Mason - Elvis presley: a life

O N A UGUST 16, 1977, when I learned that the KingElvis Presleywas dead, I was vacationing in Nova Scotia. In the lounge at the inn where I was staying, the news came on TV. Stunned, I could only mumble some clichs. The bartender recalled the death of the actor Audie Murphy, a war hero of his generation. I felt far from home. Although I hadnt thought much about Elvis lately, I now sensed there was a great hole in the American cultural landscape. Elvis had always been there, hovering in the national psyche, his life punctuating our timeshis appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, his first movie, the death of his mother, the Army, his marriage, the 1968 Comeback Special. It seemed inconceivable that Elvisjust forty-two years oldwas gone.

For me, Elvis is personalas a Southerner and something of a neighbor. I heard Elvis from the very beginning on the Memphis radio stations. Many parents found Elviss music dangerously evocative, his movements lewd and suggestivebut when my family saw Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing Ready Teddy, my father cried, Boy, hes good! We had been listening to rhythm-and-blues late at night on the radio for years, and we immediately recognized what Elvis was about. We had heard Arthur Big Boy Crudup and Little Junior Parker and Big Bill Broonzy and Wynonie Harris and El-more James. In the daytime we listened to big bands, pop hits, country, the opera, everything we could find on the dial. On Sundays we sang in church along with the congregation, and we heard plenty of gospel musicespecially the Blackwood Brothers, who influenced Elvis so much. Elvis listened to the same regional stew, seasoned by the far-ranging reach of the radio, so when he emerged with his own startling, idiosyncratic singing style, we recognized its sources.

Elvis was great, so familiarand he was ours! I dont remember the controversy he stirred up because everything he did seemed so natural and real, and he was one of us, a country person who spoke our language. It was hard to grasp how revolutionary his music was to the rest of the world. And it was years before we could realize what a true revolution in American culture Elvis had ignited.

But now the King was dead. Two writer friends of mine dropped everything when they heard the news and rushed to Graceland, Elviss Memphis home, to grieve with the multitudes of fans. One of the writers snitched a rose from a floral wreath and still has it displayed under glass on her wall. The other helped himself to the newspaper that had arrived at Graceland the day after Elvis diedthe paper Elvis would have read if he had lived. Elvis, who was taken seriously in a wide variety of circles, inspired such a need for connection. He mattered deeply to many different kinds of people. After his death, the world absorbed the storythe utter loneliness of his life, his grasping for ways to ease his pain and sorrow. It was a sadin some ways a sordidstory, hard to take. Then the grief gave way to a nervous national joke throughout the eighties. Elvis had been part of American life, and now it seemed people didnt quite know what to do about him. Elvis was ridiculed, reduced to a caricature in a sequined jumpsuit. In 1992, the post office held a contest to vote on the new Elvis stamp; we could choose between the young, pretty Elvis and the older, bejeweled Elvis. Of course we chose the pretty one.