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- LISA MARIE AND BEAU SPLIT
(National Enquirer)
March 30, 2001
Lisa Marie Presley is checking into the Heartbreak Hotel. Elvis' little girl has split with her fiance, musician John Oszajca, her publicist announced. The couple had been dating the for nearly three years and became engaged a few days before Christmas in 1999. Lisa Marie, now 33, was previously married to musician Danny Keough (with whom she had two children) for six years before they broke up. Three weeks after a quickie divorce in the Dominican Republic, The King of Rock 'n' Roll's daughter married the King of Pop -- Michael Jackson. She and Jacko divorced less than two years later.
- Jackie Kahane; Comedian Opened for Elvis Presley
By MYRNA OLIVER
(Los Angeles Times)
March 28, 2001
Jackie Kahane, the stand-up comedian who opened for Presley for seven years before the singer's death in 1977, died Monday at the age of 79. Personally close to Presley, Kahane traveled the world with the legendary singer and delivered a stirring eulogy at his funeral. The comic's usual opening act for Presley was 18 minutes, but Kahane said that stretched to 45 minutes in the last two years of the singer's life, when Presley required more and more time to prepare for the stage.
- Man who rammed Presley pleads no contest to drunken driving
(Courtroom Television Network)
March 28, 2001
Also reported as "No Contest Plea in Presley Case" by Associated Press, March 27, 2001
A driver accused of hitting Priscilla Presley's sport utility vehicle and five other cars during a police chase last year has pleaded no contest. Jacek Zareba, 33, of Los Angeles, pleaded no contest Monday to driving while under the influence of alcohol, hit-and-run, and evading a police officer. Zareba will be sentenced April 4 in Van Nuys Superior Court. He had a blood-alcohol level of .20 percent. The state's limit is .08 percent. Patrol officers saw Zareba driving on the afternoon of Oct. 4 when he struck two vehicles and didn't stop. As officers chased him, Zareba drove the wrong way along major San Fernando Valley thoroughfares, hitting four other cars. He drove on the wrong side of Ventura Boulevard, which runs east-west across the length of the valley, when he clipped Presley's Land Rover. The 55-year-old actress and ex-wife of the Elvis Presley was not injured.
- ELVIS AND NIXON (Book review)
Reviewed by David Greenberg
(International Herald Tribune / Washington Post)
March 27, 2001
ELVIS AND NIXON By Jonathan Lowy. 304 pages. $22.95. Crown.
Despite his attempts to empathize with his characters, Lowy invariably patronizes Nixon and Elvis. That's no surprise: among culturally attuned, well-educated liberals, the Nixon-Elvis handshake is a sure-fire source of humor. To many, the very juxtaposition of these two incongruous figures - the ultimate square trying to make chitchat with a bloated, over-the-hill rock star - is an inherently risible event. To appreciate why the event resonates requires seeing it not from Lowy's detached and condescending perspective but from an empathic one. It requires that we recall a bit of history: that Nixon won re-election in 1972 by a landslide and that Elvis's 1968 comeback concert was a smash success. A whole lot of people are taken with the meeting of the president and the King because they voted for the one and boogied to the other.
- Old Haunts Still Resonate With Memories -- and Elvis
By Anita Huslin
(Washington Post)
March 26, 2001
As a young saxophone player, Del Puschert met Elvis Presley when he went to Texas in 1954. "He stopped in one night while he was going through to Shreveport and sat in with us," Puschert said. "It was no big deal. We were all musicians, and so we played." As he recalls, the highlight may actually have been after the show, "when we went out and had biscuits and gravy." Later, Presley asked Puschert, whom he called Daddy-o, to join him on a tour. At first, Puschert declined, because he wanted to stay in Texarkana to be near a lady piano player. But the two musicians would meet again, and the next time Presley asked, Puschert agreed. They played a couple of shows, eventually ending up in Miami, where Puschert played with Presley one night before the show moved on and Puschert decided to go to school to get his barber's certificate. "He was a super, super guy," Puschert recalled. Soon after, Elvis headed to Hollywood to make the movie "Love Me Tender," ending his road-show days. And Puschert returned to Annapolis, where he bought his father's eight-acre farm and set up a barbershop.
- Our universe not alone, say scientists
(United Press International)
March 25, 2001
Spanish and American astrophysicists claim the universe we inhabit contains an infinite number of other universes like our own, called O-regions, that we will someday be able to contact. The team will publish their hypothesis this fall in the journal "Gravitation and Quantum Cosmology". These universes are likely to be similar to our own - share similar life forms, for instance - because they share a key feature with our world: a finite number of distinct histories. A history is the way something has evolved in time and will continue to evolve. "Distant copies of ourselves play all sorts of different roles" in these other worlds, Vilenkin said. In fact, "there are infinitely many O-regions where Al Gore is president and - yes Elvis Presley is still alive!"
- THEATER: Everybody Let's Rock
By SUSAN KING
(Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2001)
Producer Rene Sheridan announced Friday that "Jailhouse Rock," a new musical based on the 1957 Elvis Presley film, is about to hit the boards. The show will include Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's tunes from the movie with additional music from a yet-to-be-announced composer. Emmy and British Academy Award winners Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais wrote the book. "Jailhouse Rock" will have a workshop staging in L.A. in September and plans are in the works for a national tour.
- Elvis Presley is greeted by fans as he arrives in Honolulu for his historic Arizona Memorial concert in 1961
By Burl Burllingame
(Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 23, 2001)
Burlinghame reports on Elvis Presley's charity fund-raiser of 1961 to boost the USS Arizona Memorial building fund. Dozens of plans had been proposed to memorialize the crew of the Arizona, the US Navy's single greatest loss of life, when more than a thousand US sailors died in the battleship after a bomb ripped apart the bow. It is an event largely unremembered and unmemorialized, even though a rock 'n' roll entertainer was able to accomplish something that admirals, generals and politicians could not.
- 'Best of Webb Pierce' Recalls a Forgotten Country Legend
By ROBERT HILBURN
(Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2001)
Webb Pierce's music topped the charts in the '50s. But big record sales don't guarantee a glowing legacy. Just look at the career of Webb Pierce. He was once dueling Hank Williams and Elvis Presley at the top of the country charts, yet he's largely unknown today to any country fan under 30. Pierce's lack of standing today is even more puzzling after listening to a dozen of his biggest hits, which are collected in "The Best of Webb Pierce/The Millennium Collection," a retrospective album just released by MCA Nashville.
- Buyers: don't be discouraged by home's decor
By Rick Jillson
(Evansville Courier & Press, March 23, 2001)
So you dig Elvis Presley. You've seen Jailhouse Rock a dozen times, vacationed at Graceland and danced with your sweetie to "Love Me Tender." Even this degree of devotion won't prepare you for the shock of walking into a home that's been turned into a black velvet, shag-carpeted shrine to the King - especially if the home's for sale and you're a potential buyer. Message - it's important to look at the underlying structure of a house rather than the "prettys".
- Elvis - that's the way it is
(Live4Now, March 21, 2001)
Harvey complains that the movie lasts too long. At the same time, he acknowledges that it's insightful about why people loved Elvis so much - "if you can blot out the sort of images he still has, you are left with Elvis as a god". Harvey almost gets to the point of accepting that Elvis' death was actually a genuine loss to the world instead of something to chuckle at.
- Texas twaddle . . . Clintonville . . . So let's talk Europe . . . Clinton's new playpen
by MICHAEL SNEED
(Chicago Sun Herald, March 21, 2001)
Clinton was recently in Baden-Baden, Germany, at a media awards ceremony where he was mobbed by fans. He ate spaghetti and cheese in a restaurant . . . and the next day the menu item was called "Clinton Spaghetti!". During the awards ceremony for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, people were flocking to get close to him [Clinton]. Then a group of kids played saxophone for him. They didn't play 'Hail to the Chief' they played Elvis Presley's 'Don't be Cruel'.
- At home, Sheriff Arpaio faces his own diet discipline
by Bonnie Law
(The Arizona Republic, March 21, 2001)
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the man behind the pink underwear for inmates, Tent City and chain gangs, and the man reputed to be "America's Toughest Sheriff" admits he always wanted to be a police officer. By age 21, after a three-year stint in the Army, he realized his goal. He worked as a police officer in Washington, D.C., and in Las Vegas - "long enough to lock up Elvis Presley," Arpaio boasts. He says he stopped Presley in 1957 for driving 100 mph.
- Rock and Roll Celebrates Its Newest Crop
(International Herald Tribune / Reuters, March 21, 2001)
Paul Simon, Aerosmith, Michael Jackson, Solomon Burke, Queen and Steely Dan have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an event marked by a late-night jam session of Steely Dan's "Do It Again" and Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love." Also inducted were Ritchie Valens, who was killed with Buddy Holly in a 1959 plane crash; the Flamingos doo-wop group; Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records; Johnnie Johnson, who played piano with Chuck Berry, and James Burton, who played guitar with Elvis Presley and Merle Haggard.
- Beatles top rock 'n' roll memorabilia
(MSNBC, March 18, 2001)
Upcoming online auction: Lennon's piano, stretch Mercedes. The Beatles top the rock memorabilia market for now. Eminem's chainsaw one day could end up being the most valuable item of all, but that's still in the far future. "John Lennon and the Beatles are the stars of the memorabilia industry", auction specialist Ted Owen says. "Historically, hierarchically, the Beatles have always been the No. 1 seller, ahead of Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and Madonna."
- A quick look at 2001 class of inductees
by JOHN SOEDER
(Cleveland Live / Plain Dealer, March 18, 2001)
Various performers went to Graceland, dreamed on and declared themselves the champions of the world, among other accomplishments. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2001 includes performer Michael Jackson and nonperformer / sideman James Burton, renowned for his "chicken pickin'" prowess on guitar. This Shreveport, La., native backed Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson and Emmylou Harris, among others.
- Heartbreak shares the stage with Vietnam's Elvis in exile
by ELSA C. ARNETT
(San Jose Mercury News, March 18, 2001)
Elvis Phuong is a popular Vietnamese singer who understands the meaning of the words of the songs and reflects it in his voice, his facial expressions and his body language. He remains as popular today as ever among Vietnamese because much of the emotion is injected into everything from his rendition of Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?'' to nostalgic Vietnamese love ballads. Elvis Phuong's name is not a coincidence. He is paying tribute to the singer he has been mesmerized by since he first heard "Hound Dog'' as a 6-year-old growing up on the outskirts of Saigon. All those years listening to grainy records left an impression when he began his professional singing career at 17. But he isn't an Elvis Presley impersonator. Instead, he tries to incorporate the King's style into his own as he seamlessly moves between Vietnamese, English and French tunes. Like his idol, Elvis Phuong sings with a similar impassioned baritone. At the end of each song he, too, lets out a bashful, muffled"thank-you-very-much". And on this evening at the Queen Bee nightclub in downtown Saigon, he seems to have the King's ability to make a crowd collectively swoon.
- SPRING FEVER: A DAILY COUNTDOWN: Put a song in your heart
by Rasmi Simhan
(The Kansas City Star, March 17, 2001)
It's never too early to sing about spring. Try these spring-titled tunes: "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring" (Gilbert and Sullivan); "Spring Haze" (Tori Amos); "Spring Fever" (Elvis Presley): The lyrics to this song popularized by Elvis are as imaginative as a pair of wet socks. Then again, the King could probably charm if he sang the phone book. Curl your lip and sing, "Spring fever comes to everyone/Spring fever, it's time for fun"; [and others ...]
- Elvis: That's The Way It Is (2001)Reviewed
By Michael Thomson
(BBC Online, March 16, 2001)
The reviewer would have preferred a documentary which cemented Elvis to his era and included interviews with the star and his band. He also regrets that Elvis was nine-parts showbiz, one part rock 'n' roll, considering "Elvis: That's The Way It Is" to be pleasant, not essential, showing up the limitations of the rock documentary.
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