ELVIS: 30 Years Later


Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. In 1977 disco music was the main thing. I was working middays at a top 40 station in Terre Haute, Indiana when the UPI machine spit out a very brief headilne saying that Elvis Presley had been found dead in his home. That was it. I was on the air, at the time, and my program director brought the wire copy to me along with a scratchy old Elvis 45 RPM record. I think it was "It's Now Or Never." The irony was that, at that time, we weren't playing any Elvis songs.
30 years later, you can still find an amazing amount of Elvis crap on the internet. I say crap because that's basically what it is, being sold by leeches. If you want to remember Elvis, buy his box set or any of his CD's. If you see an Elvis movie you can be sure that the acting is mediocre. That's OK. You see, every one of his films made money! Can Tom Cruise say that? Elvis' musical popularity was so huge that fans didn't care about his acting. They simply couldn't get enough of him. Looking for proof, still? The proof is huddled around Graceland, this morning.

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