Elvis Has Left the Buidling. Pt. 1

I was just listening to one of Elvis’ songs on the radio. 

A full four decades after his death, he remains by all accounts, the most gifted male soloist of all time. (Given the opportunity to nominate a female soloist, I might add Whitney Houston or Karen Carpenter to the head of the female list).

Elvis Presley must have been one of the first singer/entertainers ‘to go by’ his first name, and forty years later those two syllables still elicit a smile, a nod and even a tear. Elvis was one of a kind.

I can tell you my ‘Come to Elvis’ moment happened during the second half of my life. As an adolescent I listened to ‘The Beach Boys,’ (and only ‘The Beach Boys’). I remember skateboarding down a sidewalk in my petite hometown with a transistor radio pressed up against my right ear; listening to ‘California Dreamin’ or ‘I Get Around.’ Oh, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t keenly aware of the existence of ‘The King.’ I was. I mean, by the time I turned five, he was already a nationally known musical artist.

I can tell you that there’s still plenty of his music which I simply don’t like, (but which, to be fair, someone else may dearly love). No one can deny his vast repertoire of musical genres was among the most diverse of all his peers; (if indeed, it can be said he had any peers). 

I love to listen to Channel 19 on the Sirius Network, though I don’t mind telling you more than once I have informed them that their selection of their hero’s recordings is limited and repetitive. I mean, didn’t the man record hundreds of songs, and didn’t he make hundreds of live appearances? (But that is a consideration best saved for another ‘editorial.’)

George Klein, one of Elvis’ best friends, who hosts a program on the Elvis channel, and has written a ‘tell all’ (well, maybe not all) posthumous, (Elvis, not him) book readily admits the so-called king displayed plenty of flaws and inconsistencies; including the abuse of prescription medication, womanizing, and adultery. 

And it is said that Elvis’ behavior ‘on the road’ and his ‘enjoyment of the ladies’ contributed to a great deal of contention between himself and Pricilla. So much so that a divorce was in the offing. (I have often reflected that in spite of Presley’s propensity for ‘wine, women & song,’ in recent years this hasn’t kept Priscilla from ‘cashing in’ on his lingering popularity and the profits which flow from it).

And yet, in spite of his glaring inconsistencies, it seemed Elvis’ heart remained sensitive towards the Savior; “A friend who sticketh closer than a brother” and whom he’d met as a boy.

As a young man, Presley was raised in poverty and southern Pentecostalism. He attended a conservative Assemblies of God church, but would often sneak off in the middle of the service to listen to the preaching and singing at a black church less than a mile away. Elvis loved gospel music and dreamed of singing it professionally before his own career took off in the mid 1950s.

“We used to read the Bible every night, if you can believe that-he used to read aloud to me and then talk about it," testifies Dottie Harmony, who dated Elvis in 1956. "He was very religious-there was nothing phony about that at all."

"I never expected to be anybody important. Maybe I'm not now, but whatever I am, whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me," he told Photoplay magazine in 1957.

(Steve Beard)

*Cont. - See Part 2


   By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 41. Copyright pending

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