I’ve come to believe that just about
everyone who grew up or lived in Memphis around the time I did has an Elvis
story to tell. I have several--one of which is quite remarkable, and perhaps a tad magical, or at least it seems that way to me.
Elvis has always been a part of my
life. Back in 1959 or 1960, shortly
after my parents moved to the house I grew up in, they bought a Motorola stereo
hi-fi, and one of the very first albums they brought home was Elvis’s 1956
debut LP on the black RCA label, cleverly titled, “Elvis Presley.” I was about two and a half years old. Thus the first music I ever recall hearing in
life was that Elvis record, about half of which was recorded in Memphis. (It is, by the way, a vastly underappreciated
album). This record started me on a
lifelong love of music, and remains one of my favorites to this day.
My family lived about six miles from
Graceland. We passed the mansion at
least once a week on the way to this or that. Sometimes the gates would be standing wide. It’s hard to believe such a thing might
happen in today’s nut-filled, security conscious world. But back in those days, when Elvis wasn’t
home he left the gates open, so that fans could drive right up to the house,
get out and look around. One day when I
was about 7 Mom and I did just that, completely on the spur of the moment. There’s not much to report. We got out of the car, approached the door,
knocked, milled around for a while, and then we left. At that age, I didn’t really have any idea of
just how important this figure was to world culture. But at the same time, for some reason I never
forgot that visit.
Elvis used to wind up in Baptist
Memorial Hospital every now and then with intestinal blockages and whatnot. You could always tell he was there because one
of the hospital windows would be covered up in aluminum foil. One of my best friends was in the facility during one of Elvis’ stays. He tells a
story about how he just wandered into Elvis’ room one afternoon and started up
a conversation. Elvis was very friendly.
One of Elvis’ best friends from high
school was a guy named George Klein.
Klein was a DJ in Memphis during the golden era of Top 40 AM radio. It was largely through him and his
colleagues at WHBQ-AM that I was kept up to date on the world of pop music
during the 60’s and early 70s, via the AM radio in my mom’s car and also
through my mom’s tiny little 9 volt transistor radio that used to hang on a wall
hook in the kitchen, which she would let me borrow from time to time. That was how you did it back then.
In 1974, Elvis held the first of his
Memphis homecoming concerts. Until that
time, he’d avoided performing in Memphis, on the theory that he might get no
respect in his home town. Boy, was that
theory wrong. I was there. The place was insane. My mother was a homebody, and very rarely
went out for anything. It was the first
time she’d ever suggested going to a concert.
This was in the “fat Elvis” era, or so I’m told. But he looked vivacious, energetic and in his
prime to me. The man was magnetic. And parenthetically, this was where I first heard
the phrase, “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.”
In 1976, I worked a summer as the “drive
out boy” for John Ellis Chevrolet, which was a new car dealership near the
airport, a short drive from Graceland. I
was one of the guys who drove the cars to be serviced in and out of the
bays. One day one of Elvis’ people
brought one of his trucks in for service.
Yep, I drove Elvis’ truck. How
about that.
Elvis was famous for meeting people
on the street and doing massive favors for them, such as buying them a
car. Later that year, Elvis walked into
that dealership with someone he’d met and did just that. He paid in full, writing a personal
check. I was no longer working for the company,
but my father was. He didn’t sell Elvis
the car, but he did get The King’s autograph on his business card, which I
still have.
In August of 1977, I was pumping gas
into my somewhat disreputable 1961 Buick LeSabre at a station just a few blocks
from my girlfriend’s house, preparatory to picking her up for a date, when some
guy walked up to me and said, “Have you heard?
Elvis died.” My girlfriend and I
had never discussed Elvis at any time.
But that night she was a wreck, crying and wringing her hands as we
listened to disc jockeys on the FM dial playing one Elvis record after another
and telling Elvis stories all evening long. She was inconsolable. I was
choked up too. We both felt like we’d
lost a member of the family. Neither one
of us could really explain why we
felt that way. Perhaps it was because
all three of us shared Memphis accents.
Maybe it was because Elvis had, without us really thinking about it, become
the center of our home town’s cultural pulse.
Maybe it was because he’d stolen our hearts while we weren’t looking.
 |
| The Commercial Appeal front page, August 19, 1977 |
And now here’s the point this little
essay has been leading up to. Elvis was
laid to rest on Thursday, August 18, 1977.
The next day—37 years ago today—the late King and I shared a rare distinction: both of us landed on the front page of our
hometown newspaper. Coverage of Elvis’
funeral dominated the page, of course.
And there’d been a horrible accident in front of Graceland that morning,
where someone had crashed a car into the crowd of mourners. But below that article was, believe it or
not, a piece about my home, quoting
me, based on a story I’d written.
 |
| Detail from the lower right corner of the page |
It came about this way. The Commercial
Appeal used to have a humorist on staff named Lydel Sims. His columns ran on the front page. Sims was a folksy kind of guy, writing about
southern folkore, southern people, southern critters, and so on. He relied on his readers for a lot of those tales. I saw myself as a writer and
smart-aleck-to-be. So one day, at the
age of about 18, on a whim I wrote him a letter about a humorous incident that
had happened to me. He turned it into a
column and put it on the front page. I
wound up doing this several times, and each time I did, Sims would make use of
my material. So on August 19, right
there on the front page of the historic edition of the Commercial Appeal that was dedicated to coverage of Elvis’ funeral,
there is a cutesy article about a real-life house cat named Tex cowering from a
mockingbird, complete with an illustration, based on a story I had written for Sims. The day Elvis was being laid to rest and his
fabulous career was coming to a close, I was setting out on my path as a writer
hopeful and humorist-wannabe. Amazingly,
our orbits had intersected.
Nor was this the last time our footsteps
would cross. In 1980, I landed my first professional job in
broadcasting as a news reporter for WHBQ-AM.
It’s the station that had introduced Elvis to the world, playing his
single, “That’s All Right Mama” in 1954.
A huge oil painting of Dewey Phillips, the pioneering DJ who’d spun that
record, hung in the lobby. I was there
during some of the final months the station still broadcast in the Top 40 music
format. Shortly after that, it went all
news/talk. (Now it’s sports/talk). Later that same year, I went to work at (what
was then) the ABC affiliate next door, WHBQ-TV, writing news copy and filling
in as a reporter. That was the station that had announced Elvis’ death to the world.
What’s the point of all this? None, really, except to marvel, once again,
at the amazing interconnectedness of life.
The world truly is a magical place.
Never doubt that for a moment. As
we sail along, we send out ripples. You
never know whom they’ll touch—or whose will touch you.
###
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