Welcome to Vintage Paparazzi.

Legend Of Rock ‘n’ Roll—Elvis Presley

The hillbilly cat, the King, Elvis Aron Presley—there’s no figure more legendary in the history of rock ‘n’ roll than Elvis.

The thousands of mourners who packed Graceland following his death made for a spectacle which was not unlike the life of the great white soul singer himself-at once moving and bizarre, beautiful and grotesque. Thousands of floral arrangements in the forms of Bibles, crosses, crowns and guitars were airlifted in from across the country. Women broke up their marriages and spent their life savings to get there. Ruthless entrepreneurs hawked everything from cheap Elvis memorabilia to the sheets from the ambulance which carried his corpse. In the weeks and months to come, Elvis would be reborn, record-pressing plants working overtime to keep up with the demand for his albums, his post-mortem image exploited by hucksters like the infamous Colonel Tom Parker and the National Enquirer, which ran a front-page photo of Elvis in his coffin that sold 6.7 million copies. During the first year after his death Elvis made more money than he had in any year that he was alive.



In the wake of the attention given to Elvis’s drug-crazed and debauched final years, it is all too easy to lose sight of the true legacy left to us by the man from Tupelo, Mississippi. There are other legends-the Godfather of Soul, ће founding fathers of heavy metal, the high priests of punk and numerous other presidents, princes and potentates of pop music-but Elvis Presley is the original rocker. And there’s no one in the world who plays rock ‘n’ roll that doesn’t owe him a debt.






Like any good American legend, Elvis sprang from humble origins, born to Southern sharecroppers in 1935, at the height of the Depression. In 1948 the family moved to Memphis, where Elvis was exposed to a variety of musical influences-blues, gospel, country-which would eventually shape his own unique style. Indulged by doting parents, Elvis was encouraged to pursue the dreams of stardom he’d nursed throughout his youth.



A couple of tunes Elvis performed at Sun Records’ Memphis recording studio came to the attention of producer Sam Phillips, and the rest, as they say, was history. Soon, Elvis was tearing up the Bible Belt with his extravagantly sexual live performances. The famous Sun sessions from 1954 and ’55 are indisputably among the greatest rock tracks ever-one critic has suggested that you can hear rock ‘n’ roll being born in the very grooves of these recordings. The spirit, the unbridled good rockin’ of those tracks, is the same spirit common to all great rock music that followed in their wake.






In 1956 RCA bought Elvis’s contract from Sam Phillips and Sun, and the parade of Elvis’s greatest hits began. “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Jailhouse Rock” are just a handful of the songs that solidified Presley’s star status. His appearances on programs like Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey’s and the Ed Sullivan Show electrified the nation. His enlistment in the army in 1958 only intensified the Elvis fervor, as fans eagerly awaited his return.



But something happened to the King. The death of his mother Gladys, whom he adored, seemed to drive Elvis further into the clutches of his Machiavellian manager, Colonel Tom Parker. After Elvis’s return from the service, Parker committed him to a seemingly endless string of mindless movies which served to take the edge off of Presley’s image as he traded in his wild, lusty abandon for a harmless boy-next-door appeal. He wanted to be James Dean, but wound up more like Beaver Cleaver.

Elvis did have one spectacular comeback left in him-in December of 1968. During an hour-long NBC TV special, looking as lean and mean as ever, Elvis roared and rocked his way back to his rightful throne. This was followed by a return to the road, starting in Las Vegas, where Elvis played up his deified image to the hilt in his white-jeweled sun-king jumpsuit.



Alas, from that point on the road it was strictly downhill. Consumed by boredom and megalomania, Elvis descended into massive drug abuse, perverse sexuality and near madness. Eventually he walled himself up in his Graceland mansion with only his few trusted cronies, the “Memphis Mafia.” There, on August 16, 1977, he died-like so many other celebrity ODs-in the bathroom.

Loved and loathed, pitied and worshipped, the man may be gone, but his music is still here, ready to be discovered or rediscovered. As John Lennon once said, “Before Elvis, there was nothing!” Now, thanks to Elvis Presley, there’s good rockin’ tonight!

THE END

BY ADAM GOLDMAN

 

It is a quote. RIP MAGAZINE 1986