mid July, 2006
- Cashing in
By DAVID MCKEE
(Las Vegas City Life July 20, 2006)
Cashing in
Two releases strategically celebrate the Man in Black. "Johnny Cash will be cool forever because he's just so real," says Cash colleague Rodney Crowell in one of the documentaries accompanying the two-disc DVD version of James Mangold's biopic, Walk the Line. I'd certainly agree Cash always seems to mean what he's singing and Elvis Presley never does, making the former an American icon and the latter (for me, anyway) a slick, semi-campy pop culture phenomenon. ...
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- Roberto Clemente tournament truly a World Series
By Jeff Hensley
(Henry Daily Herald July 19, 2006)
Ronald McDonald, Superman and Elvis Presley all made appearances as the McDonough Youth Baseball League held opening ceremonies at the square in downtown McDonough for the AABC Roberto Clemente World Series for the sixth consecutive year. Eight teams from all over the country and Puerto Rico will join the hosting McDonough Elite, reigning McDonough Youth League champs. ...
- Beatles Tape Thieves Sentenced
By Dave Maher
(Pitchfork July 19, 2006)
Sometimes you can't just let it be. When it comes to the Beatles, quite a few of us wish record company executives would just give up the lawsuits and get back to the task of remastering (and digitizing) those classic LPs. Recently, though, one of those lawsuits has actually produced material that might at least aid in the addition of bonus tracks to those elusive reissues.
In 2003, over 500 tapes from the 1969 "Get Back" sessions that produced Let It Be were discovered in a warehouse in the Netherlands after a man named Nigel Oliver attempted to sell the tapes (along with George
Harrison's 1960 passport) for £250,000 to undercover police officers in Amsterdam. According to the London Times, on Friday, a London court ruled that Oliver, who is schizophrenic and was found unfit to plead at a previous hearing, should be placed under psychiatric supervision for two years. The BBC reports that another man, Colin Dillon, was also sentenced.
It is unknown who originally stole the tapes, which include 80+ hours of footage of the band playing over 200 songs, including covers of "Maggie May", "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Great Balls of Fire", as well as songs by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. The sessions' original sound engineers identified the tapes as legitimate, having recognized their own voices among the arguments, banter and
jokes of the band.
Hey, maybe we'll get a spoken word album -- a la Elvis or Robert Pollard -- out of this whole mess. We hear Ringo had a killer stand-up routine back in the day.
- Death no obstacle for chart-topper Johnny Cash
(Yahoo!7 News July 17, 2006)
In life, Johnny Cash was merely a legend. In death, he is proving immortal.
Almost three years after he died at the age of 71 after a
decade of poor health, the country outlaw is the most popular
artist in the United States, currently at No. 1 on the pop and
country charts with an album of new material. The album, "American V: A Hundred Highways," recorded in Cash's final months as he looked forward to reuniting with his late wife, June Carter Cash, sold 88,000 copies in the week
ended July 9. It's his first chart-topper since 1969's live
prison album "Johnny Cash at San Quentin."
It also marks the fifth -- but not the final -- installment
in the "American Recordings" series, which resurrected the
singer's career in the last dozen years of his life. The
comeback was masterminded by rock producer Rick Rubin, who has
already topped the album charts this summer with the Red Hot
Chili Peppers and the Dixie Chicks. Cash and Rubin started work on the acoustic set the day they finished 2002's fourth volume, which featured one of the biggest hits of his career, a Grammy-winning cover of hard rock
band Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." With a frail Cash sensing the end
was near, he recorded 60 songs over eight months, often singing
in an improvised bedroom studio at his home near Nashville.
Among the tracks on "American V" are covers of Gordon
Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind," and the folk standard
"Four Strong Winds," as well as the last song Cash wrote and
recorded, the train-themed "Like the 309." His voice sounds eerily fragile on "If You Could Read My Mind," but Rubin said it fits perfectly with the melancholy lyrics and melody. On the other hand, his reading of Hank
Williams' "Evening Train" is full of gusto, in part because
Cash knew the song by heart. The album was originally envisaged as a black gospel release, and Cash recorded several such tunes including the
strident "God's Gonna Cut You Down" before they decided to
expand their horizons. His former Sun Records labelmate Elvis
Presley had an earlier crack at the traditional tune on his
gospel album "Amazing Grace." ...
- Fan's Notes
By David Gates
(Newsweek July 17, 2006)
My parents had no idea what they'd given me when that plastic Admiral radio showed up on my night table. It was 1956, in a small Connecticut town; I was 9. Late at night, in the dark, when I thought they couldn't hear, it brought me baseball and ice hockey, talk-show discussions about the reincarnation of Bridey Murphy, Vincent Lopez's orchestra (coming to you from the Hotel Taft in New York City), the McGuire Sisters and Patti Page, and deep-night disc jockeys who played Frank Sinatra singing "That's All." But it also brought me that dangerous new music I thought no parent knew about, and knew no parent would approve of: Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, street-corner doo-wop teens from the scary city. It was the year of "Heartbreak Hotel," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Long Tall Sally," "I Walk the Line" and Miss Molly who sure liked to ball. Even at 9, I felt this might be dirty. Sex and rock and roll - 9 years old and I was already two for three. ... For many of us, rock and roll wasn't just music: it was a cause, a cult, a movement. It divided parents and children, it taught its devotees styles, attitudes, ideologies and behaviors. It gave strength and comfort to the alienated and misunderstood (a big constituency with us). Its basic stance was rebellion: rock and rollers were the first popular entertainers to be beloved because they refused to be ingratiating; there's a straight line from Elvis's sneer to Mick Jagger's to Eminem's.
The original rock and roll, like Beat poetry -1956 was also the year of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"- expressed energies and anxieties that the Eisenhower era had hoped to repress. Were we all to join the middle class now? Fine, we'd embrace the music of rough working-class blacks and whites who wouldn't have been welcome in nice homes. Were we to ignore the recent Holocaust and the impending H-bomb? Fine, we'd turn up the record player. Those images in car ads, of families waving from a convertible as they cruised along Ike's interstate highway system, begged to be blasphemed. ...
- Elton John's enduring appeal
By ALLAN WIGNEY
(Ottawa Sun July 16, 2006)
"The great thing about rock and roll is that someone like me can be a star." - Elton John
He was an unlikely teen idol. A balding, bespectacled butterball, Elton John capitalized on the rise of 1970s glam by taking every excessive aspect of rock 'n' roll that much further. Visually, he wore outlandish costumes - everything from sporting ostrich feathers to dressing as a duck or the Statue of Liberty - and glasses that were an optician's nightmare (or dream). Musically, he crafted supremely catchy tunes and proved equally adept at the prettiest of pop ballads and the most ferocious boogie-driven rockers. Offstage, he became one of rock 'n' roll's most controversial figures, though not always intentionally or justly so.
He pulled John Lennon out of the shadows and helped to ease Guns N' Roses into them. He hesitantly advanced the cause of the gay-rights movement and paid a hefty, if temporary, price for it. He has engaged in a lengthy love-hate relationship with the media that has likely both helped and hindered his remarkable endurance as a performer. Between 1970 and 1996, Elton John placed at least one single per year in the Top 40. Today, he stands as one of the 10 best-selling recording artists in history. And he's only getting started. ... "There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex," John said in a 1976 Rolling Stone interview entitled "Elton's Frank Talk." After all, he said, he had done it himself, on more than one occasion. And with that, seemingly, everything changed. John had admitted only to being bisexual, as a tentative means of testing the homophobic waters. And his career nearly drowned as a result.
... But while success continued on the singles charts, John's personal life was in turmoil. Years of drug and alcohol abuse, plus serious throat problems, took their toll through the remainder of the 1980s. In 1988, John auctioned off his complete collection of records, costumes and other memorabilia, bidding farewell not so much to the past as to the man who now likened himself to Elvis Presley in the King's final days. ...
- Training and racing pigeons has become a costly hobby
By TOM RAGAN
(Standard Speaker July 16, 2006)
The Hazleton Flying Club once boasted that more than 40 members raced their prize pigeons from April through the middle of October. Now only about a dozen members participate and membership is down about 70 percent overall, according to club president John Wittig of Hazleton. ... Probably the most famous pigeon is one that American troops named "G.I. Joe" after raising and training the bird in North Africa in 1943. ... Other famous pigeon lovers include baseball Hall of Fame outfielder Willie Mays and boxing champs Mike Tyson, George Foreman and Marvin Hagler, and Scott Baio of TV's "Happy Days" fame.
Walt Disney had famous white birds and his pigeon lofts were maintained near the park up until a few years ago. Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando and Terry Bradshaw, and even Queen Elizabeth II, all raised pigeons at one time. In fact, the queen's Royal Lofts are still maintained today in England. ...
- For the love of living on St. Croix
By MARIAN KAHL
(Bradenton Herald July 16, 2006)
I believe in fate. If you don't believe in it yourself, you may understand why I truly believe it was fate that got me to this beautiful island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. When I was in my early teens I got my first record player. My first two LP's were Elvis Presley and Polynesian island music. I always thought it would be terribly romantic to live on an island, but living in Connecticut, it didn't seem likely that it would ever happen. ...
- Ruined treasures interest museum
By LYNNE JENSEN
(Sun Herald / ASSOCIATED PRESS July 16, 2006)
It's usually a solo act when Gabriel Puccio picks apart his ruined rock 'n' roll collection, now a moldy mess tossed throughout his Chalmette home by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. This month, Puccio was thrilled to be part of a trio scoring black-and-white photographs, record albums and music posters from his collection that could be included in an 8,000-square-foot exhibit portraying the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana. The as-yet-untitled exhibit of artifacts from the storm is being assembled by the Louisiana State Museum. Greg Lambousy, the museum's director of collections, said music will be "a big part of it because it's a big part of the city."
Puccio, 58, invited Lambousy and museum registrar Ann Woodruff to his house to search for items that represent musicians from Louisiana, such as a black-and-white photograph of Fats Domino and Elvis Presley, sitting together at a Las Vegas casino where Domino was performing, Puccio said. "Elvis went to see him," Puccio said about the photo, autographed by Domino. ... The large exhibit will be costly, since conserving damaged items is expensive, Lambousy said. It also is time-consuming; most likely it will open in 2008, he said. Along with flood-damaged items of musical interest, such as Fats Domino's flood-ravaged Steinway, the display will include a menorah donated by the Beth Israel Congregation in Lakeview, a watermarked public library drop box, a pirogue used for rescue in the Lower 9th Ward and a garage door marked with spray-painted X's "that you see all around," Lambousy said. ...
- Better quality of life through music: Anderson Symphony Orchestra announces diverse season lineup
By MELANIE D. HAYES
(Dateline Florida July 15, 2006)
A classical harmonica player, spooky Halloween music, Irish dancers, Christmas carols and a violinist playing a Mother Goose Suite will all be gracing the Paramount Theatre Centre stage with the Anderson Symphony Orchestra. The lineup for ASO's 2006-2007 season will appeal to people with a variety of tastes and interests, and will expose them to new styles. One of the performances that will stand out is the season opener on Sept. 9 with Robert Bonfiglio, a guest who plays the harmonica with classical music.
"The harmonica is not thought of as being a classical instrument," said ASO music director and conductor Rick Sowers. "Most people haven't heard it played that way. Bonfiglio is sought by some as being the best classical harmonica player in the world." ... "In addition to playing the classical pieces, he's doing a piece, the Elvis Lives Medley - a medley of Elvis Presley tunes," Sowers said. "It shows Bonfiglio's versatility as a blues harmonica player as well. This first concert is very interesting." ...
- Flight engineer ferried presidents' families
(Dateline Florida July 15, 2006)
Robert Purcell encountered some of the world's most famous and powerful people during his last years of military service. Purcell manned the controls in the airplane that followed Air Force One during the 1960s. He ferried the families and friends of presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Johnson to the White House and abroad. When Kennedy died, Purcell flew various dignitaries to the funeral.
"We never talked about it in detail," said Purcell's daughter, Judy Skinner of Tallahassee. "There were high levels of security involved. I got to see the plane inside once when Kennedy was present. He had a back problem so it had a special chair for his back. And there was a presidential insignia on the bedspread. That's all I remember."
Born July 23, 1922, in Hoboken, N.J., Purcell, 83, died of cancer Wednesday at Peace River Memorial Medical Center in Port Charlotte.His role as a flight engineer in the presidential squadron capped a 27-year career in the military. Purcell was a senior master sergeant in the Air Force and served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. His brushes with fame surpassed the strictly presidential. He rode on the same airplane as Elvis Presley when the star returned home from serving in the Army in the 1950s. ...
- Japan PM rides camel in Jordan
(jsonline.com July 15, 2006)
Just two weeks ago, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was imitating Elvis during a visit to the United States. Today, during a trip to the ancient Jordanian ruins at Petra, Koizumi rode a camel and donned a traditional red-and-white headdress. "A camel isn't comfortable," Koizumi quipped, punning with the words for camel and "it's comfortable", which sound the same in Japanese. The red sandstone ruins at Petra were carved more than 2000 years ago and served as a set for the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" with Harrison Ford.
Two weeks ago, the peripatetic Koizumi visited Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley, with US President George W. Bush. Koizumi, who shares a birthday with Elvis, sang the opening line of an Elvis song and put on a pair of sunglasses Elvis had owned. Koizumi was in Jordan on the last leg of a four-day Mideast tour. He leaves for Russia and the Group of Eight summit tomorrow.
- A town big enough for Elvis and Bigfoot
By Dennis McCann
(jsonline.com July 14, 2006)
The first thing to understand is that Elvis Presley (really, that's his name - if I'm lying, I'm dying ) is alive and well and living in Phillips, so don't discount the impossible. Unfortunately, historic Bloom's Tavern, the bar Presley now owns next to a building named Heartbreak Hotel, was not open the day I stopped so I was unable to frame the question any newspaperman would trade his first born to ask. "Elvis, have you seen Bigfoot?" ...
- Internet floats Lay conspiracy theories
(Yahoo! News July 14, 2006)
Ken Lay has taken his place alongside Elvis Presley in the pantheon of people whose deaths have not been fully believed. In Internet sites and blogs, conspiracy theorists and jokesters have floated the idea that the Enron founder's powerful friends helped him fake his death to escape sentencing in one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history. Some disbelievers are serious. Others are clearly having fun, such as the creator of a Web site that shows Lay's face inserted Where's Waldo-style into pictures from around the world - at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the running of the bulls in Spain and as E.T. on a bike about to fly away from bad guys. ...
- Elvis stars in England church service
(UPI July 14, 2006)
The congregation at England's Truro Cathedral is replacing a regular Sunday evening service with a gospel show featuring an Elvis Presley impersonator. The cathedral, concerned about the "limited appeal" of its traditional evensong services, has moved the regular services to earlier in the evening to make room for "alternative" services in the 6:30 p.m. time slot, the Telegraph reported Friday. The latest in the series is "His Hand in Mine: An Inspirational Evening of Elvis Presley's Gospel Music," starring Johnny Cowling as the King, performing such classics as "Peace in the Valley" and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot."
Canon Perran Gay said the alternative services were an attempt to draw more people to the cathedral. "We were concerned that we weren't reaching people who aren't drawn to traditional services, so we decided to consider alternative ways of worship," Gay said. "We are confident in our numbers to try something slightly wacky. This is just one of many authentic ways of worshipping God." Past alternative services at the church have involved jazz sessions, country music-singing cowboys and line dancing.
- All Shook Up at the Cathedral
By Matt Shepherd
(BBC Cornwall July 13, 2006)
Elvis Presley may have been known throughout the world as The King of Rock and Roll, but his passion lay in gospel music. Throughout his career Elvis would spend hours performing his favourite spirituals in the privacy of his Graceland home, and during breaks from recording sessions in the studio. Presley's backing singers all enjoyed early success recording gospel favourites including The Jordinaires, The Sweet Inspirations, and JD Sumner and The Stamps.
In a career that saw countless gold and platinum records, worldwide number ones, and Hollywood blockbusters, Elvis only ever received three Grammy Awards. These were for his gospel recordings. 'How Great Thou Art' won the Best Sacred Performance award in 1967, 'He Touched Me' got the Best Inspirational Performance in 1972 and a live version of 'How Great Thou Art' won the Grammy for Best Inspirational Performance in 1974.
At the height of Elvis' career in 1957, he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show to silence his critics. He succeeded with just one song, a gospel tune, 'Peace in the Valley'. This was followed by an Extended Play single in the same year with four religious recordings by Elvis and the Jordinaires. In the '60s at the height of his movie career, Elvis once again turned to gospel music. He scored a UK number one with 'Crying in The Chapel', and two massive albums, 'His Hand in Mine' and 'How Great Thou Art'.
In his legendary '68 Comeback Special, Elvis featured an eight minute gospel medley, and a few years later when he was constantly touring, Elvis would always perform favourites like 'How Great Thou Art' and 'The Impossible Dream'.
But Elvis' love of gospel music goes back further than his recording career. As a three-year-old boy Elvis would attend the Assembly of God Church. He would often walk right up to the gospel choir and try to join in.
Possibly the ultimate honour for Elvis came many years after his death. The King of Rock and Roll was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in November 2001. He was already a member of the halls of fame for rock'n'roll and country music, the latest honour made Elvis the only entertainer to be inducted into all three.
So the fact that Truro Cathedral is producing a special Elvis Gospel night comes as no surprise to fans of the legendary singer. Get there early, it is likely to fill up quickly. Cornwall's Johnny Cowling will be singing his heart out, performing the classic gospel tunes of Elvis on Sunday 6 August at 6.30pm. Johnny has visited Graceland, the fabled home of Elvis and was runner-up of 10,000 entrants to GMTVs 'Search for Elvis' competition in 2001.
"Elvis came from the deep South in America where religion and singing Gospel were deeply ingrained. He might be known as the King of Rock 'n Roll but his great love was always Gospel music. It was his great inspiration; it's what he returned to when things got tough," explains Johnny.
Canon Perran Gay and Johnny Cowling
- Town all shook up over licence to Elvis
(Australian Broadcasting Corporation July 13, 2006)
A town in central west New South Wales is applying overseas for a licence to impersonate Elvis Presley. Organisers say with 5,000 visitors to this year's event, Parkes can claim the biggest Elvis Festival in Australia. Fears that there would be a crackdown on unauthorised Elvis impersonators have prompted the group to start negotiations with the American billionaire who owns the rights to Elvis's name and likeness.
Festival publicity officer Monique Kronk says if they are endorsed by Elvis Presley Enterprises the group would have to do some policing of its own. "We will need to be looking at any retailers during our festival which might be selling unlicensed merchandise, there will be restrictions put on them," she said. But she says the licence would increase merchandising opportunities and safeguard any performer or venue that participates in the festival.
She says the endorsement would mean any Elvis impersonator who attends will not be breaching copyright even if they gain financially. "Basically everyone who is performing as an Elvis in any capacity, and any local venues even for that matter that are putting on Elvis shows, if they register through our office and at no charge, they'll be covered, for use of the Elvis name under our own licence," she said.
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