was particularly upset when the Colonel vetoed a project which would have seen Elvis as an escaped convict, shackled to fellow con Sammy Davies Jnr. And the same went for Elvis’s hopes of starring as the washed up Norman Maine in A Star Is Born. Apparently the colonel wasn’t happy to see – “my boy playing second fiddle to a Jewish broad.”
Elvis Presley made some dire movies but thankfully his westerns, all three of them, are amongst his better film work. And each of them offered him a chance for some straight acting.
First was Love Me Tender (1956) which starred the magnificent looking young Elvis and during this period Elvis was still aiming to become something of a James Dean(his idol) figure. And although this is his first movie and his acting displays all the signs of a beginner he does take things seriously and turns in a adequate performance.
The film was originally titled, The Fighting Reno Brothers but with the casting of the new teen sensation it was decided to change the title of the movie to allow Elvis to release the soundtrack songs.
When the film was released Time Magazine famously called Elvis both a sausage and a goldfish while the Hollywood Promoter said he was an obscene child. The film did massive business at the box office and fans screamed when the Elvis character died at the end but soon perked up when his ghost was brought back to sing the title track over the end credits.
Elvis' second western, Flaming Star (1960) came at a time that the singer/actor most needed it. A good director in Don Siegal, an intelligent screenplay, only the one song plus the title track. The result was perhaps his best acting performance and a movie that is arguably his all time best. Only King Creole comes close in any case.
Elvis turns in a fine performance in a role originally written for Brando. The King plays Peter, a half-breed Kiowa. Director Siegal was initially horrified with the casting of the rock and roll star but he soon changed his mind. The scene in which Elvis declares his love for a stunned Barbara Edan is absolutely pitch perfect.
The resulting movie is more western than Elvis Presley movie and is as good as many of the oaters made at the time.
Charro (1969) was the last western Elvis would ever make. It was a dream role for him - a totally music free movie with Elvis only being called upon to sign the title track.
Elvis was at home in the dusty clothes and thick beard and he was hoping that the movie, boasting a Italian western feel to it, would be taken as seriously as the Clint Eastwood westerns which were all the rage at the time. The problem is that the movie came out disjointed and at parts Elvis seems to be sleepwalking. Still it's a decent enough minor western which is at least watchable and doesn't feature any scuba diving, speedway driving, singers.
In many way Elvis' movies mirror his signing - one wonders what could have been if better material had come along. And the story of Elvis Presley is one of the saddest in American show - business.
