Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203010261
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ELVIS inside ment in Harold's life.
Elvis had performed in Fayetteville a year or two earlier - to an auditorium packed with fans who had spent days, weeks looking forward to that concert.
The next day, the headline in our paper read: "Shake, rattle and roly-poly."
Bad mistake.
Outraged fans wrote angry letters for six months demanding an apology for Elvis.
We learned one lesson: Don't mess with The King. There are some topics too sacred for humor.
Myself? Well, I've always been both amused by and envious of the women so fascinated with Elvis.
Shouldn't there be one thing in my life that I care about totally, passionately. Even if it's Elvis?
- BETH OBENSHAIN He helped upstage big band music
The truth of it is that Elvis came along at a bad time for me.
In the mid-1950s, the big band music that we had won a war with was gone and this had left me a little hysterical.
Even today, I would have to tell the King that I don't think "Heartbreak Hotel" will ever replace "Stompin' at the Savoy" or "I'll Walk Alone."
Johnnie Ray was part of this era. In case you don't remember, he sang a song about a cloud that sat right down and cried. I think I can be forgiven for thinking he was weird.
The loss of big-band music was a major cultural dislocation, for which Elvis can't be solely blamed.
I wanted Helen O'Connell, before an orchestra with music stands that had writing on them, singing "Green Eyes."
I wanted "Tangerine."
But it was gone forever and people like Jerry Lee Lewis sang this crazy stuff that you couldn't two-step to or jitterbug to - not that I was ever good at jitterbugging.
I began to blame it all on Elvis and I would later take up with the Kingston Trio and, getting deeper into rebellion, I would return to country music and bluegrass.
It was honest music that sometimes looked at life through the bottom of a short glass or sang of death on the highway as only Roy Acuff could sing about that.
You could also do the two-step or the Cotton-Eyed Joe to it.
I didn't realize until years later that Elvis - even with the sweaty scarves he threw to hyperventilating women - always stayed a little country.
I was reminded of this by the late King Edward IV of radio station WSLC, who was kind of a legend himself. King Edward would spin Elvis when other country DJs wouldn't, because, he said. Elvis never forgot where he came from.
But Elvis still came along at a bad time for me and, to be frank, I never saw an Elvis Presley movie I liked - including "Blue Hawaii." Make that especially "Blue Hawaii."
- BEN BEAGLE A close encounter of the Elvis kind
In the 20 some years I've been a photographer at the Roanoke Times & World-News, covering everything from rock singers to porn stars, only two real celebrities stand out in my mind as folks I really enjoyed meeting. The type of people who, when they spoke to you, you could tell it was genuine, from the heart. One was Prince Phillip. The other was our beloved Elvis.
In 1972 when Elvis came through Roanoke with his tour, MGM was filming "Elvis on Tour" and the local media were given a golden opportunity to go aboard the Lisa Marie, Elvis' personal airplane, and meet The King. From the time I extended my hand and identified myself, I felt like we were on a first name basis. He said, "Welcome, Wayne. Have a seat."
From that point on, it was casual conversation, joking and having a good time. Roanoke's Mayor Roy Webber came aboard with a wreath made into a guitar that had been sent through Webber's florist by Elvis' fans. Elvis started singing and `playing' his guitar.
The whole time I was on the plane the atmosphere was warm, one that you could never forget. And as we left the plane with Elvis behind us and started down the fence row lined with all the fans, that warm feeling continued.
The only bad memory I have of the experience was when we were boarding the airplane and there was a backup on the stairway caused by the MGM film crew trying to get through the small door. Col. Tom Parker, Elvis' manager, decided to show off a little bit and treat the media as if he were herding cattle through a chute in a barnyard and I became the first victim of the end of his cane.
The highlight of this event was that I was in "Elvis on Tour" - a role I have learned to regret. Every time the movie is shown on late night TV people I work with and people on the street remind me of the length of my hair in 1972, which I admit looked pretty bad - but it was more than I have now. - WAYNE DEEL He was on the cover OK, but not Rolling Stone
The Elvis I grew up with was past his prime - past, even prime time.
He was the Elvis of late night television; his movies played on the same stations that advertise cures for baldness, 900 numbers and how my life would be better if I studied for a career in gun repair.
Mine was the Elvis who may or may not have appeared in some Kmart in the middle of South Dakota. I was only 10 when he died, and in my formative years, he was making the cover of the National Enquirer, not Rolling Stone.
He was on the cover, too, of ashtrays and cigarette lighters, and I bought them both, although I never smoked. He was available at thrift shops everywhere.
My brother bought three Elvises in black velvet at just such a thrift shop. He hung one above his toilet. We deemed it somehow appropriate.
Growing up in the 1970s, I guess I developed an affinity for the tacky - on road trips, I still stop at South of the Border; in the Midwest, at the World's Largest Ball of Twine.
My musical tastes have always run more toward Elvis Costello than Elvis Presley. I used to cringe when my mother would sing her Jamaica High School alma mater, "Red and Blue," to the tune of "Love me Tender." (She claims that a recent reunion - I won't say what year - everyone in her graduating class remembered all of the words.)
Still, during some awkward years in high school, an Elvis song could bring me solace.
"Did you ever get one of them days, boy, ever get one of them days? When nothing is right, from morning to night, did you ever get one of them days?"
And still, as I scan the channels late at night, my finger pauses on the remote when I hit an Elvis movie, and I lay awake until 2:35, until Elvis gets the girl, until Elvis and the girl drive off into the sunset. - MADELYN ROSENBERG The King and I were both young back in those days
My most vivid memory of Elvis was my mother grabbing my "Heartbreak Hotel" record off the phonograph and breaking it across her knee.
"I can't stand it any more," she said.
I was the typical teen-ager drooling for Elvis. I saw him do his thing on the Ed Sullivan show and went ga-ga. I cried while watching "Love Me Tender."
In 1974, as a reporter I reviewed his concert in Roanoke, and said he "shook his way to a new record attendance" in front of a crowd of "predominantly early 20s to mid-30s women with good lungs."
But, I also said Elvis was looking a little heavier, wearing his pants a little looser and sounded good, "if not fantastic."
A headline writer labeled the story, "Vintage Elvis Wows 'Em" and angry women called me up the next day. Most wanted to know what age I was because they couldn't believe that anyone near Elvis' age would not be thrilled to pieces by him. Several offered to beat me up.
I was thrilled by Elvis, periodically. I even own a black T-shirt with his likeness on the front, which I never wear for fear his face will fade and I won't remember when either of us were young.
- SANDRA KELLY He had a mysterious, magical effect on fans
On Aug. 2, 1976, I was a young reporter on the rock beat.
The biggest story in town was the Elvis Presley concert that night at the Roanoke Civic Center. Elvis at 41 was already on a physical decline brought about by his lifestyle but his fans hardly cared. The civic center sold out in 19 hours.
Nothing had quite prepared me for the huge outpouring of emotion in the civic center that night. Women in their 50s acted like teen-age girls every time Elvis twitched. They shrieked and screamed and swooned. They approached the stage bearing presents. They threw teddy bears and roses and lingerie on stage. One woman presented Elvis with a cake shaped like a guitar. Elvis, solidly in his Vegas period, was dressed like a sun god. He looked tired and ill.
But he knew how to work his audience. A lackey handed him scarves to wipe the sweat from his forehead and he threw the coveted garments to his clamoring fans. By the end of the evening, the mood in the civic center had escalated to what could only be described as religious hysteria.
In August a year later I stood in the newsroom and watched the hard-nosed consumer reporter weep at his typewriter as he hammered out a reminiscence of Elvis to run with the news story that The King was dead.
I was again astonished at the magical capacity Elvis had to affect people so deeply.
Elvis's death came a week before he was scheduled to appear again at the Roanoke Civic Center. Fans held onto the costly tickets. They were more than mementoes. They had become holy relics, splinters from the true cross. - CHRIS GLADDEN We changed together as the years passed
Elvis. I never was a fan, but somehow memories of him mark my life.
In his early years I remember him as a sort of lovable, rogue. He later bought The King image too much and became a musical caricature of himself - reclusive, strange, a masculine Michael Jackson, distorted by drugs instead of plastic surgery.
My first recollection of Elvis was when I was about 8 or 9 years old. He had a hit or two. I don't recall which ones they were, but they were an exciting change from the McGuire Sisters pablum brought into our living room on television's Hit Parade.
And I can't forget the thrill, and disappointment, when the family crowded in front of the television that night in 1956 to watch Elvis gyrate on the Ed Sullivan Show. He gyrated all right, but television, being what it was in those days, showed Elvis only from the waist up. I have to admit that led me and my friends to many a playground debate over exactly what Elvis was doing with the rest of his body.
As the 1950s moved on, Elvis' songs changed the sound of the radio. Or maybe it was really me who was changing into a teen-ager.
But by the time he sang the pulsating words "I was so lonesome I could die" I was old enough to know what he was talking about. My family moved to St. Louis from Chicago and I had to leave behind little Becky. I too was was so lonesome I could die.
A couple years later Elvis was history, at least to most of the young teens I knew. Chubby Checker and the Twist changed that.
And then I took a walk back in time. My father, an Army colonel, was transferred to Taiwan, Nationalist China, and nobody there had heard of the Twist or Chubby Checker. Elvis was still all the rage, and he was all the talk too because he had been drafted into the Army.
I became a hippie, war protester and Elvis became irrelevant to me and many of my generation. At least you didn't admit it if you liked him.
With the '70s the Beatles were gone, the Vietnam War had ended and Elvis was still there.
In 1976 I moved to Roanoke as a reporter for the old World-News. One of my friends was a reporter named Guy Sterling. He was a blues, jazz and rock music fan and, to my surprise, an unabashed Elvis lover. He later wrote a book with photographer Wayne Deel about Elvis's trips to Roanoke.
I remember driving with Sterling along Brandon Avenue one August day in 1977 when the music on the radio was interrupted by the announcement of Elvis' death.
I wasn't positive, but I thought Guy was hiding tears. My eyes got a bit wet too, not so much for Elvis, but for the passage of time.
- DOUGLAS PARDUE He was a legend, even if I didn't know it then
I was impressed.
There he was, dressed in black leather. He was on a square stage in the center of a room full of quiet fans - people who were interested in hearing him, not screaming their adoration for him.
And I discovered that this star could really play.
The problem was, the year was 1977 and Elvis was dead. And, with Lewis Grizzard, I didn't feel too good myself - under the realization that I had missed my chance to hear the guy in person.
For a kid who came of age in the '60s, Elvis was already a has-been.
Oh, he was a legend and all that, and everybody knew the words to "Hound Dog," but Elvis was yesterday.
He made those awful movies and really his music was just a little too close to country to be cool.
And, for heaven's sake, he was almost as old as my parents.
It wasn't until after his death that I really made an effort to understand how much of an influence he was.
And what I found out was that this guy was good!
When he died 15 years ago, my music collection might have included two 45s of his. Today, you could find virtually all of his Top 40 hits there, most through a medium he never knew - compact disc.
I know now that what I thought was a pretty good collection of rock 'n' roll was woefully incomplete until Elvis took his place with the legends at the front of the line.
- CODY LOWE He could have reigned as king of baseball
I always preferred Jerra Lee.
I liked the way he pounded on the piano and kicked the bench out behind him when he got going good.
Elvis was OK, though. Anybody who made adults that nervous had to be doing something right.
I liked him enough that when this newspaper carried a gossipy piece by the Washington Post's Sally Quinn saying that Elvis had gotten fat, sick and strange, I was appalled. I thought it irreverent and unfair.
But then he died, mysteriously. I got the word while driving to Northern Virginia to pick up a friend for an Orioles game in Baltimore. My friend, who used to play the trumpet in a beach band, was shocked.
His friends, who joined us at the game, hadn't heard the news. When we told them, they refused to believe us. Adamantly refused. Said it couldn't be so. Then they heard other people talking about it, and they shut up. It really glummed them out.
The evening was cool and pleasant, uncharacteristic for Baltimore. But there was a solemn undercurrent to it. I kept wondering why they didn't put Elvis's death on the stadium's message board, or make an announcement, at least.
If The King were alive today, they'd invite him to the All Star Game, ask him to sing the anthem and get him to throw out the first ball.
It would beat the hell out of being on a stamp, as he'd be the first to agree.
- JOE KENNEDY Seeing him hurt almost as much as the long wait
"He went into the Safeway and bought a loaf of bread and then got back on the truck with the rest of the soldiers and they drove away."
The words were those of Lucille Marberger, our best family friend, telling me and Mom that Elvis Presley had convoyed through tiny Cameron, Texas, the day before in what had to be 1958 or '59.
Elvis, one of two renegade heroes of my generation, was undertaking boot camp 30 miles away at Fort Hood, the nation's largest Army base. Hordes of us had driven to the base for a glimpse of The King - although then he was known simply as "Elvis," his stature as a world-class singer still in doubt. But military security turned us away, by the carload, every day.
Through the years I endured the pain, craving an audience with Elvis, suffering from the death of my second hero, rogue actor James Dean, and then, finally, letting Elvis slip to the same emotional graveyard where I had left Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and Tarzan.
But, near the end, I saw Elvis.
It was in his last year, and the place, of course, was Las Vegas.
I stayed too long in a nearby tavern and almost missed the act, somehow perhaps dreading my first personal viewing of the singer I had worshipped.
When finally I pushed into the crowded arena, I watched him at work.
It was masterful work. Even then, with 40 back in his rear-view mirror and his waistline out of control, he performed with a vigor and a seriousness that few entertainers muster at the height of their careers, let alone near the end.
He tossed out the silk scarves, sweated a ton of moisture and he studied his audience, not like a performer who has played to millions, but like a beginner still not certain he was making it and I did not think he would ever leave the stage.
I knew he didn't want to, not that night or any other.
- BOB MANN It was a freer, happier time when The King ruled
The King?
Elvis reminds me of my squealing, Noxema-faced sisters and their bobby-soxed friends.
He was the 1950s to Lexington.
A time when children played without fear in their yards and walked unaccompanied to the neighborhood stores alone.
And teen-age girls held hands joyfully and danced together as I bolted down Ovaltine chocolate drinks because I was too skinny. (Believe it or not)
It was a time when a surly operator convinced me that the telephone was just a passing fancy and that she had no time for children.
And we still rode each week to Grandma's house for dinner with our country cousins.
I sometimes played Rin Tin Tin with my sometimes ill-mannered Boston terrier, Danny.
I guess that's why I always like Elvis' song "Hound Dog."
It took a little maturity to understand, appreciate
My first memory of the King was from endless television commercials promoting this paunchy white-jumpsuited guy with dyed-black hair singing in Hawaii. I thought, "Who would send their $7.99 for record, $8.99 for cassette to hear this idiot?"
As a child of the 1970s, I targeted Elvis and these advertisements interrupting my re-runs of "The Flintstones" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" for the butt of so many adolescent jokes and jabs. Order now: "The Complete Fat and Sweaty Elvis Absolutely Live." Operators are standing by.
It wasn't until college that my attitude changed.
By chance, my college roommate's mother was a devoted Elvis fan from her teenybopper days in the 1950s. She had all his singles, meticulously stacked and cataloged in a handy carrying-case. She let us borrow it for a semester.
We thought we were so cool, so funny, taking her collection to beer parties. What a novelty when it seemed like the only party song you ever heard was "Super Freak," by Rick James.
Then, we started listening to them, and my juvenile sensibilities matured.
And although I still found the Hawaiian Elvis laughable at times, there was now appreciation, too. So much so, that when I got married a few years ago, I gave each of my groomsman a gift of four Elvis coffee cups. Most of them college buddies who shared the same newfound discovery of The King as I had. They were delighted.
- MARK MORRISON
`I felt like a part of me died' that August day
I was born in Memphis, and I've always loved Elvis. When my grandmother, also a great Elvis fan, came to visit us one summer, she brought my sister and me little ribbon-tied bundles of grass that she had personally clipped from Elvis's front yard (before Graceland.)
His early appearances on TV were big events at my house, all the more fun because my parents joined in, disapproving, and because we all wondered if Elvis would be shown from the waist down.
We finally got to see Elvis when he came to the Roanoke Civic Center. But were far from the stage and high up, I'm not sure how much of Elvis we really saw.
We had tickets to the Aug. 24 concert when the news came that Elvis was dead. When he died, I felt like a part of me died.
We went to the civic center that day anyway to a memorial service for Elvis. On the dimly-lit stage was a solitary stool with a guitar propped up against it and Elvis' voice floating from the rafters. - MARY LINN `Stop the presses!'
So, where were you?
Copy editor Marty Horne claims he was ready to head for home on Aug, 16, 1977, when writer Chris Gladden stumbled in to his office, emotionally affected, and stammered:
"Have you heard? Elvis died!"
Horne was certainly sorry. "I loved Elvis when I was in high school," he said. "One of my finest memories was of me and my best friend singing "Heartbreak Hotel" while we were thumbing a ride from Wytheville to Pulaski to see some girls one Saturday night."
But when Elvis died, Horne had another reason to mourn. The singer's passing meant the Extra section front page for the next day would have to be remade, and Horne would have to stay late to do it.
It didn't help either that Horne had lots of input from coworkers.
The then city editor offered a design for the page. That insulted Horne's assistant, who walked out in a rage.
Then a sports writer came to stand over Horne and observe: "But for the grace of God, it could have been Porter Waggoner."
And the resident quick-tongued copy editor, Fred Loeffler, the man who always likened any changes at the company to rearranging the chairs on the Titanic, strolled over to offer this farewell headline:
"Good-bye, Mr. Hips."
Yep, that was some day.
- SANDRA KELLY
by CNB