48 years ago today

[Gym Beam]

Is he still dead?!?

He and Generalissimo Francisco Franco

 

[Liut]

Just came to me ... Michael Jackson's death was not the lead that day on The NewsHour. Lehrer was off and Margaret Warner filled in, IIRC.
The lead was a story on, wait, ... Russia.

 

[britwrit]

Peter Garulnick's two-part Elvis biography is really good.

Read the Albert Goldman a few years back,

Not an Elvis fan, don't know how accurate it is but truly, I've never seen such a towering, majestic mountain of hate towards a subject. I just had to stand back and marvel.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

If he had stayed alive then no way is Graceland a thing. Not only would it not be open to the public but there is no way he would have stuck around South Memphis as the neighborhood free fell into ruin. It took his death to launch the cult of Elvis, and even they are dying off now. How much longer can Graceland keep up as a cash cow?

Would the neighborhood have declined as much as it did if he'd still be around though? I'd think he'd have spent money buying up properties around his place.

 

[qtlaw]

Hunting is probably the wrong verb because it implies a developed plan. But how many 16 year old women could resist the allure of being the companion of the most popular entertainer on the planet with the attendant massive wealth and instead date the quarterback on her high school football team?

You know this sentiment strikes me as a continuation of the misogynistic narrative I've been hearing for the past 60 years and hoped that we were moving past in the 21st century.

Stripped down, this puts the 16 yr old on par with the 34(?) year old worldly "most popular entertainer on the planet" and says SHE pursued HIM (or even had the power to do so.) This is Lolita storytelling.

Oh she couldn't resist? So she brought some of this on herself?

Look at what she was wearing/saying/moving, she wanted it. IMHO that's what you are saying.

That's so wrong and warped. This gives Elvis and his team a huge pass for letting this come to pass. I only have sons, but thinking about my sister and wife at 16, no way should they carry any responsibility for such a situation. They and those like them get the full pass.

Elvis (and his entourage) had all the power, not Priscilla. They were not even close to equals.

 

[dixiehack]

Would the neighborhood have declined as much as it did if he'd still be around though? I'd think he'd have spent money buying up properties around his place.

I think so, yes. It began free falling in the 70s when Memphis annexed the area, known as Whitehaven. The name says it all when it comes to who was originally intended to live there and they started leaving in droves rather than send their kids to the former Memphis City Schools system. From Whitehaven you can drive south and be in Mississippi in five minutes. And Memphis couldn’t annex across state lines so people weren’t scared of having to uproot again.

So Elvis had his shot if he wanted to buy up the block. But building a real estate empire for the sake of gentrification wasn’t really a widespread business model then and he may have been doing well to hold onto Graceland itself.

 

[Jake from State Farm]

Priscilla met Elvis in Germany where her father was stationed in the Air Force. It sounds like there were many negotiations between Elvis and the parents keep the relationship going

 

[Huggy]

As far as the rock death with the most lost potential, it's Buddy Holly by light-years.

At worst, he would have gone corporate and been a dependable pop music hit maker for 30 more years; at best he returns to his roots, hooks up with Dylan, the Beatles, the Byrds and CCR, then in the Seventies and Eighties he becomes the godfather to Springsteen, Seger and the whole Americana rock movement. Who knows?

At one point I punched out an alternate history story about Buddy Holly being the de facto leader of the Traveling Wilburys (as "Jiminy Wilbury") in the late Eighties.

Probably not all of it would have happened, but some of it might have, and that's the really intriguing thing.

He was so far ahead of his time in so many ways. Wrote his own songs, had artistic and financial control of his recording career and pretty much created the template for the rock band. And looked damn good rocking a Fender Strat.

Was clearly a massive influence on so many who followed, not just the multitude of artists who recorded his songs but "I Fought The Law" might be the best song he didn't live to write and to these ears, anyway, so many of CCR's best songs sound like songs he might have written had he lived.

 

[Huggy]

Read the Albert Goldman a few years back,

Not an Elvis fan, don't know how accurate it is but truly, I've never seen such a towering, majestic mountain of hate towards a subject. I just had to stand back and marvel.

Read it once when it came out (after Rolling Stone ran an excerpt complete with Elvis on the cover) and it struck me as a total hatchet job. I thought Goldman's John Lennon book was better.

 

[swingline]

So it's 1988 and the Oilers.are playing the Pats in an exhibition game in Memphis, right around now. Jerry Glanville, true to his brand, left two tickets for "Elvis" at the will call window. It's Saturday night, and I figure this is the easiest pre-game first edition column of my life. Just go to will call and see which whackos show up. Nobody, not one person, did so. Never been so pissed off in my life and it's put me off Memphis even now.

Dude, that's the story you write.

 

[swingline]

Not even a young Elvis Grbac!

I hate you.

 

[maumann]

Well, he could have just pulled up stakes and moved to the Greensboro Coliseum if he really didn't want to play at the Hartford Civic Center. He didn't have to go die.

Outing alert: Elvis was the mascot in the pig costume.

 

[swingline]

She wasn't 16 when Elvis started with Priscilla. More like 14.

 

[Starman]

Read the Albert Goldman a few years back,

Not an Elvis fan, don't know how accurate it is but truly, I've never seen such a towering, majestic mountain of hate towards a subject. I just had to stand back and marvel.

Read the Lennon book, it's worse.

Read it once when it came out (after Rolling Stone ran an excerpt complete with Elvis on the cover) and it struck me as a total hatchet job. I thought Goldman's John Lennon book was better.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Dude, that's the story you write.

That's what I did, because that was all I had to work with. It's probably for the best I've never been back to Memphis.

 

[Della9250]

Is he still dead?!?

no he just went home