late August, 2005
- News items from here and there
(knoxstudio.com / San Francisco Chronicle / Scripps Howard News Service, August 22 2005)
As Grateful Dead fans everywhere know, the music never stopped when Jerry Garcia died 10 years ago, and now a grass-roots campaign wants to memorialize the Dead's driving force with a U.S. Postal Service stamp of Americans and others around the world and a philanthropist. ... Besides, they say, in 1993, the Postal Service honored Elvis Presley - who died of a heart attack after years of abusing prescription drugs - and ended up with a best seller. About 517 million of the 29-cent Elvis stamps were sold, and the Postal Service ended up with a $36 million profit. About 95 percent of those stamps are still in collectors' hands. ...
- Impersonators of all ages wow 1,000 fans at Gimli's Elvis Fest
By FPNS
(Brandon Sun, August 22 2005)
It wasn't the biggest Elvis festival ever held, but you could still get poked in the eye with a sideburn if you weren't careful. Close to 1,000 fans packed the Gimli Recreational Complex on Saturday night to see 20 Elvis Presley impersonators show off their sequined jumpsuits and gyrate their hips in the town's fourth annual Elvis Fest. The youngest impersonator was just four years old. Named Presley, the boy is the son of the festival's co-organizer, Marsha Tarnowski. His name is fitting, considering she met her Elvis-impersonating husband at a similar festival in Ontario. The oldest impersonator at the weekend event was 60.
The Gimli festival was timed to be close to Aug. 16, the day in 1977 when Elvis Presley died. "We drove eight hours from Thompson so my mom could come and see this," said Adele Sweeny, a 32-year-old nurse who had her seven-year-old daughter in tow. "We picked a campground off the Internet and came down here. We love the big hoopla that surrounds Elvis."
Dave Greene, a 47-year-old Elvis impersonator who was at the festival, said his day job is driving a truck at a Moosehorn rock quarry. But he said his passion is squeezing into a rhinestoned outfit and belting out hits like Are You Lonesome Tonight? "The best part of this is the ability to make people laugh and make them bawl," Greene said. I was singing at a Wal-Mart, which I know is a strange venue, but this 60-year-old woman started crying when I was singing. I just held her through the whole song."
- Music file sharing to be offered legally
By Owen Gibson
(Guardian Unlimited, August 22 2005)
Online music fans will for the first time be able to legally share tracks by big names such as Oasis, Beyonce, David Bowie and Elvis Presley after the artists' record label signed a ground-breaking deal with a new internet service provider.
In what some see as signalling a dramatic shift in the way consumers buy music, the provider, Playlouder, has licensed acts from SonyBMG, the world's second largest record label, and is confident that the other two big record labels, Universal and EMI, will follow suit. Illegal file sharing, which allows users of software such as Kazaa, Grokster and eDonkey to swap pirated tracks over the internet, has been blamed by the record industry for largely contributing to a 25% slump in global sales since 1999, worth around £1.3bn a year. The record industry has pursued a "carrot and stick" approach, taking legal action against the worst offenders while encouraging the use of legal download sites such as Napster and iTunes. ...
- James Burton Statue Graces La. Hometown
(Yahoo! News, August 22 2005)
James Burton played with Elvis Presley. Now, a statue of him as a thirtysomething stands next to the King outside his hometown's Municipal Memorial Auditorium, where both performed. "Yeah, it looks like me," the guitar sideman said Sunday, his 66th birthday and the last day of his new James Burton International Guitar Festival. ... Sculptor Eric Kaposta, who also made the Elvis statue, said he used old photographs for the Burton likeness, which shows the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member keeping time with the back of his left heel. ...
- The Importance of Being Elvis
By John Ervin
(elitestv.com, August 22 2005)
Elvis Aaron Presley's death has been mourned, celebrated, noted and griped about for so long now that it has taken on a life of its own. As of this past August 16, Dead Elvis, as I shall call this phenomenon, is twenty-eight years old, and 'He,' as it were, has outlived many of His fans, one or two members of the Memphis Mafia, and even the seemingly eternal Colonel Tom. In honor of this anniversary, I wish to briefly cover His influence on motion pictures since that fateful day He was 'born' in late summer 1977. Herewith are the best and the worst products from the three subcategories of a film genre I like to call, in tribute to a cool sounding film that director Stephen Frears has tried but failed to launch for the past several years, 'The Importance of Being Elvis.'
First off are the biopics, all twenty-plus of them television movies, suggesting that, as far as studio Grand Poobah's are concerned, serious studies of the King's life are not considered worthy of big screen theatrical treatments. ... An even greater abundance of documentaries and concert films about Dead Elvis are floating in the home video stratosphere, but the only one since His creation to receive a major release was 1981's 'This is Elvis.' ... As for movies concerning fictional characters who are in some way affected by Him and His memory, the number is hopelessly infinite, but some standouts can be gleaned from the morass. ... In regards to all those impersonators we've seen on the news, at the fair, or perhaps in our own homes (including those creepy dudes who had their faces surgically altered to look like Him) two opposing attitudes can be found in the annals of Dead Elvis filmography. In the delightful 'Honeymoon in Vegas,' a platoon of parachuting Preselys help lovable lug Nicholas Cage save his sweetie Sarah Jessica Parker from the clutches of mob kingpin James Caan (who has now beaten Christopher Walken in playing more such kingpins than any actor alive). Conversely, a crew of Evil Elvi - one of them played by Kurt Russell, no less - slaughters the patrons of a casino they are heisting, before going on to betray and waste one another, in the appalling '3,000 Miles to Graceland,' which is surely the worst execution of a great movie concept in recent memory. ...
Continuing in the annals of crime, the ghost of EP, as portrayed by professional rock star impersonator Val Kilmer, gives advice to small time crook Christian Slater in the equally wretched 'True Romance.' And for those of us who are curious as to what he would up to today if all those tabloid sightings were correct, one need look no further than Bruce Campbell's portrayal of a septuagenarian Pelvis saving his fellow nursing home residents from a plague of zombies in the hilarious 'Bubba Ho-Tep.'
And on that rousing note, I'll end my Dead Elvis birthday salute. Yes, the past three decades have brought us a kajillion more movies directly about, indirectly regarding, or ever so lightly touched by the most famous ex-truck driver in history, and I'd love to tackle them all. But I only have so much space in which to pay homage to the death and cinematic influence of the entertainer who, more than any other, has stained my life ... whether I wanted Him to or not. I'll leave it to some other brave soul to officially catalogue and comment on those 792 (and counting) movies, 22,792 (and counting) books, 40,485 (and counting) memorabilia items, and, last but hardly least, 300 (and a-count-count-countin'!) albums of fine music.
All I can add to this ocean of information, noise and imagery is that, despite what many cynics say - including my long time Elvis-fan brother - Dead Elvis will not only live for another twenty-eight years, but possibly another twenty-eight kajillion. Chances are good as a gold commode that our descendants, in the process of being inspired by, irritated with, and, on occasion, dressing like Tupelo's Favorite Son, shall never forget The Importance of Being Elvis.
- ELVIS' TUPELO THEN
(Duluth News Tribune, August 21 2005)
IF YOU GO
The fairground where Elvis tore up the audience in 1956 and 1957 is gone, but a 14-year-old who sat in the front row at the first show -- Wynette Pugh -- was inspired to great things. She became country legend Tammy Wynette.
AND NOW
- At the Tupelo visitors center, 399 E. Main St., you can get a map showing a driving tour of nine sites associated with him. The map has errors: Driving around the area to find the monuments can be a hassle. Good news: The center will give you a coupon good for free admission to the Elvis Birthplace (you'll still have to pay to see the museum).
- Tupelo historian Roy Turner is finishing up a documentary about Elvis' triumphant '56 return to Tupelo. He hopes to have "Homecoming" ready for release next spring.
- Eat at Johnnie's Drive In, on East Main in East Tupelo. Little Elvis used to go there with his friends. There's a historical marker on the site. If you're part of the chain gang, the McDonald's at 372 S. Gloster St. has an Elvis theme.
- Roy Turner's wife, Debbie, just opened Hound Dog Cafe at 1439 E. Main St., in East Tupelo (inside Bishop's Flowers & Gifts). The menu includes EP's fave: fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Check the decor, which includes items from Roy's collection.
- Elvis' Birthplace: 306 Elvis Presley Drive, Tupelo, Miss. Cost: $7 for home/museum; $6 for museum only; $2.50 for home only; home/museum admission for ages 7-12 is $3.50. Chapel/grounds free. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Details: (662) 841-1245; elvispresleybirthplace.com.
- Info about Tupelo: Convention and Visitors Bureau, 399 E. Main St., Tupelo; (800) 533-0611, toll-free; http://tupelo.net. Stop by to get birthplace directions, a coupon for free admission to the birthplace home, and a fan with Elvis' 1950s likeness on it. "It's for Elvis fans," they say.
- Viatical fraud story leads to Elvis' house But Venice agent denies wrongdoing
(Sun Herald, August 21 2005)
"Nobody ever lost money; it's safe." Those words, uttered by Venice-area financial planner Herman "Skip" Jaehne, led retirees Ron Gillis of North Port and John Romanus of Port Charlotte to invest many thousands of dollars in "viatical settlements." No one could lose on the investments, Jaehne argued, because a viatical settlement is an investment in which an investor buys shares in the life insurance policies of terminally ill patients at a discount which comes off the face value of the policies. Once the patients die, as everyone does eventually, the insurance company pays off the investor.
When their investments failed to pay off within a year or two as promised, Gillis and Romanus mounted separate crusades to bring down the billion-dollar corporation that provided their viatical investments, Mutual Benefits Corp. of Fort Lauderdale, and the financial planner who sold them the investments. Their crusade would eventually take them from the halls of a Fort Lauderdale office building that Gillis described as "shabby," to Elvis Presley's deluxe house in Palm Springs, Calif., which Jaehne had purchased for $1.25 million -- the amount of money he made selling the viatical investments. "It didn't surprise me," said Romanus, of Jaehne's connection to Elvis's house. "I know from past experience, (Jaehne) always wants to do unusual business practices that most good financial planners wouldn't touch." ...
- They're all shook up over Post-it Elvis
By David Ranii
(Indianapolis Star / Raleigh News & Observer, August 21 2005)
Elvis is in the building. And he's still generating hits. We're talking about a mosaic of the King, Elvis Presley himself, made from Post-it notes. A total of 2,646 sticky notes, to be exact, on a 14-by-9-foot wall. The tribute to the rock 'n' roll idol, who died 28 years ago, has gone gold, in a sense. Pictures posted on the Web have attracted more than 1 million hits. It's the handiwork of creative types at Capstrat, a Raleigh public relations and marketing agency. They stuck it on a wall in a conference room used for brainstorming. Charles Mangin, digital media designer, assembled it over a 10-hour period. Last month, after the agency posted the tribute on its Web site, Elvis fans got all shook up. Web logs blabbed about it, and the official Elvis Web site put it in its "photo spotlight" section. The original idea was for staffers to dismantle the mural, piece by piece, whenever they needed a Post-it. So far, no one wants to bring down a legend.
- Tupelo preserves the King's gritty roots
By JOHN BORDSEN
(Duluth News Tribune / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS, August 21 2005)
[Tupelo] on U.S. 78 is an on ramp to any "Road to Rock & Roll": Elvis was from here, and nearly 100,000 visitors, foreign and domestic, arrive every year to get close to where the King was born. They see the 15-acre park that cradles his birthplace and a museum and chapel that honor him. They drive to the markers at nine places he fondly recalled. But those markers are easy to miss. The reasons Tupelo seems so Elvis-deficient are tied to his basic saga of the triumph/tragedy: He was born with so little; he died with too much. And he was from the wrong side of the tracks.
The evening of Sept. 12, 1948, Vernon and Gladys Presley and their only child left Tupelo. It is said Vernon's sudden departure may have had something to do with bootlegging. He also had a reputation as a hard-partying skirt-chaser who couldn't hang onto a job. The two-room house where Elvis was born Jan. 8, 1935, was built with $180 Vernon borrowed from his boss, Orville Bean. The remaining stops on the drive are grindingly mundane. A grade school, a junior high, a library and a grocery are the marginal high points of an obscure, impoverished life.
RETURN HOME
In 1954, still a shy loner but now with long hair, sideburns and odd clothes, he leapt from truck driver to regional stage attraction on the strength of several rockabilly records. He hooked up with cunning ex-carny promoter "Colonel" Tom Parker and within 12 months was a national phenomenon. The kid who sold a million copies of "Hound Dog" in less than two weeks was ready to return to Tupelo for the Mississippi-Alabama Fair & Dairy Show of 1956.
It was in many ways a triumph: An often-seen photo shows Elvis leaning toward the crowd of 5,000 teens, hysterical girls reaching for him, on a sweltering September afternoon. Main Street banners read "Tupelo Welcomes Elvis Presley Home," Gov. J.P. Coleman made a nice little speech between songs, and Tupelo's mayor gave Elvis a guitar-shaped key to the city. "That first show, there were these girls grabbing his clothes, and that didn't go over well," says Judy Schumpert, a hostess at the Elvis Presley Birthplace park. "So they warned him: 'If this happens at the later show, we will stop the performance right then and there; the show will be over.' "
He returned the following year bigger than ever to do another show. The Presley house was still standing, and the property was for sale. Elvis told city fathers he'd donate proceeds from the show to the city if they'd buy the site and develop it as a park. "He'd got to thinking he'd like to do something for the place he was born," recalls Janelle McComb, who knew the Presleys. Her grandfather owned a store where the Presleys had shopped; she befriended them and kept in touch. McComb, still in Tupelo, in her 80s and forthright on all things Elvis, is considered the keeper of the flame.
VIEWS TODAY
The 30-by-15 shotgun-style Presley home undoubtedly looks better than when Vernon lived there. Its attendant said the painted white exterior was just weather-beaten wood back then. Inside, she said, the walls would've been covered with newspaper "this newer wallpaper matches what was up in 1957, when it was sold to Elvis." The roof has been redone; the linoleum, too. But the impression of poverty remains strong. Small wonder the birthplace museum has little of Elvis' early years. Much is from McComb's personal collection, who would write inspirational verse for the family after the boy hit the big time.
For the best photo op, stand next to the life-size bronze "Elvis at 13" by Michael Vandersommen. The Greensboro sculptor worked from a sixth-grade class photo taken at Lawhon Elementary. And there's the Elvis Presley Memorial Chapel. The 12 pews were sponsored by friends and fan clubs, and have little donor plaques. The plaque at front left reads "In Memory of Elvis From The Colonel." That would be Parker, who made him a star, a millionaire and who many of the Elvis faithful believe squandered Presley's talents and ruined his health. Scratch marks deface "The Colonel." Up to 65,000 people a year pay to tour the museum; perhaps another 9,000 come to see the other buildings and the grounds, free of charge.
But there is a disconnect between Elvis and Tupelo. The Elvis Festival, in June, was staged by the Main Street Association, not the city. The park is city-owned, but structures on it are operated by the nonprofit Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation, which is funded by neither the city nor the Presley empire. And there is The Colonel's legacy of financially safeguarding his client's name: "Elvis" and "Elvis Presley" are registered and very actively protected trademarks of Elvis Presley Enterprises. Dead more than a quarter-century, the star is still making money.
Finally, keep in mind that Tupelo is the front end of the Elvis story. McComb is among those who want the town and the world fully aware of what he overcame. "We want to keep it 1935," she says. "The beginning wasn't fountains and sparklers. "When Elvis sang 'The Impossible Dream,' he meant it. Because he lived it."
- A QUESTION OF AUTHENTICITY: All shook up over old recordings - Plano man says tapes contain lost Elvis songs, but experts on the king beg to differ
By LINDA STEWART BALL
(Houston Chronicle / Dallas Morning News, August 20 2005)
Steve Lawrence pulled the fragile reel-to-reel tapes out of a duffel bag and reverently laid them on the table. The Plano man has tied his family's financial future to a dusty box of old recordings. Dubbed The Lost Memphis Tapes, they were found in a shed behind his late uncle's house on the Tennessee-Mississippi border. "This whole thing is about dreams and destiny," Lawrence says. "It's destiny, how this landed in my lap. ... I hope I handle it right." Lawrence's uncle, Ronald "Slim" Wallace, owned Fernwood Records, a Memphis recording studio in the 1950s that had one big hit, Tragedy , by Thomas Wayne. Given the time, the place and a few eyewitness accounts, Lawrence, 52, believes the voice on at least six songs on those tapes is that of a shy but talented future king of rock 'n' roll.
But experts beg to differ. It's not a young Elvis Presley, they say. It's not Elvis singing at all. "He believes in it because he wants to sell it," said Kevin Kern, media coordinator for Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. in Memphis. "Everything Elvis is hot." Especially because last Tuesday marked the 28th anniversary of his death in 1977 at 42. "People who want to get publicity just latch on to Elvis because the ride will take you everywhere," said Kern. "I don't want to say that's what this guy is doing. ... You have to judge whether this guy is legitimate." "There are deep-pocketed Elvis collectors that would just go berserk with the right kind of authenticity," said John Petty, director of media relations for Heritage Galleries and Auctioneers of Dallas.
ACTUAL FINDINGS RARE
And there's the rub. Ernst Jorgensen, the premier archivist of Elvis' recorded works, said the singer on the excerpts he received wasn't Elvis. He hears claims of lost Elvis tapes or just-discovered early recordings 20 to 30 times a year. "I follow up on everything I can," Jorgensen wrote in an e-mail from Denmark. "It's quite seldom that we find something new." A voice analysis comparing known early Elvis recordings to Lawrence's tape failed to match the vocal characteristics. But Lawrence won't be deterred. He's neither a con artist nor a fool, those who know him say. Lawrence is a hard-working maintenance supervisor at Rodman Excavation in Frisco who writes and sings country and gospel songs in his spare time, a former police officer who is not afraid to chase life's possibilities. "He's a man of integrity," said longtime friend Joe Ninowski Jr., 43, of Flower Mound. "He has great character, a great spirit about him. A-never-say-die attitude." Lawrence's Uncle Slim, a truck driver and musician, built a recording studio in a garage behind his Memphis house around 1953-54. But in 1966, after Wallace's younger daughter was killed, he lost interest in the music business and Fernwood Records faded. In 2001, Wallace suffered a fatal heart attack. At a family reunion, Lawrence wondered what became of his uncle's record business. All that was left was the name, some papers, and a couple of boxes of tapes. "Steve kept on me, 'What's on those tapes?' " his cousin Ronnie Lee Wallace Sr., 55, of Southaven, Miss., recalled. "He cut me a deal before I knew what was on them. ... He paid us $90,000."
BACK IN TIME
In a Tyler studio they sifted through hours of unlabeled tapes, finding a smorgasbord of rockabilly, country and the blues, music that hadn't been heard in decades. The brittle tape often broke between songs. "Finally something comes on," said James Patterson, 27, a Rosewood Studio engineer. "To me, you know, I thought it was Elvis instantly. The hair stood up on my arms and stuff. I turned around and said, 'Yes, that's Elvis right there.' " Lawrence's cousin Glenda "Sue" Wallace, 66, of Duluth, Ga., doesn't have a doubt. "I was there and saw it happen," she said. She said she and Elvis were contemporaries who met at South Side hangouts. The way she remembers it, they talked music and Elvis asked whether her dad could help him out. She claims that after realizing Elvis wasn't straight country, her dad suggested the youth see his friend Sam Phillips at Sun Records. "The rest is history," Sue Wallace said, adding that Elvis gave her dad the songs in appreciation for helping him get started.
He may have been in the Fernwood recording studio, but is that him singing? "I guarantee you that's not Elvis' voice, even at an early stage; the quality of the voice is not there," said author and retired local schoolteacher Stanley Oberst. But Oberst, who wrote the book Elvis in Texas: The Undiscovered King 1954 to 1958, thought some of the more valuable tracks on the tapes were of black blues singers. Collectors in England and Germany would latch on to that in a minute, he said. So Lawrence may have some Memphis gold after all.
- 58-year announcer who introduced young Elvis now in Walk of Stars
By JOHN BORDSEN
(Dateline Alabama / Associated Press, August 20 2005)
The announcer who introduced a young Elvis Presley and other up-and-coming stars to the Louisiana Hayride radio show has added his shoeprints to a Walk of Stars that includes Elvis, country star Hank Williams, writer William Joyce and golfer David Toms. But, pressing his size 16s into the wet cement, Frank Page allowed as he stands out. "The mayor called," said Page, a member of the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame. "He's putting a hold on the Convention Center project until he can get some more concrete. Sorry, I used all of it."
Page has been working 58 years at KWKH-AM, starting Thanksgiving Day 1947. He'd been on the air less than seven years when, as the station's staff announcer on the Louisiana Hayride, he introduced Elvis at Municipal Auditorium on Oct. 16, 1954.
The station's next most tenured employee, John Lee, was born in September 1948, 10 months after Page began work there. ...
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