late October
- Funeral home gets 'All Shook Up': Elvis helps Endsley celebrate 80 years of service
By ADAM GERIK
(pjstar.com, October 26 2008)
Dave Stovall danced around a replica of Elvis Presley's casket. Hail to the King. "I've got a weird sense of humor," the Elvis impersonator said, clad in a white jumpsuit covered in jewels and rhinestones. "Part of me wants to lay in it."
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- Funeral home gets 'All Shook Up': Elvis helps Endsley celebrate 80 years of service
By ADAM GERIK
(pjstar.com, October 26 2008)
Dave Stovall danced around a replica of Elvis Presley's casket. Hail to the King. "I've got a weird sense of humor," the Elvis impersonator said, clad in a white jumpsuit covered in jewels and rhinestones. "Part of me wants to lay in it."
A facsimile of the 650-pound copper casket in which Presley was buried, complete with French bisquit-tufted velvet, was on display Saturday at Endsley Funeral Home. Stovall performed some signature Elvis songs during an open house at the funeral home, which is celebrating 80 years of service in the Tri-County Area.
"We wanted people to come here and have fun for once," embalmer Stephanie Van Oppen said. "Why not throw ourselves a party and show people we're not creepy and weird?" Van Oppen said the open house was a chance for the funeral home to show its lighter side, with food, music and an antique hearse outside.
"Ninety-nine percent of the time they come here, they're sad," she said. "We're putting the first three letters back in funeral." ...
- Review: 'The Elvis Encyclopedia' by Adam Victor
By VALERIE KELLOGG
(newsday.com, October 26 2008)
THE ELVIS ENCYCLOPEDIA, by Adam Victor. Overlook, 598 pp., $65.
How did Elvis Presley kiss? "How do you describe soft lips, slightly parted, not too much, but just perfect?" It's just one of the many, many, many things even the most jaded Presley fanatics will learn in "The Elvis Encyclopedia." Old girlfriend June Juanico's recollection can be found under the "Sex Life" heading - a salacious, if sad, read.
Other engaging entries in this A-to-Z book are "Monty Python" (Presley could recite episodes by heart and loved the "Nudge, Nudge" skit), "Food" (when bingeing, he is said to have consumed 94,000 calories a day) and "Will" (he drew up his final wishes, which can be read in their entirety, less than six months before he died in 1977).
More than a few snapshots of the bloated King appear among the 500 photos, including one of the drug-addled rock star atop a woman on the carpeted floor of an unnamed location in Hawaii. But there also are many of Presley in his prime - like another for the unissued prototype of a Wheaties box.
"Elvis fans have an unslakable thirst for 'new' facts, and for books that challenge their knowledge of the man," author Adam Victor writes in the section called "Trivia." "This book may well swell the number of well-informed fans." With 598 pages resulting from six years of research in libraries, film and audio archives and private collections, there's a good chance.
- On song: Tom Jones can't believe his luck. He's a belting balladeer rediscovered as cool, he's a womaniser with a lifelong happy marriage, and then there's the voice - good enough to tussle with Elvis.
By Simon Hattenstone
(guardian.co.uk, October 25 2008)
... Jones, now 68, has a lovely way of telling stories, as if every thought has hit him for the first time. ...
... All the time he really wanted to sing edgier songs. First, there was the new rock'n'roll of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, then there was the blues. "I was liking black singers without realising. And the blues. Big Bill Broonzy. ...
In the 70s, his income tax rose to 98 %; Jones and Linda packed their bags and moved to Los Angeles, where they still live. By now, he was known for his tight trousers, hairy chest, snake hips and libidinous thrust as much as for the voice. Was he as horny as he appeared to be, or was it an act? Hell, no, he says, appalled, it was - is - for real. Was any other performer as sexually charged as him? "Well, the only one really was Elvis Presley. I knew him very well, and he said I see in you what I feel myself. You see, Elvis was a macho man, he was a good-looking fella, but he was still strong. That's why he was always doing karate in those movies, it was a male thing that he felt. So, not to pick on Mick Jagger, but [Elvis] said how the fuck ... what do people see in the Beatles and the Stones and these British bands? He said thank heaven for you coming out of Britain, that you feel the same thing. I said, 'Well, you are partly to blame, it was watching you Š you rubbed off on me so much that you gave me confidence to do it.'" Does he get excited on stage? "Oh yeah!" Sexually excited? "Well, you don't get physically aroused, because you concentrate so much."
His friendship with Elvis provided him with some of his most cherished memories. They never performed together publicly, but they often went to Elvis's hotel suite for a sing-song when they were both playing Vegas . "He'd say, 'I'll get the group up and we'll do something' and I'd already done two shows. There were two songs he loved at the time. A song Kris Kristofferson wrote called Why Me and Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly. Once he latched on to something, he wouldn't let it go. So we're at the suite, comparing gospel I learned in Wales with gospel he learned in Mississippi. We must have sung The Old Rugged Cross a dozen times with an electric piano and his vocal group, the Sweet Inspirations. He'd say, 'D'you think I'd like Wales, Tom, if I came over ?' I said, 'You'd love the male voice choirs.' I had this vision of taking him up the Rhondda valley and having him sing with all the choirs."
For the last two years of Presley's life, Jones never saw him. He knew he'd become addicted to diet pills and had turned in on himself, but he didn't know how desperate he was. In 1977, Presley died and Jones still regrets that he didn't make more of an effort to help him. Towards the end he had stopped taking calls. "I didn't know Elvis was sick. I thought he was just getting lazy - he was getting heavy and pushed people away from him. The first thing that hit me after he died was I should have gone and seen him. Priscilla called me, and said, 'When you show up, you give him a spark. He's got this competitive spark in him again.' So I thought maybe I could have given him that shot again. Maybe."
Presley's death coincided with a downturn in Jones' fortunes. He came to be regarded as a kitsch crooner, a parody of his former self, and went without another hit in Britain for 15 years. He continued to sell out shows, but the venues were smaller. The knickers and door keys began to pall. People stopped talking about the voice. "The thing that I don't like about it, it became a joke. People go, 'Oh Tom Jones, knickers.' You want another?" ...
- Priscilla Thrilled To Be A Gran Again
(ContactMusic, October 21 2008)
PRISCILLA PRESLEY has described her daughter LISA MARIE's newborn twins as "a dream come true". Elvis Presley's widow [ie ex-wife] became a gran for the third and fourth time on 7 October (08) when Lisa Marie, 40, welcomed Finley and Harper, her first kids with husband Michael Lockwood.
And she is "thrilled". She tells Entertainment Tonight, "My daughter just had twins, so that's a dream come true. It's been a real delight entering into the room and seeing these two little babies - it's been pretty terrific. "Father's (Lockwood) a little nervous. He's a first-time dad, so it's the most beautiful thing to watch the way he holds and carries the babies. It's so endearing to watch how delicate he is."
Lisa Marie, has two older children by ex-husband Danny Keough; Riley, 19, and Benjamin, 16.
- Pat Boone pushes rewind, looks back on 50-year career: Star clings to convictions and holds no regrets
(tennessean.com, October 21 2008)
As some celebrities weighed the professional risks and rewards of endorsing a presidential candidate this year, Pat Boone reflected on a 50-year career continually infused with political and religious activism.
This came as he researched and wrote his autobiography, Pat Boone's America - 50 Years, which documents a singing, acting and writing career that resulted in 45 million albums sold, 38 top-40 hits, a network TV show and more than a dozen films.
He returns to his hometown of Nashville today to sign copies of the book, as well as his Christmas album, The True Spirit of Christmas, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop.
... "Believe it or not, when I began, there was no such thing as rock 'n' roll," said Boone, who counts Elvis Presley among his opening acts. "I've called myself one of the midwives at the birth of rock 'n' roll."
Boone has been criticized for ripping off the work of the African-American artists who originated the songs. "That is just a complete perversion of history and those who lived through the era know it," he said.
Back then, Boone said, everyone covered others' hits, including artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. "Perry Como did a Vic Damone song," he said, noting that Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and two other acts also recorded the Charms' hit.
He said Domino's version of "Ain't That a Shame" sold 150,000 copies, and that Domino "sported a big diamond ring he bought with some of the proceeds" from Boone's million-selling version. Boone said he helped introduce these African-American artists to a white audience because disc jockeys would play the covers and the originals. Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Domino were covered by white artists, including Elvis and The Beatles; other artists who weren't covered never became nationally known, he said.
""It was a seminal part to play, and now it's been twisted around that maybe I was taking something from these artists," he said. ...
- Executive Inn throws party for upcoming closing
(WHAS11, October 20 2008)
After 45 years of serving the community, it was a grand goodbye party for the Executive Inn this Sunday. The hotel on Phillips Lane hosted numerous celebrities, including three presidents and Elvis Presley. The Executive Inn is scheduled to close by the end of the year. It was the first of three hotel properties built by Al J. Schneider and still owned and operated by the Schneider family. The hotel will be demolished and the land turned over to the Kentucky Exposition Center for what will be a more modern franchise hotel. Nearby, the Executive West is currently undergoing a $26 million dollar transformation to become a Crowne Plaza.
- Elvis Gospel Experience draws a crowd
(Galesburg Register-Mail, October 20 2008)
Al Hull, portraying Elvis Presley, sang with the Carl Sandburg College Children's Choir on Sunday afternoon at Galesburg High School, backed by his Legends band. The second annual Elvis Gospel Experience drew a crowd of about 2,000 to raise money for the Abingdon and Maquon United Methodist churches.
- John Lennon, in his own rite
(book review)
By David Hajdu
(The Australian, October 20 2008)
John Lennon: The Life, by Philip Norman is published this month (Harper Collins, $35).
AS he said about the maker of all things in the song he called God, which was really about himself, John Lennon is a concept by which we measure our pain. Lennon made a great many things, both miraculous and ungodly, during his short and intensely public life, and much of what he did brought us grief, in the multiple meanings of the word, or granted us the effect of grief's denial: ecstasy.
His admirers and his detractors (there are no others in this case) have been talking and writing fervently about Lennon since the first days of Beatlemania, in Liverpool all those years ago. I do not know exactly how many books have been published about the Beatles, but I own 58, and I am not a collector by the standards of Beatle fandom. The number of newspaper, magazine and journal articles about the group and its music is unknowable; the main indexes cite tens of thousands and those lists exclude fanzines, newsletters, teen mags and the alternative press, in which much of the most obsessive and revealing documentation of Beatledom has taken place.
... When Elvis Presley first saw the Beatles, he said they looked like "a bunch of faggots", and their mere Englishness was no doubt feminising in the eyes of Americans less enlightened than the king of rock 'n' roll. Norman shuffles awkwardly around the issue of sexual transgression in the Beatles' early appeal, but he falls considerably short of doing it justice. ...
- Rocket Man soars at Wachovia Arena
By BRAD PATTON
(Times Leader, October 19 2008)
Garnering standing ovations after nearly every song, Elton John kicked off the 10th Anniversary Season at the Wachovia Arena at Casey Plaza Saturday night with an inspired, tour de force performance before an appreciative capacity crowd.
Touring in support of "Rocket Man: Number Ones," the man born Reginald Kenneth Dwight performed one hit after another in his third appearance at the Wilkes-Barre Township facility.
Not many artists can release an album that contains nothing but No. 1 hits. And unlike Elvis Presley, The Beatles, ABBA and The Bee Gees, Sir Elton is still around to recreate those timeless tunes on stage. ...
- Lost genius of rap Eminem back from the shadows
By David Smith
(Observer, October 19 2008)
Eminem's four missing years were filled by grim stories of marital breakdown, condemnation by his mother and junk-food binges. But now the recluse is staging his return with a new album.
You know the world is going crazy, the comedian Chris Rock said, when the best golfer is a black guy and the best rapper is a white guy (whatever next, a black President?). The black golfer was Tiger Woods, the richest sportsman in the world. The white rapper was Eminem. Remember him?
It is not so long ago that Eminem was being praised as a rapper of literary genius and decried as the greatest cultural menace in America. His mastery of a musical form invented by African-Americans drew comparisons with Elvis Presley and his linguistic vitality won unlikely fans such as Seamus Heaney and Zadie Smith. At the same time his lyrics, accused of glorifying misogyny, homophobia and violence, saw him branded Public Enemy Number One.
Then Eminem went 'missing in action'. Devastated by the loss of his best friend, DeShaun 'Proof' Holton, shot dead outside a club two years ago, he became increasingly reclusive. The vacuum was filled by unhappy rumour and revelation. His remarriage to his ex-wife, emblazoned on the front of Hello! magazine, lasted only 11 weeks before a second divorce. His estranged mother published a memoir calling him a liar. There were still parallels with Presley, but this time in the years of Graceland decadence: he was said to be depressed, crippled by writer's block and bingeing on junk food in his Detroit mansion. With his health failing and weight ballooning, one US tabloid claimed Eminem was 'starting to look like an M&M'.
Little wonder, then, that news of his first album for four years has electrified the ailing music industry and the rapper's persistently loyal fan base. Just when it seemed he was effectively retired, the 36-year-old is re-energised and at work in the studio. Now it is rumoured that the album, named last week as Relapse, is due to be released by Christmas. ...
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