Early December 2004
- Pennsylvanian Motors & Pumps Business Named After AC/DC
(blabbermouth.net, December 6, 2004)
Kurt Blumenau of Allentown, PA's The Morning Call reports: Neil Heimsoth is a big Elvis Presley fan, right down to the guitar-wielding stuffed dog in his office that sings "Hound Dog" when squeezed. But when he founded his company, Heimsoth turned to a different musical inspiration, heavy-metal quintet AC/DC. He named the Easton business AC/DC Motors, Drives & Pumps, adopting the band's lightning-bolt logo as well. The company sells and services electric motors and industrial pumps. ...
- Veteran journalist Grey dies: Arts reporter was known for his razor-sharp wit
BY JUSTIN WALDEN
(Press & Sun-Bulletin, December 5, 2004)
Gene Grey's career in journalism spanned three decades, but his not-so-subtle comparison of Elvis Presley to a circus performer in 1977 may have provoked the most heated, vitriolic responses from his readers. Mr. Grey, 60, a retired Press reporter and columnist, was found dead Friday in his downtown Binghamton apartment. Broome County Coroner Dr. James Hayes said Mr. Grey died of a heart attack. Mr. Grey's friends and former colleagues recalled him as a tough but fair journalist who wasn't afraid to take on The King. Reviewing Presley's visit to Binghamton in May 1977, just months before Presley's death, Mr. Grey dubbed Presley "Michu the Midget of Rock," comparing him to a then-popular member of the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus. The comparison didn't sit well with the newspaper's readers, who felt Mr. Grey didn't show enough respect to Presley, colleagues recalled. "He was a sharp writer, very witty," said Barb VanAtta, the Press & Sun-Bulletin's current assistant features editor.
- chicago theater: All Shook Up
(metromix.chicagotribune.com, December 5, 2004)
Cadillac Palace Theatre
151 W. Randolph St.
A guitar-playing roustabout introduces a 1950s small town to romance and the power of rock 'n' roll in this world-premiere musical comedy, inspired by and featuring the songs of Elvis Presley. More than 20 classics include "Heartbreak Hotel," "Burning Love," "Don't Be Cruel" and "All Shook Up!" ...
- TRIP TIPS: Holidays at Graceland
(The Times-Picayune, December 5, 2004)
The king is gone, but there still are celebrations at Graceland, Elvis Presley's home in Memphis, Tenn. Holiday decorations are up and blue lights line the driveway. There's a nativity scene, Santa and his sleigh and 2 million more lights. Call (800) 238-2000 or at least check the GracelandCam at www.elvis.com.
- Dawn of a drug culture: Beats sought spiritual alternative to the post-war world
By Steven Rosen
(The Denver Post, December 5, 2004)
Since the U.S. government long has been engaged in a war on drugs, with mixed results at best, it is critical to know where and how our pervasive, entrenched modern drug culture started. In Martin Torgoff's well-researched and superbly written "Can't Find My Way Home," the answer is startling. It started because, as Martha Stewart might say, it was a good thing.
At a time when most Americans were optimistically celebrating our victory in World War II, the first of the contemporary drug acolytes saw the horror of a ravaged world that had barely survived the catastrophe. And those seers - people like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, the Denver-raised Neal Cassady and a few others who eventually would become known as the Beats - wanted a spiritual alternative. A new vision to what they saw as "the Great Molecular Comedown" of the post-war world. "Others had fought in the battle, but it would become (their) peculiar lot to perceive and digest the meaning and magnitude of the Second World War, the Holocaust, the dropping of the atomic bomb and the bitter, uneasy peace that followed, as they experimented with drug-induced altered states of consciousness," Torgoff writes. "From the outset, there had been strong intellectual and artistic motivations behind their pursuit of drugs - what Ginsberg would later call 'the ancient heavenly connection' in 'Howl."'
Torgoff, who has written biographies of Elvis Presley and John Mellencamp, covers a lot of ground in this book, which takes its title from an evocative 1969 rock song by Blind Faith. ...
- Elvis neighbor coached King, saw rise and fall: 'Scrawny' teen Presley unimpressive; mom was joy
By June Robertson
(Whitehaven Appeal, December 5, 2004)
As Whitehaven resident Jesse Lee Denson stood in front of the two-story, red-brick building at 227 E. Winchester St. that was part of Lauderdale Courts where his family lived from 1947 to 1969, the memories came flooding back. "My parents had a mission nearby called the Poplar Street Mission," recalls Denson, whose parents, Jesse James and Mattie, were Pentecostal evangelists. "This is where my mother struck up a friendship with Gladys Presley. The Presleys were staying in a cramped rooming house and mother helped them to get a better place in Lauderdale Courts." Recently refurbished and now known as Uptown Square, the original Lauderdale Courts were built in 1936 and used as public housing for lower-income families in need.
When Denson met a 14-year-old Elvis Presley for the first time, he was not impressed. "He was different from all of the other kids," said Denson. "A bit of a misfit and scrawny with a bad complexion. He was a good kid, very shy and never got in trouble." Denson was good at singing and playing a guitar but was reluctant to assist Elvis when asked. "I gave in because of Mrs. Presley," said Denson. "She was so sweet, we all liked her." Practice took place after school several times a week in Presley's and Denson's apartment or the basement laundry area. "One day when we were inside the Presley apartment (185 Winchester, Apt. 328), Mrs. Presley told me that my name meant 'gift from God,' " recounts Denson. "She told me God had sent me to her and from then on she called me her special son."
According to Denson, Elvis had a huge crush on his sister Virginia, who had no time for Elvis. "Elvis would hide behind these bushes and watch for Virginia to come home from school," said Denson. "Most of us went to L.C. Humes High in those days. We would walk up Jackson Street until we hit Manassas, quite a good walk." When Denson left school he sang in Eastern clubs and occasionally saw the Presleys on visits home. "I kept in touch after the family moved," said Denson. "Elvis's success took everyone by surprise but we were so glad for him."
Denson was devastated after learning of Mrs. Presley's death in August 1958. "It was a tremendous blow," said Denson. "I sure did love that woman, she was an angel. We had visited with her only months before in her new home on Audubon Drive. She had looked tired and was not happy that Colonel (Tom) Parker (Elvis's manager) was keeping Elvis away so much. It just broke her heart."
When Elvis died in 1977, Denson was not as surprised. "I knew what his lifestyle was like and he worked too hard, but what a tragedy," said Denson. "All I could think about at the time was that Mrs. Presley got her boy back." Denson, a successful singer-songwriter, has written several songs about Elvis and Gladys (his mother) including "The Mississippi Kid" and "Mrs. Presley" and Elvis recorded one of Denson's most well-known religious songs, "The Miracle of the Rosary," in 1972. "If Mrs. Presley had lived longer, we might have seen a different ending for Elvis," said Denson. "They really loved each other."
- Music keeps legend young
By Charles Fernandez
(Metro Star, December 4, 2004)
WITH an album now riding high on the charts in Europe, music legend Engelbert Humperdinck is not showing any signs of slowing down. During a recent interview, Humperdinck confessed that he was obsessed with singing and was proud to be still involved in the music industry. The singer, who has been in Malaysia three times previously, will be performing at a dinner show today and tomorrow at the Grand Ballroom, Shangri-La Hotel. ... He has performed with some of the greatest entertainers in the world and one of his closest friends was Elvis Presley and the two legends often performed each other's songs. ...
- Tragedy forces couple apart
By Ernestine Bousquet
(The Bulletin, December 4, 2004)
Mary Ann Morisette met her husband Dan more than 40 years ago when a stove fire broke out in the communal kitchen of the apartment complex where they both lived. He looked like Elvis Presley, a "man of the town" who was born on the same day she was, only 10 years earlier. Now fire threatens to separate them forever. A fire broke out in the Morisettes' mobile home at the edge of Sunriver on Nov. 21, destroying it and sending 70-year-old Dan to the hospital. ...
- Giving big: Photos and fauna, gardens and glass, comics and cities: great stocking-stuffers all -- provided you've got really large stockings
(The Globe and Mail, December 4, 2004)
FILM
... In the Picture: Production Stills from the TCM Archive
By Alexa L. Foreman,
Ruth A. Peltason and Mark A. Viera
Chronicle, 160 pages, $41.95
This fascinating collection of rare, behind-the-scenes stills is an entrancing glimpse into the smoke and mirrors that created the Hollywood films from the era of Jean Harlow to Elvis Presley. The photographs, part of the Turner Classic Movies collection, reveal --among other things -- an astonishing crowd of production people and extras moved in close to get a good look at the intimate embrace of lovers Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor in Camille's boudoir. And you can only marvel at the fuss and bustle around the vast, water-filled lagoon where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were Dancing Cheek to Cheek. This book is a must for any serious film buff. ...
- Retuning the top 500: Radio
By David Hinckley
(New York Daily News, December 4, 2004)
The new world at WCBS-FM (101.1) is reflected in the new top-500 countdown it broke out last weekend. The Beatles' "Hey Jude" finished first, followed by the Temptations' "My Girl," Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife," A Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" and the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." Reflecting WCBS-FM's shift forward in time, much of the top 500 was from the '70s, with only about a dozen songs from the '50s. The Five Satins' "In the Still of the Night," which for years finished near the top on WCBS-FM surveys, came in 15th. The Penguins' "Earth Angel," a perennial No. 2, did not appear at all. The top Elvis Presley song was "Can't Help Falling in Love" at No. 22. ...
- Cult of the king: the people who still keep Elvis alive
By Emma Tinkler
(Canberra Times, December 4, 2004, Panorama section, pp. 1, 4-6)
Fans still all shook up over King Elvis
[Caroline "Pinkie" Ungarte ... now 56 and living in Sydney met Elvis Presley in Hawaii during the shooting of the film Blue Hawaii.] ... The King, a god, a hillbilly cat, a crooner, a sex symbol, a great entertainer, a recluse, a flawed fairytale prince, a star fallen from grace: Elvis was - and is - many different things to his fans and his foes. His music moves people to tears, and to move; his smile makes women's hearts melt; men covet his charisma and style.
We talk about Elvis in the present tense, as if he is still belting out hits, as if he is still alive, because in many ways he still is. His music is on the radio - and even in nightclubs, thanks to the recent reworking of some of his hits by DJs - and he regularly appears on Sunday afternoon TV, crooning to harems of glamorous women in cheesy B-grade flicks that did nothing for the advancement of cinema, but sure do entertain.
Elvis is one of the most enduring icons of the 20th century, and has been labelled the greatest cultural force of that same 100 years. He was beautiful man with a beautiful voice who reintepreted black music for white people (with a twist), and weathered the ups and downs of a fame that sat uncomfortably with him - and ultimately killed him. ... [Interviews with Susan MacDougall, Nigel Patterson, Graeme Flanagan.] ... "Elvis Presley is magic for me," says [Caroline "Pinkie" Ugarte:] . "When I think of him I want to cry. I also love The Beatles and the Everly Brothers, but no-one makes me happy like Elvis makes me happy. My heart just sings when I listen to his music." And ultimately, that is what The King is about.
- From king of '70s radio rock to British heirloom, a survivor
By Philip Shelley
(Washington Times, December 3, 2004)
To anyone under the age of, say, 40, Elton John today might pose the same conundrum that Elvis Presley presented to me when I was an AM-radio-addicted preteen growing up with Elton John in the '70s. Back then, Elvis, I understood, was as famous as an entertainer could be, a major cultural figure. I just couldn't for the life of me see why. The Elvis I watched on TV was a bloated show-biz hack, and the few radio hits he continued to have captured this flabbiness all too accurately.
Like Elvis in the '70s, Mr. John's defining work is now at least 20 years behind him. He is still commercially powerful enough to get airplay, but his songs sound ever more tepid and smudgy, the aural equivalents of a once-pristine document that has been faxed and refaxed far too many times. Knighted and securely enshrined as an "international treasure," Sir Elton dispenses his risk-free elder statesman's duties (singing at royal funerals, scoring Broadway-esque Disney cartoons, acknowledging encomia such as the Kennedy Center Honor he will receive Sunday night) with a haughty air of entitlement that to many observers may seem unearned.
...I am ashamed to admit that I laughed at fat Elvis when he died, but I didn't know any better at the time. You may be tempted to laugh, too, when you see the rather foppish and self-important figure of Sir Elton John, with his not-quite-right hair and his grating voice, throwing one of his trademark public tantrums. But there's a lot to be said for survivors, and even a toothless Lion King brings genuine happiness to children. ...
- Great Americans ... There's No End
By Donald Kaul
(The Bulletin, December 3, 2004)
There's been a nice response to the "Great Americans Who Were Never President" Contest (if you can call something without a winner a contest). Here are some of the suggestions readers sent along:
... The Entertainers --- Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse's father, Jackie Robinson, much more than a baseball player, and Elvis Presley, the King. ...
-
Redefining Elvis: KENTUCKIANS WORK KICKS OFF OUR BOOK CLUB
By Cheryl Truman
(Lexington Herald-Leader, December 2, 2004)
"There's nobody like Elvis. He gave us that. I think he would have been better off if he didn't."
- Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Elvis Presley
One of the things about Elvis that struck Bobbie Ann Mason was the first home he bought for his parents, a ranch house on Audubon Avenue in Memphis. The family was poor, acted poor, felt poor. But suddenly they lived in a house with all the space, comforts and conveniences of those who had made it in '50s America -- such as twin state-of-the-art wall ovens, two tiled bathrooms and Danish modern furniture. The Presleys were stunned. "I can feel what it was like for them to go into a comfortable house with a nice kitchen and a nice neighborhood," Mason says. "His parents didn't know what to do with themselves." Mason suspects it was the emotional pinnacle of Elvis' life. "That story is about innocence and about things going downhill then." In a career marked by dramatic extremes, she thinks, Elvis was never to have that same feeling again.
Mason's book, one of the Penguin Lives series (Viking Books, $19.95), isn't an exhaustive tell-all. Rather, it's about defining moments in Elvis' brief life. "I tried to portray these things not in terms of ideas or conclusions you could draw, but more in terms of emotions and the textures of his emotions. ... In each chapter, I try to get at a certain moment that draws together a lot of experience. "I didn't write about what Elvis did to us. I wrote about what we did to Elvis, how did he experience his fame."
She sympathizes with the pressure of a very mortal man trying to simultaneously define and live up to the Elvis legend. Elvis was, Mason notes, simultaneously delighted and haunted by his own popularity, asking himself whether he was a godlike figure or possibly even another Christ.
And then, after Elvis' death in 1977 at age 42, his fall from grace was just as dramatic. He was savaged. "After his death, everybody blamed him -- for being poor, country, for singing black songs," Mason said. "People even thought he was odd because he was devoted to his parents. So he ends up being a caricature." Mason thinks that's unfair to Elvis' complexity, his constant attempts to reinvent himself even in the face of opposition from his family and assorted hangers-on at his attempts to expand his artistic horizons.
Elvis got tired of being Elvis, but he loved being Elvis. His reading was guided by a hairdresser, then stymied by his wife. He was devoted to his mother yet all too aware of all the things she thought he couldn't do.
One photo that strikes Mason is of the Presley family in Germany during Elvis' stint in the Army. Elvis' mother, Gladys, had recently died, and the Presley family is gathered for breakfast -- in a strange country, without the family anchor, trying to re-create a down-home breakfast complete with McCormick's pepper in its signature can.
Despite Elvis' loyalty to some of his poor rural ways, he nonetheless nurtured "a sense of cultural inferiority" that limited his career: Not expanding his musical style to include "highbrow" elements. Not taking riskier parts in movies such as Midnight Cowboy instead of the pap formula films that are now almost unwatchable.
Mason used to think Elvis had a weak character. Now she doesn't. "I think he was struggling heroically to deal with everything that had been handed him. ... He tried to live up to the image, and that proved impossible." She's also touched by Elvis' attempts to educate himself, "in his own way, he's trying to expand his horizons and learn." But he has no guide among his cronies, and his reading veers into strange metaphysical directions. Wife Priscilla initiates a book bonfire.
And Priscilla is not the only one at odds with Elvis' strivings. Mason says his manager, Colonel Parker, had "no aesthetic sense ... no interest in Elvis' artistic inclinations, his genius in shaping and interpreting a song." Still, Mason says, "my understanding of Parker and the Presley family is that they were made for each other." Parker was "a familiar type of person" to the Presley family, "a Southern trader." That Parker had little real taste and no expertise for re-inventing Elvis in artistically riskier ways apparently never bothered the family.
Still, Elvis left a legacy: The Elvis songs sung in that Elvis style, a driving mix of blues, gospel and rock 'n' roll that would never be duplicated. "He was driven to make music," Mason said. "He had it in every nerve of his body."
- Bob Dylan feels more like Elvis than a prophet
(Yahoo! News / AFP, December 2, 2004)
In his first TV interview for nearly 20 years, Bob Dylan said he never saw himself as a singer-songwriter and felt more comfortable with the idea of becoming Elvis Presley than the prophet of a generation. In the interview, to be broadcast Sunday on the CBS network, the 63-year-old folk-rock legend said the hero worship of the 60s generation often left him feeling like an "imposter." "It was like being in an Edgar Allen Poe story and you're just not that person everybody thinks you are, though they call you that all the time," he said according to advance extracts released by CBS. "'You're the prophet. You're the savior.' I never wanted to be a prophet or a savior," he said. "Elvis maybe. I could see myself becoming him. But prophet? No." Much of Dylan's discomfort comes from the quasi-religious mystique fans attack both to his personality and his body of work. ...
- Legal eagles target Tarzan
By TOM CARDY
(stuff.co.nz, December 2, 2004)
All the vine-swinging Tarzan of the Apes had to worry about was the law of the jungle. But a New Zealand publishing company is up against complicated copyright law for using the fictional hero in a critically acclaimed novel.
Edgar Rice Burroughs Incorporated, the estate of Tarzan's creator, has demanded that Victoria University Press stop selling copies of the humorous novel Tarzan Presley. Written by New Zealander Nigel Cox, it tells the story of Presley "raised by gorillas in the wild jungles of New Zealand, scarred in battles with vicious giant wetas, seduced by a beautiful young scientist" who gets a record deal with Elvis Presley's producer and has 30 No 1 hits. The book was published in June to critical acclaim and has sold most of its initial 3000 print run.
Victoria University Press publisher Fergus Barrowman said it received a letter from a British law firm, acting on behalf of Burroughs' estate, several weeks after the book was published. It wanted a New Zealand website to stop advertising the book. The publishers had since received several letters from lawyers for the estate, based in Tarzana, California.
Mr Barrowman said they were surprised by the company's claim that Tarzan "infringes their intellectual property rights" including the name Tarzan and other aspects of the man-raised-by-apes character. He said Cox felt hurt by the attack. "Tarzan is in the dictionary, for goodness sake, and the book is in no sense an attempt to pass itself off as the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs or an authorised continuation of his work. It's a literary reinvention." ...
- At 70, singer Pat Boone is in career overdrive
By Gioia Patton
(Louiseville Scene, December 2, 2004)
Pat Boone has had 63 records on the charts, and with several CDs in the works, he's not easing up. Debby Boone will perform with her father Saturday at the Palace.
IF YOU GO
Pat and Debby Boone will appear with the Louisville Orchestra in a holiday concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Louisville Palace, 651 S. Fourth St. Tickets are $33 to $68. Call (502) 361-3100 or visit any TicketMaster outlet. The concert is sponsored by King Southern Bank. Pat Boone has had 63 records on the charts, scoring hits in the music categories of rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, adult contemporary, country, gospel and Christian.
He sold more records in the 1950s than any other artist besides Elvis Presley, had starring roles in numerous films in the '50s and '60s and has written more than 15 books, including the nonfiction best seller "Twixt Twelve and Twenty," a book of advice for teens. ...
- Get Away: Blackpool
(Daily Herald, December 2, 2004)
Brighten up those endless dark days after the holidays with an uplifting trip to Blackpool. Elvis head for the seaside resort between Januarty 7 and 9 to pick the King of 2005 and celebrate what would have been Presley's 70th birthday. Look out for GI Elvis who will be driving up and down the promenade in an army tank. The Queen's Hotel is the epicentre of the action and provides a chance enter the Sing Like the King karaoke contest and peruse stalls of memorabilia.
- WYMAN'S ALL-STAR JAM
(contactmusic.com, December 1, 2004)
Former ROLLING STONE BILL WYMAN is enrolling his celebrity pals to create an all-star band and record a tribute to ELVIS PRESLEY's guitarist SCOTTY MOORE. The (SI SI) JE SUIS UN ROCK STAR hitmaker has invited ERIC CLAPTON and SIR PAUL McCARTNEY to London's famous Abbey Road Studios on Thursday (02DEC04) to lay down a range of songs for 72-year-old Moore. Wyman enthuses, "There's going to be me, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and a load of other guitarists all jamming together. It's being filmed for television and also a DVD, the works. ... "
- Broadway Ticket Availability
By MICHAEL KUCHWARA
(Yahoo! News / Associated Press, December 1, 2004)
"All Shook Up," the new musical comedy that uses songs by Elvis Presley, is set in 1955, so its producers have decided to sell its more than 300 balcony seats for $19.55 each, the lowest ticket price on Broadway. The show opens March 24 at the Palace Theatre. Preview performances begin Feb. 20 after a tryout engagement, Dec. 19-Jan. 23, at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago. "All Shook Up" tells the story of a handsome, guitar-playing stranger who brings romance, not to mention rock 'n' roll, to a small-town girl. It stars Cheyenne Jackson and Jenn Gambatese. The book is by Joe DiPietro and the score features more than two dozen Presley classics such as "Blue Suede Shoes," "Don't Be Cruel," "Hound Dog" and "Love Me Tender." For tickets, call Ticketmaster 212-307-4100 or 800-755-4000 or go online at www.ticketmaster.com . For more information, visit the show's Web site, www.allshookup.com.
Go to earlier articles
|
