mid August, 2006
- FASCINATING FACT 1978
(contactmusic.com August 19, 2006)
ELVIS PRESLEY's favourite jewellery item was a 1973 Christmas gift from his girlfriend LINDA THOMPSON - a diamond-studded Maltese cross with the lovers' birth stones.
- Psychic sues to get former Elvis home
(Yahoo! News / Reuters August 17, 2006)
Celebrity psychic Uri Geller and two partners claim in a federal lawsuit that the former owners of Elvis Presley's first house breached an eBay contract to sell the home. Geller, who gained notoriety in the 1970s for seeming to bend spoons through telekinesis, and his partners are seeking to rescind the sale of the property to Nashville record producer Mike Curb. Their $905,100 offer was the high bid in the May 14 Internet auction. But after the auction, they made changes to the real estate contract that gave owners Cindy Hazen and Mike Freeman 60 days to move from the property.
"If we had signed the contract, they could have taken possession immediately. We couldn't do that," Freeman said. Hazen and Freeman then decided to sell the house to Curb for $1 million, a move Geller and his partners claim broke their contract. For Hazen and Freeman, now divorced, the sale of the Audubon property resulted in the reopening of a bankruptcy case in which they had been excused of $43,000 in debt. With profits from the sale of the home, Hazen said, more than $43,000 was placed in escrow to cover the debts owed to their creditors In a court hearing Thursday, Hazen and Freeman agreed to repay the money. "We wanted to fulfill that obligation," she said.
A former lieutenant governor of California, Curb is chairman of Curb Records and head of the Mike Curb Family Foundation, which describes itself as a "philanthropic organization dedicated to preserving music history and promoting music business education." A Curb spokeswoman said in June that the foundation was negotiating with a Memphis college to operate a music education center at the former Presley home. She declined to name the college. ...
- It's now or never: find Elvis for $3 million
By Sara Ledwith
(Yahoo! News / Reuters August 17, 2006)
Have you seen the king? As the 29th anniversary of his death passes, a $3 million reward is being offered for anyone who finds
Elvis Presley alive. U.S. writer, actor and filmmaker Adam Muskiewicz says he and a producer friend set up the website www.elviswanted.com mostly for publicity and to get the public involved in an independent documentary exploring the myth that Elvis is still alive.
"The hoaxing of Elvis Presley's death is the biggest myth in the history of pop culture. Does it have any merit? What are the facts behind it?" the site asks. The film and site aim to explore persistently popular rumors that Elvis did not die on August 16 1977, but may have gone into hiding.
Muskiewicz says he has interviewed countless fans and up to 175 people who either knew Elvis or had insight into his music or lifestyle for the documentary, planned for release next year on the 30th anniversary of the American singer and actor's death. "Right now, about 75 percent (of those interviewed) definitely think he's dead," Muskiewicz said by telephone. "About 25 percent think he's alive."
The website, linked to www.truthaboutelvis.com, offers pictures of possible Elvis sightings and opportunities for people to share their Elvis-related experiences and conspiracy theories. Muskiewicz, 28, says he currently installs indoor advertising in Lakewood, Ohio, to get by. He has not decided what he believes but the main reasons for some fans' suspicions are the strange behavior of Memphis medical staff at the time, and inconsistencies in events surrounding Elvis's funeral. "You don't have to be an expert to see there were procedural questions: why was the funeral so fast? Things were sealed and people went quiet," he said.
Another question always on people's minds is the spelling of his middle name: Aaron on his tombstone, this was Aron in his life, according to the site.
Whatever the search for Elvis reveals, the website's $3 million reward is genuine. Backed by a bet with UK bookmakers William Hill Plc, it is a particularly pricey version of one of the company's longest-standing novelty bets, said Graham Sharpe, the company's media relations director.
"The odds we're giving to the rest of the world on this are 1,000 to 1," he added, noting that if Elvis were found alive today he would be an elderly figure, not the rocker we remember. "I think that's what we're pinning our hopes on," he said. "That if he is found alive, he's going to deny it!"
- Thousands mark Elvis anniversary
(BBC News August 17, 2006)
Thousands of fans have made the annual visit to Elvis Presley's former home for the anniversary of his death. A week-long series of fan club meetings and concerts culminated in a candlelight vigil by Presley's grave at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.
A letter from US President George Bush that was read out to fans said Presley would "forever have a special place in the cultural life of America".
The star died at Graceland on 16 August 1977, aged 42.
Teddy bears, flowers and messages were left on Presley's grave on the 29th anniversary of his death.
Mr Bush's note said: "This event is an opportunity for people from around the globe to come together, share memories and celebrate one of America's most beloved icons."
The president visited Graceland in June with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is a huge Elvis Presley fan.
- In Memorium: An Elvis Presley Playlist: Rolling Stone editors select their favorite Elvis tracks on the anniversary of the King's death
(Rolling Stone August 16, 2006)
Twenty-nine years ago today, Elvis Presley died of a heart attack at the age of forty-two. To commemorate the King's legacy, Rolling Stone's editors handpicked some of their favorite Elvis tunes.
Track-by-track playlist:
"That's Alright (Mama)": Elvis' first single was recorded and released by Sun Records in July 1954, and in 2005, Rolling Stone declared it the song that started the rock & roll revolution.
"Good Rockin' Tonight": The second single from Sun Records, recorded in 1954.
"Mystery Train": In September 1955, "Mystery Train" became the first Elvis recording to hit Number One on any Billboard chart.
"Wear My Ring (Around Your Neck)": A relatively chaste Presley song that tackles the quaint topic of going steady, this track from 1958 nonetheless riled Catholic leaders, who deemed it "suggestive."
"A Little Less Conversation": The unofficial Brat Pack theme song has been used in countless movies and television ads, but it still sounds good.
"Hound Dog": An indisputable classic.
"Kentucky Rain": Along with hit singles "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto," "Kentucky Rain" was recorded in the so-called "Memphis sessions" of January 1969 and is widely considered to be one of Presley's best.
"In the Ghetto": On Presley's most explicitly political gospel-influenced ballad, he creates a moving illustration of the circle of life and death in the nation's slums -- a clear influence from his own rags-to-riches history.
"Suspicious Minds": Released August 26, 1969, "Suspicious Minds" was Elvis' seventeenth Number One single in the United States and his final Number One before his death. The passion in his voice might be explained by the fact that he and his wife were cheating on one another at the time.
"Unchained Melody": Though it has been recorded an estimated five hundred times by artists ranging from the Righteous Brothers to Barry Manilow to Harry Belafonte, the King does a killer version here in his dying days.
- Sad day in American music: Elvis Aaron Presley: Jan. 8, 1935 - Aug. 16, 1977
By Steve Anderson
(Huffington Post August 17, 2006)
Does it matter anymore? Hell yes! He introduced mainstream America to the music of Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard, and blues.
Forget the cape and jump suits, the awful movies, ridiculously up-tempo covers and chestnuts, that was debris of a career squandered by, well, I'm not sure what. Ennui, laziness, bad management decisions, drugs, all surely played a part.
When Elvis mattered was in the beginning, long before most readers were born. In '50's America, pop music was, among others, Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Perry Como, and what at the time were already slightly past their sell-by date talent such as Sinatra & Crosby. Country was pretty mannered and predictable, with a few exceptions, notably in the bluegrass & hillbilly genres trying to do something original As it was, the "country swing" of the time was probably the most revolutionary thing going, with Spade Cooley here in L.A. and Bob Wills from Texas pushing the envelope, with distorted guitars, and bluesy vocals.
R & B of the time got little radio play except for the "Race Stations," but there was some great stuff. T-Bone Walker and others were bridging the gap between Cab Callaway & Louis Jordan and the up and coming blues performers like B.B. King and others. But white kids in America were largely oblivious to that. Until Elvis. From Wikipedia:
"During a rehearsal break on July 5, 1954, Presley began singing a blues song written by Arthur Crudup called "That's All Right". Phillips liked the resulting record and on July 19, 1954 he released it as a 78-rpm single backed with Presley's hopped-up version of Bill Monroe's bluegrass song "Blue Moon of Kentucky". Memphis radio station WHBQ began playing it two days later, the record became a local hit and Presley began a regular touring schedule hoping to expand his fame beyond Tennessee. However, Sam Phillips had difficulty persuading Southern white disk jockeys to play Presley's first recordings. The only place that played his records at first were in the Negro sections of Chicago and Detroit and in California. In the South the hillbilly disk jockeys refused to play him because they said he was singing "darky" music. However, his music and style began to draw larger and larger audiences as he toured the South in 1955. Soon, demand by white teenagers that their local radio stations play his music overcame much of that resistance and as Rolling Stone magazine wrote years later in Presley's biography: "Overnight, it seemed, "race music," as the music industry had labeled the work of black artists, became a thing of the past, as did the pejorative "hillbilly" music."
In other words, white kids had never heard a white guy sing with such raw feeling, such abandon. And they loved it! And that's why we never forget Elvis.
- Elvis Dies
By Tony Scherman
(American Heritage August 16, 2006)
By the beginning of 1977, when he turned 42, Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts. One March night in Norman, Oklahoma, during his second tour of the year, he fell asleep in the middle of dinner, almost choking on his food. "Is there much more time left?" wrote an aide in his diary. At about this time Elvis's staff drew up a contingency plan for smuggling his body back home to Graceland, his Memphis mansion, in case they needed to cover up a fatal overdose on the road.
Three nights after Norman, Elvis was in Alexandria, Louisiana, where a local journalist complained that the star was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand." At the next stop, in Baton Rouge, Presley didn't go on at all. He was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and his manager, Col. Tom Parker, cancelled the rest of the tour. In mid-April Elvis flew to Las Vegas; according to his cousin and close aide Billy Smith, the reason for the trip was to get prescriptions from a Las Vegas doctor. The singer had had a tiff with his Memphis physician and chief prescriber, Dr. George Nichopoulos, and was tapping another source.
On April 21 the year's third tour began, a Midwestern swing. The reviews "ranged from concern for his health to perplexity over how little he seemed to care," writes Presley's most assiduous biographer, Peter Guralnick; according to a Detroit journalist, Elvis "stunk the joint out" in that city. Fans, too, Guralnick writes, "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his [spiritualism] books." And, one might add, to his tranquilizers and sedatives.
When the next tour started, in Knoxville, Tennessee, on May 20, "there was no longer any pretense of keeping up appearances," Guralnick writes. "The idea was simply to get Elvis out onstage and keep him upright for the hour he was scheduled to perform." So it went for the rest of that spring, with Presley stumbling and lurching through show after show. One June concert in Omaha was especially bad; to Guralnick, listening to a recording made of the show, Elvis "gives the impression of a man crying out for help when he knows help will not come." As the tour promoter Tom Hulett said, "It was like he was saying, 'Okay, here I am, I'm dying, f--- it.'"
From the end of June through July and into mid-August, Presley stayed at home, rarely leaving his bedroom. Sometimes his girlfriend, Ginger Alden, was with him, sometimes not; it was an on-and-off relationship. After sunrise on August 16, he and Ginger went to bed (he kept an inverted schedule). At about 8 a.m. he still hadn't fallen asleep, and he told Ginger he was going into the bathroom to read. Awaking at about 1:30 p.m., she found herself alone in bed and went to check on him. Entering the bathroom, she found him lying on the carpet, his face in a puddle of vomit. There was a bathroom intercom; she called downstairs and told a bodyguard that something was horribly wrong. Within minutes the bathroom was crowded with people "surrounding the almost unrecognizable body," Guralnick writes. "[Presley's] face was swollen and purplish, the tongue was discolored and sticking out of his mouth, the eyeballs blood red." An ambulance sped him to Baptist Memorial Hospital, where efforts to revive him were futile. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m.
The autopsy, which began at 7 p.m., was still going on when the Shelby County medical examiner, Dr. Jerry Francisco, told the gathered press that Elvis Presley had died of cardiac arrhythmia. This was the sanitized version, which Francisco would stick to. Meanwhile, Baptist Hospital sent blood and other fluid and tissue samples to Bio-Science Laboratories in California, one of the nation's top toxicology labs. Bio-Science found 14 drugs in Elvis's system, 10 in significant quantities. Codeine was present at 10 times the therapeutic level, methaqualone (Quaalude) at a toxic level, and three others on the toxic borderline. The conclusion was clear: Elvis died from polypharmacy, or the simultaneous use of multiple drugs. Actually, as Charles Thompson and James Cole point out in their book The Death of Elvis, "the codeine alone, in lower concentrations than Elvis's, had put people in their graves."
On the evening of August 16 the body was taken to Memphis Funeral Home for burial preparations. The next morning Presley was brought back to Graceland, where 50,000 people had already gathered outside the gates. Thirty National Guardsmen, 80 policemen, and 40 sheriff's deputies were there to control the crowd, and three police helicopters hovered overhead. South Central Bell asked Memphians to keep phone calls to a minimum; the circuits were overloaded.
A viewing was scheduled for 3 p.m., to last until 5. The open coffin sat in Graceland's foyer, just inside the front door, and fans filed past four abreast. Several mourners fainted beside the coffin; outside in the 90-degree heat hundreds more fainted. "Many, revived with rubber gloves filled with ice, staggered back into the crowd and fainted again," said a wire-service report. At 5 p.m. the viewing was extended for another 90 minutes. At 6:30 an estimated 10,000 fans were still waiting to view the body, but the police closed Graceland's gates. The crowd thinned, though thousands remained overnight.
The funeral service was held at Graceland at 2 p.m. on August 18. Presley was eulogized by C. W. Bradley, a local minister, who said, "Elvis would not want anyone to think that he had no flaws or faults. But now that he's gone, I find it more helpful to remember his good qualities, and I hope you do, too." Then a 49-car cortege, including 17 white Cadillacs, accompanied the body to Forest Hill cemetery. The road was lined with at least 15,000 fans. After a brief service the body was interred. Eleven days after the funeral there was a bungled attempt to steal the corpse, and in late October both Presley and his mother, Gladys, were reburied at Graceland, where they remain.
So many millions of words have been written about the trajectory of Elvis's life that it's impossible to say anything really original. Contemplating his depleted final months, onešs mind inevitably turns to the vibrant music of his youth, "That's Alright," "Blue Suede Shoes," and dozens more, or even to the less assured but passionate songs of his brief reflowering, circa 1968 to '70, "Suspicious Minds," "If I Can Dream," and so on. We have these recordings forever, and the sad later stumblings and sordid death can never erase them, or dim the brightness they radiate.
Not that remembering past glories necessarily consoled the forty-something Elvis, who must have lived with an especially acute sense of how far he had fallen. But surely, escaping now and then from his unhappiness, his narcotized fog, he found some fugitive moments of pride in the way he had so effortlessly tapped into our unconscious yearning for freedom and redirected the path of modern American culture.
- Elvis Week 2006 Still in Session: Elvis Insiders Convention Allows Friends to Enrich With Tales of Star's Life
By Edward Morris
(CMT.com August 16, 2006)
This week marks the 29th anniversary of the death of the King. The King of rock and roll, that is, Elvis Presley. Investors should take note because throughout the years Elvis incorporated hidden investment messages in his song titles. I know this may seem a little far-fetched, but compare my analysis with any of the, uh, let's call them non-traditional market analysis you'll find on message boards, newsletters and TV shows. And who is to say that Elvis, who lives on in the form of postage stamps and tribute acts, is not, in fact, the Nostradamus of our time?
Got some inside stories about Elvis Presley? Then grab a shovel and rush on down to Memphis. There's gold in them there spills. Elvis Week 2006 began Aug. 8 and runs through Wednesday (Aug. 16), the anniversary of Presley's death. Events have been held throughout the city, and fans from around the world have converged for the annual celebration.
While it may be difficult to identify with their extreme passion for "the King," one can't write them off as cartoonish obsessives. Within their ranks are scholars, serious memorabilia collectors, performers, students of popular culture and people who simply want to examine the processes by which legends are turned into cash.
Graceland, Presley's mansion, is the event's focal point. But for three days -- Aug. 11-13 -- a group called Elvis Insiders staged its own convention at the Memphis Marriott East hotel. It was here that people who knew Elvis gathered to talk about their relationship with him, sign autographs -- and sell lot and lots of merchandise. (Elvis Insiders is a fee-based fan club.)
Speakers included singer Pat Boone (for whom Presley was once an opening act); June Juanico (who dated Presley for three years early in his career); Jerry Schilling (a long-time friend); Maxine Brown (a member of the vocal trio, the Browns, that toured with Presley for two years); photographer Al Wertheimer; veteran guitarist James Burton; former girlfriend Linda Thompson; and Gordon Stoker (a member of the Jordanaires, the vocal group that performed and recorded with Presley). Several of the speakers and special guests also had new or recently-published books to sell.
Also manning merchandise tables were actors William Schallert and Victoria Paige Meyerink (who co-starred with Presley in Speedway) and Chris Noel (who worked with him in Girl Happy); Nancy Rooks (author of Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers); Joe Moscheo (a former member of Presley's backup vocal group, the Imperials); and Tanya Lemani George (a dancer on Presley's 1968 NBC-TV special).
Juanico enthralled a crowd of several hundred as she detailed her romantic encounters with Presley -- from holding hands while watching the 1956 Doris Day-James Stewart thriller, The Man Who Knew Too Much, to flying with him to Houston to pick up his new Cadillac El Dorado. "We slept in the same bed together," she said of that trip, "cuddled up like spoons, and I was intact the next morning. So when you hear stories about Priscilla and Elvis [sleeping together celibately], you can believe them."
Brown told how her mother had introduced her to Presley's music and how the promising young singer virtually became a member of her family after he joined the Browns on the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, La., and then began touring with them. She devoted a chapter to Presley in her career memoir, Looking Back to See.
Presley's name and image adorned a staggering array of products other than the customary T-shirts, photos and CDs. There were displays of Elvis wines, Elvis coffees, Elvis purses and even Elvis bicycles.
While most of the crowd were late middle-age and upward, there was also a sizable sprinkling of teenagers and twenty-somethings. Several guys -- old and young -- with suspiciously black pompadours strolled the hotel hallways, looking eager for conversation. Three Elvis impersonators performed Friday evening, backed by a shared band, and then signed autographs for an hour afterward.
Many of the Insider events were priced separately -- and the prices tended to be steep. It cost adults $38 a day (or $60 for two days) to hear Presley's friends talk about him. The faux Elvis showcase was tagged at $30. An evening show by Terry Mike Jeffrey and the Imperials carried a $40 ticket. A sightseeing trip from Memphis to Presley's birthplace in Tupelo, Miss., cost $75.
But few complaints were overheard about this relentless harvesting of cash. Even in the especially long and slow-moving lines that Boone and Schilling generated, the people were remarkably relaxed and amiable. Real fans, it seems, are accustomed to sacrificing. One fan told of another who -- after years of sitting out in the sun in order to be the first in line to attend a candlelight vigil at Presley's grave -- developed skin cancer. That level of zeal puts the pain of an overpriced ticket into perspective.
A spokesman for Elvis Presley Enterprises estimated that Elvis Week 2006 will draw 4,000 to 5,000 fans.
|
