January 8th 2010 marks the moment one of our greatest icons of all music for all eras emerged from his mom Gladys – 75 years earlier. Elvis Aron Presley, in Tupelo Mississippi. Beside him, lay his stillborn twin Jesse Garon, soon to be interred. A southern country boy, yet so much more. They say former “Muleskinner” or “Saddleman” Bill Haley was the start of it all. Maybe his spitcurl was cool, and his band did swing with slap bass and swooping jazzy guitar licks, but ELVIS set the style, dear Readers.
 
“Well the bellman’s tears keep flowin’, the desk clerk’s dressed in black, If you leave your baby there, you’ll never never git her back.... Yuh be uh so lonely yuh could DIE...” Elvis, and Scotty Moore and Bill Black and DJ Fontana took us to Heartbreak Hotel, and never brought us back. What Valentine’s heartbreaks we experienced with “The King!”.  This lad the one of whom Albert Goldman related, patterned his “waterfall” pompadour hairstyle (light-years from the Haley spitcurl, and Haley’s light weight vocals) after Bobby “Blue” Bland, reigning ruler (in 1955 and beyond) of Soul, Rhythm and Blues! It seems Presley had snuck into Municipal Auditorium for one of Bland’s shows, and was at once transfixed!

But we did swoon and suffer with Elvis as he soared up and then crashed and burned – repeatedly, through that truly remarkable and relatively brief parabola of a career. Was it really only 21 turns of the planet between young Presley, accepting from one of Mississippi’s segregationist white governors, a “Greatest Popular Entertainer” certificate at a state fair; before launching into “I Wancha, I Need Ya, and ‘all that good stuff..,’”(laughingly).  And then...to shuffle off this earthly coil so sadly at his end.

Was it that much less time between Alfred Wertheimer’s preternaturally seductive photos of ‘El’ fully locked into an embrace in a Richmond concert hall stairway with one of his early pre-Priscilla, conquests, and his plaid-tuxedoed appearance on Steve Allen’s show as he sang “Hound Dog” to a strategically placed mournful-eyed Basset Hound?  So little space between Hound Dog and being placed in the cold Memphis ground!

But meanwhile there was “GI Blues,” and a skein of wacky, chum-crazy, meaningless (but probably tons o’fun for the Memphis ‘Mafia’) Hal Wallis- produced back lot movies, and lest we forget, a handful of genuine classics: Jailhouse Rock, King Creole and Flaming Star.

There was that traumatic loss of mother Gladys, the back-and-forth marriage with Priscilla Beaulieu, of whom one of Presley’s close pals said, “You build a statue. Then you grow tired of it.” More tidbits on Elvis’ tempestuous love life can be found in Alanna Nash’s recent bio-release ‘Baby Let’s Play House’. The above title, by the way, is derived from one of Elvis’ earliest covers of a Black Memphis Blues hit, originally recorded by Arthur Gunter. Gunter, natch, is hardly a household word.

Around the late 1950's household of little Sky Earnshaw, however, his two meddlesome older sisters continually grabbed the lapel of his Peters jacket and turned them down constantly, as they shrieked with alarm, “No! You’ll be a ROCK!!” Whereupon Sky’s older brother Sam would turn this pup’s collar back up and lead him to a nearby phonograph player, where a crackling 45 rpm record was spinning, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” in full fury! Said tune, incidentally, sprang previously on the Duke label as sung by Willie Mae Thornton, who in many homes was a household word!

Funny thing, when Elvis yelped out “Ready Teddy” and “Long Tall Sally” live at the 1957 Arkansas State Fair, it sounded like the ‘Rill Thing’ to these ears, with an equal intensity to the originator of those songs, Little Richard. What a far cry from the syrupy Pat Boone, who certainly would not have carried along in his entourage, motorcycle loving actor Nick Adams, soon to portray ‘Johnny Reb’ on a popular TV series out of Hollywood, but who for the moment was complimenting Elvis for his mom Gladys’ good “ocher, er- is that, OKRA?”.

And on a greater scale, when you hear Marty Robbins’ “A White Sport Coat, and a Pink Carnation,” or the much raunchier Gene Vincent cryin’ “Got a Pink Cadillac, and, uhuh.. Baby that’s Mine...b-but Baby, There ain’t nothin’ I ain’t got that you can’t have, etc. etc.,” Elvis got there first, and planted that red/black/pink/white/lime green template of geetars, Cadillacs, poodle skirts, polka-dots, foam dice hangin’ off the rear view mirror of that pink and black T-Bird, or Pontiac, or Nash Rambler for goodness’ sakes!

Even when El and the Jordanaires, and probably Scotty pickin’ some wickedly righteous rills and riffs on that swaying blond Gibson 175 or 335 instrument, oh Lord, that gospel swung harder than even a lakeside baptism with Sweet Daddy Grace, God save us. “Yuh know yuh gotta walk, yuh gotta walk that long Valley, oh Lord, ain’t noo-body, yuh gotta walk there by your self...

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Five Blind Boys of Alabama, Mahalia Jackson, infused Elvis’ soulful rep as surely as the White geniuses of the sacred, the Stamps and the Imperials. And don’t forget the storied Cherokee bloodlines, probably derived from dear Gladys’ side of the Presley clan. Forget the much ballyhooed feud between another Cherokee descendant, Chuck Berry, and Elvis over the throne of Rock and Roll. Listen, brothers and sisters – beneath that red clay ground runs common sanguinity.

A lot of us were at the beach sunning our young backsides when word jumped across the AM airwaves that Elvis Presley, by then commonly referred to as the King, had died. August 16th, 1977. Only some days or maybe weeks later did we see the macabre tableaux across the pages of the ENQUIRER and other seamy tabloids. Elvis, chalk white, laying flat, in a plush recessed casket, ringed with lavish swags of roses and other fuss. His face looked oddly calm, if heavily ringed around the eyes with kohl – or is that an accurate picture, or instead have the soundwaves of time erased the accurate image and replaced it with a blurry mirage.

Here in the Washington metro region, a handful of odd, offbeat memories drift in and out of our collective mind. A woman in College Park Maryland, and another in the lush Gold Coast of DC, cradling and sighing over filmy silken scarves flung out to the audience at a Cole Field House show by Elvis, circa 1976, about the same time he covered the theme song, “Pledging My Love,” once a hit for Johnny Ace, yet another doomed Memphis icon of blues and rock.

One year earlier Billy Hancock, his own pompadour flying in the hot Alexandria wind as he tools down King Street in Old Town with a buddy, in his chartreuse El Dorado convertible on the way to a Bar-B-Que lunch at the Dixie Pig, reminiscing about Cliff Gallop, Gene Vincent, and Elvis – all major influences on him and on his band mate Danny GATTON. Does 1975 seem that far away?

And for years down in the lobby of the Washington Post offices on a  pylon of prize-winning photos was our favorite – a huge Bubba-ish fellow, nearly bald, and just about busting out of his white leisure suit with the big pheasant-feather-and-onyx waist buckle, leaning over the Presley family sarcophagus, deeply reverential, in the company of an oily-haired midget in a neatly tailored miniature white outfit that mirrored his friend’s attire. We can only hope fervently that Elvis has his final “PEACE IN THE VALLEY.”

In March: Billy Hancock’s unique roadtrip.

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