For me, it is one of those pivotal, unforgettable “where were you when” moments, like hearing the news of the murders of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, or John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane disappearing, Michael Jackson’s shocking exit, or Princess Diana’s car crash in a tunnel in Paris.
On this day, August 16th, in 1977, Elvis Aaron Presley took his final bow. I was sitting in the “Vistadome” section on Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco, enjoying the views and occasionally cruising this interesting guy who resembled John Cassavetes. I brightened a bit as he leaned towards me, assuming he was going to compliment my eye color. But instead, he whispered, so I had to move in close: “The King Is Dead.” I was confused. I disembarked in Denver to buy a newspaper paper. I learned that Elvis had died at 42-years-old. I was a fan, I had albums by him, but I was not obsessed. Yet, I began to cry. I remember thinking that 42 was really old and I that didn’t really care if I lived that long.
Strange, because I was never a fervent fan, but I have been to Elvis’ birthplace and also to the home where he left this world. He started his life in a tiny shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi that was built by his father Vernon the year before he was born (1935), and which the family was forced to abandon three years later when Vernon went to jail for check fraud. There was a memorial chapel in Tupelo, paid for by Presley’s longtime manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, where Elvis’s “personal Bible” was displayed under glass. I was the only person there. My friend David sat in the car and waited for me.
Elvis’s sudden death 40 years ago today produced an equally sudden, unexpected outpouring of national grief, featuring masses of hysterical pilgrims to Graceland, his home in Memphis.
Presley had been scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin a new tour. That afternoon, his girlfriend, Ginger Alden, found him on the floor of his bathroom. Alden:
“Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it. It was clear that, from the time whatever hit him to the moment he had landed on the floor, Elvis hadn’t moved.”
For some reason, probably a reaction to codeine and a mix of other drugs, he experienced pain or fright while sitting on the toilet, and he stood up, dropped the book he was reading, stumbled forward, and fell into the fetal position. Unable to breathe, he died. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 p.m. at the Memphis Baptist Memorial Hospital.
President James Earl Carter issued saying: “Presley permanently changed the face of American popular culture”.
Thousands gathered outside Graceland. Presley’s cousin, Billy Mann, took $18,000 from The National Enquirer to secretly photograph his body in the casket. The picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer; its biggest-selling issue ever. Alden took $105,000 from the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will
The funeral was held at Graceland on August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to the cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. The next day, Way Down, his final single, topped the Country and Pop charts.
After someone tried to steal Presley’s body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were reburied in the garden at Graceland.
Photograph via WikiImages/Pixabay
Presley was as one of the most important and recognizable 20th Century Cultural Icons and the first musical superstar. He is known as the “King of Rock N’ Roll” or simply “The King”. Presley is one of the most celebrated and influential musicians of the 20th century. Hugely successful in many musical genres, including Pop, Rock, Country, Blues and Gospel, he remains one of the best-selling solo artists in history.
Presley loved and respected African-American musicians, and had a disregard for the norms of Southern segregation and racial prejudice. He cracked Memphis’s segregation laws by sometimes attending services at a black church and showing up at a local amusement park on what was designated as its “colored night”. Presley was generally embraced by the black community during the early days of his stardom. Many white people did not like him or his music and condemned him as depraved.
In our own PC era, Presley has been dismissed as having appropriated African-American culture. There is resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idioms owed much to black artists, achieved the commercial success largely denied to his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had “stolen” black music is still being talked about. The great Jackie Wilson argued:
“A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis.”
Throughout his career, Presley acknowledged his debt to black sounds. In his famous 1968 television comeback special, Elvis!, he told his audience:
“Rock ‘N’ Roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues, or it sprang from that. People have been adding to it, adding instruments to it, experimenting with it, but it all boils down to that. It has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues”
He was the first, and perhaps, last, American pop figure whose fame transcends his time and place. In the mid-1950s, his music was embraced mostly by the kids, but there was hardly anyone on the planet, certainly no one in America, who didn’t know who Elvis Presley was, or could fail to recognize the sound he made.
I was only two-years-old when Presley made his debut on national television (1956), and so when I was a teenager, I found the whole Elvis phenomenon amusing. He was hardly forgotten in the 1960s, but he had gone from cool to camp. I laughed at that famous photograph of his impromptu 1970 White House visit with Richard Nixon. Yet, what appealed to Americans about Presley in 1957 still meant something to them when he died 20 years later.
Photograph via WikiImages/Pixabay
As an adult, I embraced his image and his music. Presley’s story became more familiar: The unique performer who struggles to stay relevant and descends in into drugs and disillusion. I have a framed sheet of USPS Elvis stamps. That’s iconic!
In the past 40 years, there have been numerous sightings of Presley. There long-standing theories that he faked his death. Fans have alleged discrepancies on his death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin and numerous accounts of Presley planning it as a diversion so he could disappear and live in peace.
