July 2001
- Bo Diddley brings roots of Rock to 'Bird Fest
By DAN NAILEN
(Salt Lake Tribune, July 27, 2001)
Bo Diddley is just one of the legendary performers headlining this year's Snowbird Jazz and Blues Festival, running today through Sunday. Diddley was there at the beginnings of rock 'n' roll, developing what he calls "that freight train sound" in the mid-1950s with his first recorded work for Chicago's Chess Records, a double-single of "Bo Diddley" and "I'm A Man." Fifty years later, and Diddley's fuzz-guitar sound and chugging rhythms, aped by everyone from Buddy Holly to the Rolling Stones to BowWowWow, remain as the bedrock of rock as a musical style. "I was there at the beginning," Diddley said in an interview this week. "People say Elvis started rock 'n' roll. That's the biggest lie I ever heard. He was good, a dynamite dude, but he didn't start no rock 'n' roll. He was playing rockabilly. He was a good dude, though. An outta-sight cat."
- August - Let's get rid of it
By David Plotz
(MSM.COM, July 27, 2001)
August is the Mississippi of the calendar. It's beastly hot and muggy. It has a dismal history. Nothing good ever happens in it. And the United States would be better off without it. August is when the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when Anne Frank was arrested, when the first income tax was collected, when Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe died. ... World War I started in August 1914. The Nazis and Soviets signed their nonaggression pact in August 1939. Iraq invaded Kuwait Aug. 2, 1990. August is a popular month for coups and violent crime. Why August? Perhaps the villains assume we'll be too distracted by vacations or humidity to notice. ...
- He has one El of a sound
By JONATHAN TAKIFF
(Philadelphia Daily News, July 26, 2001)
Elvis Week in Memphis doesn't start until Aug. 10, but you can get a jump on the festivities at Abilene's on South Street tomorrow night. Star of the show is Danny Beissel's Mystery Train (formerly the Elvis Experience), a four-man combo out of Northeast Philadelphia that has been duly honored by the Presley organization with a contract to perform at Graceland Plaza and the Heartbreak Hotel during the Big Bash. The lean and lanky Beissel doesn't physically resemble the man whom he honors in song, "but that's not important anymore to the Presley people," says Mystery Train manager Ken MacAdams. "As a matter of fact, they prefer that the performers working at Elvis Week don't look like him. "They bought Danny's services strictly from hearing his demo CD. As long as the sound is right, that's what counts." On that score Beissel is just about perfect. Close your eyes as he's running through "Suspicious Minds," "Burning Love," "Little Sister" or "Johnny B. Goode," and it's easy to imagine the mid- to late-period El is in the house - a little hoarse, wigglin' around some of the tough notes, but still putting his Memphis soul whammy on the material. Why, the emulator's even got Presley's goofing-on-the-material thing down, with gags of his own.
- Wild and Wacky (letter to the editor)
By J.M. BRUYETTE
(Salt Lake Tribune, July 25, 2001)
I read with great interest Peggy Fletcher Stack's story on the religion page about Elvis and the Mormons (Tribune, July 14). It seems to me that Cricket Coulter could better be referred to as a stalker. When she says she had been "hanging around Elvis nearly a decade . . . ," perhaps closer to the truth would be that she was hanging around the sidewalk near where Elvis was staying, first in Memphis then in California. While I've never taken the time before to write your paper after one of these off-the-wall stories of the wild and wacky world of Mormonism, I find that this time I must send a letter of thanks. Thanks for reminding me why I am moving my family out of Utah. I will put your paper to use as I leave and use this article in its most appropriate fashion, as wrapping for items to be placed in shipment.
- Corrections & Clarifications
(Salt Lake Tribune, July 24, 2001)
Alan Osmond gave a Book of Mormon with notes reportedly made by Elvis Presley to Elder Rex Pinegar, a general authority in the LDS Church. An incorrect first name was given for Pinegar in a story in The Tribune's Religion section July 14.
- HE IS ONE! Ex-SMASHING PUMPKINS vocalist BILLY CORGAN has started work on a solo album
(NME.COM news, July 24, 2001)
Speaking in an interview with the local Chicago Tribune newspaper (July 22), Corgan, who has recently visited the UK to make a live appearance with New Order, said he is currently recording demos in a Chicago studio, with a view to starting an album proper by the end of 2001. ... Corgan said he has co-written a song for a forthcoming record by Lisa Marie Presley and elaborated on his work with '60s star Marianne Faithfull.
- Guitar Maker Closing R.I. Factory
(Washington Post / Associated Press, July 24, 2001)
Guitar maker Guild Music will close its Westerly factory Aug. 30 and move operations to a high-tech factory in Corona, Calif., according to its parent company, Fender Musical Instruments Corp. Guild was founded in 1952 and moved from New Jersey to Westerly in 1971 to make its acoustic, electric and jazz guitars for buyers including Elvis, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash and Randy Travis. The instruments, made of ebony, mahogany, rosewood and spruce, range in price from about $700 to more than $5,000. The Guild brand name won't disappear with the move.
- THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
By MARY HUHN
(New York Post, July 24, 2001)
Is it time to wave bye, bye, bye to teen pop? Critics seem to think so. But they were sounding the death knell for teen ear candy back in December, after the Backstreet Boys' "Black & Blue" only sold 1.7 albums its first week out. Hey, critics never liked teen pop to begin with. And, if teen pop is a fading fad, store owners don't know it. They've ordered 4 million copies of *NSYNC's new album, the same number they ordered for the group's mega hit "No Strings Attached." If booze and the blues could end a musical trend, rock 'n' roll would have died long before Elvis did and we'd all be doing the waltz.
- Elvis Presley International Airport? Just a thought, fans (2nd item)
(Memphis Business Journal, July 23, 2001)
From the July 20, 2001 print edition
Beatles fans who travel to England next year will have the option of avoiding London and instead touching down at Liverpool John Lennon Airport. And an Elvis fan who hopes to visit Memphis next year hopes he can have a comparable experience. "With next year being the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death, Elvis fans on the Internet have been getting together to see what we can do to honor the guy," says Maurice Colgan, of Swords, Ireland, who is leading a letter-writing campaign to have Memphis International Airport renamed for The King. Targeted for letters are Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout and Gov. Don Sundquist. "We understand the politics in Memphis, and so we think it could just be called King Airport, so it's also for Martin Luther King Jr. and BB King," Colgan says. Along with renaming the airport, Colgan says his fans are also starting a letter campaign to have the University of Memphis award a posthumous degree to Elvis. "We're asking for an honorary degree in relation to the fact that Elvis was an exceptionally great singer, and his fame has done some great things for Memphis and the world," he says. "We hope this will all happen in time for next year's celebrations."
- TROGGS ARE STILL 'WILD'
By MARY HUHN
(New York Post, July 23, 2001)
AT the advice of a journalist, Reg Presley - frontman of the Troggs - changed his name from Reginald Ball to attract attention from Elvis fans. But the English '60s band didn't need the help - especially after it crashed through with "Wild Thing" in 1966. Thirty-five years later, the Troggs are still playing on, returning to the monthly Cavestomp event, a garage-rock fest celebrating another side of '60s pop.
- Steven Fredrick holds up a bunch of film inside the projection room of Consolidated Theatres at Kahala Mall. He collects classic Hawaii-related films
By Scott Vogel
(Honolulu Star Bulletin, July 23, 2001)
A benefit film series offers a rare glimpse of how the silver screen has cast Hawaii in tones exotic, romantic - and wrong. "It's been a joke," film historian Steven Fredrick said of Hawaii's movie history, putting it bluntly. "And 'Pearl Harbor' still continues with that joke, to be perfectly honest. It's not true; it's not accurate." It also isn't a particularly novel achievement in that regard, Hawaii having long ago been transmogrified by Hollywood into something unrecognizable by island residents. "It started right at the beginning of movies", continued Fredrick, whose personal collection of features, shorts, travelogues and commercials forms the basis of "Hawaii in the Movies", a film series that begins tonight at the Sheraton Moana and continues through December. Fredrick's impressive library includes everything from standard home video stuff like [Elvis Presley's] "Blue Hawaii" and "Waikiki Wedding" to vintage surfing documentaries and rare '20s silent films starring Duke Kahanamoku.
- ROGGS ARE STILL 'WILD'
By MARY HUHN
(New York Post, July 23, 2001)
At the advice of a journalist, Reg Presley - frontman of the Troggs - changed his name from Reginald Ball to attract attention from Elvis fans. But the English '60s band didn't need the help - especially after it crashed through with "Wild Thing" in 1966. Thirty-five years later, the Troggs are still playing on, returning to the monthly Cavestomp event, a garage-rock fest celebrating another side of '60s pop.
- Iowa Hosts 'Images of Elvis' Contest
(Washington Post online / Associated Press, July 23, 2001)
Iowa - Hawaiian Elvis was there. TV Elvis also showed up in a Frank Sinatra-style 1960s suit. Even gospel-singing Elvis made an appearance, but was outnumbered by several swiveling pelvis Elvises. Of course Vegas Elvis shined courtesy of the sequins at Bluffs Run Casino for the fifth annual Images of Elvis contest. Rick Lenzi of Santa Rosa, Calif., won the impersonation contest Sunday, earning him an automatic entry to the Elvis championships later this
year in Memphis, Tenn. The impersonators sang Elvis ballads and were judged on their voices, difficulty of act, authenticity and audience appeal. Musicians, booking agents and performers served as the judges and rated each of the 20 performers from the back of the casino's lounge. Only outnumbering the Elvis impersonators were the true-blue fans of the King.
- LARSON TOPS AT TUNING IN TO MUSICALS
By CLIVE BARNES
(New York Post, July 22, 2001)
The early death of an artist always seems poignant. You think of the ghosts of Keats and Shelley murmuring their lost poems, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who died at 35 and ended up in a mass grave after his family failed to keep up the mandatory fees for his grave site. Or Jonathan Larson, the composer of the musical "Rent," dead - like Mozart - at 35. Since the mid-'60s, popular music has moved away from Broadway - after Elvis and The Beatles, it has proved almost impossible for a Broadway composer trying to write in a contemporary pop style. Larson tried mightily hard. And, at least with "Rent" and "tick, tick . . . BOOM!," at the end of his life, he came close, closer than anyone else so far, to total success. And that, I think, is the importance of Larson - what he did, what he so nearly did and therefore what he might have done.
- Elvis would've loved this: Reno prepares for annual tribute to classic cars, rock
By Mel Shields
(Sacramento Bee, July 22, 2001)
People who drive to Reno for Hot August Nights will find classic cars galore, Elvis souvenirs, Route 66 memorabilia, poodle skirts and car-club jackets. The radio stations will be heavy with Bill Haley and the Comets. This year's Hot August Nights -- Reno's annual classic car show, Aug. 1-5- will be even more active since it now accepts cars from the early 1970s. Ironically, the entertainment portion of the event has become more limited, partly due to competition, partly due to the fact, as one casino spokesman put it last week, "There is no need; the crowds come in anyway."
- CLASSICAL CLASH: Each generation of composers borrows from cultural icons
By PAUL HORSLEY
(Kansas City Star, July 22, 2001)
People were shocked a century ago when composer Charles Ives began sticking tunes like "Yankee Doodle" or "De' Camptown Races" into his symphonies. Nobody knew just what he had started. Imagine a classical audience confronted for the first time by Michael Daugherty's "Metropolis Symphony," introduced at the Baltimore Symphony in 1993. Using Superman and other pop icons as a point of departure, Daugherty's goal is ultimately serious: he wants to make larger points. "Metropolis" attempts to express "the energies, ambiguities, paradoxes and wit of American popular culture," writes the Iowa-born composer, who teaches composition at the University of Michigan. Superman and Lois are not the only icons Daugherty has toyed with. "Dead Elvis" is a work for chamber ensemble in which the bassoon soloist appears dressed as an Elvis impersonator. ("If you want to understand America and all its riddles," the composer writes, "sooner or later you will have to deal with the (Dead) Elvis.")
- The indomitable Madonna
By JONATHAN TAKIFF
(Philadelphia Daily News, July 19, 2001)
Andy Warhol predicted that people would be famous for only 15 minutes. He envisioned a shallow, fad-dominated popular culture, with celebrities as disposable as Kleenex tissues. And in the current pop music world dominated by flashy, fleshy (but hardly meaty) artists and tracks pumped up by radio and MTV, that's often proven the case. But then there's Madonna, a creature with more lives than your average cat, and a longer string of certified gold (500,000 sales) hit singles than anyone except Elvis Presley.
- Get your kicks at Route 66 festival
(azcentral.com / Associated Press, July 19, 2001)
Corvette owners thirsty for nostalgia can head to Albuquerque this weekend for Route 66's diamond anniversary bash. Albuquerque, the official host of the 75th anniversary party, will sponsor three days of events at the state fairgrounds and along Central Avenue, the city's historic stretch of Route 66. For nearly 60 years, the nearly 2,500-mile highway was the one most people took from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. Free-spirited adventurists bobbed their heads to the tunes of Elvis Presley and Nat King Cole while getting their "kicks on Route 66." Its popularity declined in the 1970s when travel became quicker by interstate highways. A national committee chose Albuquerque five years ago as the spot for the anniversary festivities.
- Official calls train death 'tragic accident'
By SANDRA GONZALES
(Mercury News, July 17, 2001)
A 35-year-old Fremont tow truck driver killed by an Amtrak train in Newark on Sunday may have thought he had time to clear the tracks, authorities said Monday. Vincent Trejo was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after 9:55 a.m., when the train smashed into his truck, severing its flatbed from the passenger cab, on Mowry Avenue west of Cherry Street. None of the 363 passengers on board the 13-car train were injured, but the engineer suffered minors scrapes and bruises. Trejo loved Elvis Presley. So much so that he wore Elvis regalia and performed as the "King'' at various venues.
- Old Timers Welcomed Into Country Hall
(Washington Post / Associated Press, July 16, 2001)
The Delmore Brothers and The Louvin Brothers spread the popularity of country music, while Sam Phillips was accused of trying to kill it. Now all of these Alabama natives will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 4. Phillips, a native of Florence, founded Sun Records in Memphis, Tenn., and produced early records for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. "I'm superproud of this, even though it was a long time coming," the 78-year-old said. "Some people felt I was trying to knock Nashville and country music with what I was doing in Memphis with rock 'n' roll," Phillips said. "But man, you'd have to be the most powerful man on earth to bring down country music - no man alive is mighty enough to do that." Phillips is one of two regular inductees this year. The Delmore Brothers and The Louvin Brothers are among 10 special inductees.
- Gargoyles Keep Watch Over National Cathedral
By MONICA MCCAFFERTY
(Salt Lake Tribune / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE, July 15, 2001)
Europeans waltz to Mozart and Bach when Americans twist to Chubby Checker and Elvis Presley. Americans have a history of taking European pleasures and adapting them to the busy, on-the-run culture of 21st-century America. While that may seem obvious, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., offers another example with its proud collection of gargoyles, stone carvings that originated in Europe hundreds of years ago. ...
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