Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203030356
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: E-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
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.
by CNB