WHERE'S ELVIS?; LONG AFTER KING'S RETURN TO SENDER, LEGACY GROWS.Byline: Lou Carlozo Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune Daily newspaper published in Chicago. The Tribune is one of the leading U.S. newspapers and long has been the dominant voice of the Midwest. Founded in 1847, it was bought in 1855 by six partners, including Joseph Medill (1823–99), who made the paper Borrowing from Shakespeare, Elvis Presley once declared in song, ``The world's a stage, and each must play a part.'' And in his lifetime, Elvis played many: Elvis the Pelvis, Crew-cut Army Elvis, B-Movie Elvis, Comeback Leather-Clad Elvis, Vegas Elvis, and Bloated, Died-on-the-Toilet Elvis. Now, Elvis has been gone for 20 years, almost as long as the living King spent shaking his hips and making hits. And that milestone presents something of a mid-death crisis for Elvis, who has veered these past two decades between adored pop icon For the British television series, see . For religious icons, see . A pop icon is a celebrity whose fame in pop culture constitutes a defining characteristic of a given society or era. and a tabloid trash monolith. Fans, merchandisers and a legion of Elvis impersonators will certainly keep the memory aflame Aug. 16, the 20th anniversary of his death. But the question remains, how will Elvis be remembered into the next century? As a rock innovator or a frequenter of Burger Kings? Elvis sightings Elvis sightings are a recurring phenomenon in which people claim to see American singer and rock star Elvis Presley, who died on August 16, 1977. Background Presley was born in January 1935, so his projected age would not preclude the possibility that Elvis is still may be bunk, but in the annals of pop culture, Elvis lives. His career and life story are being recast, from the just-released four-disc set ``Elvis Presley Platinum: A Life in Music'' (RCA See RCA connector and video/TV history. ), to the ongoing efforts of biographer Peter Guralnick Peter Guralnick (born December 15, 1943, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American music critic, writer on music, and historian of US American popular music, who is also active as an author and screenwriter. , now finishing a second volume after 1994's acclaimed ``Last Train to Memphis.'' Finally, Elvis is coming to the fore again as an innovator who mixed influences from gospel to hillbilly and helped demolish racial, social and musical barriers. ``That's the cusp we're on. He's being transformed from this goofy figure being kept alive by Elvis impersonators to being integrated into history,'' said Richard Schickel, longtime movie critic for Time magazine and author of ``Intimate Strangers,'' an examination of modern day celebrity. ``This may be the final drama of his career.'' The 20th anniversary also gives pause for re-examining how Elvis redefined celebrity itself. As his career spanned radio, film and TV's golden age, Elvis became more than just the good-looking hillbilly cat with a guitar - he established himself as role model for musician-rebels from John Lennon Noun 1. John Lennon - English rock star and guitarist and songwriter who with Paul McCartney wrote most of the music for the Beatles (1940-1980) Lennon to Bruce Springsteen. Yet as a cultural touchstone, Elvis gets grouped not with musicians, but James Dean Noun 1. James Dean - United States film actor whose moody rebellious roles made him a cult figure (1931-1955) James Byron Dean, Dean and Marilyn Monroe. All three, who defined '50s rebellion and sexuality, continue to rate as stars. Death leap to fame Dean and Monroe had brief careers, at best, and at 42, when he died, Elvis' best creative years were behind him. By dying young (as opposed to Marlon Brando Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3 1924 – July 1 2004) was an Academy Award-winning American actor whose body of work spanned over half a century. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential actors of all time. , who in old age has become a shuffling parody of his former self), Presley, Monroe and Dean multiplied their fame and made the post-death leap from idols to icons. ``The old joke of death as a good career move is actually true,'' Schickel said. ``In life, the dream is always better than reality. Imagine Marilyn Monroe as a drowsy drows·y adj. drows·i·er, drows·i·est 1. Dull with sleepiness; sluggish. 2. Produced or characterized by sleepiness. 3. Inducing sleepiness; soporific. old woman doing commercials for adult diapers.'' Instead of suffering that fate, Elvis endures in death, in part because his legend writes another page in an American folk tale. Everyday people, instead of spotting Bigfoot, see Elvis with huge sideburns side·burns pl.n. Growths of hair down the sides of a man's face in front of the ears, especially when worn with the rest of the beard shaved off. [Alteration of burnsides. . Whether on the World Wide Web or by word of mouth, they swap stories, mostly now for entertainment's sake. ``Elvis has slipped into a place in the human psyche,'' said Vernon Chadwick, a self-styled Elvis scholar and organizer of a six-day Elvis conference starting Aug. 10 at Memphis College of Art Memphis College of Art, known as the Memphis Academy of Arts before the 1980s, is a small, private college of art and design located in Memphis, Tennessee's Overton Park, adjacent to Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. . ``The deepest dreams we have have Elvis written all over them.'' So will newspapers, magazines and TV, especially this month. ``He was the first multimedia human being,'' Chadwick observed. ``He is a symbol of the world we live in; Elvis personifies mass media. He lives on recorded music recorded music n → música grabada , Hollywood films - anywhere there is modern technology, Elvis is present, including the Internet.'' Sure, Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper Skid Roper (born Richard Banke, October 19, 1954 in National City, California) is an American musician active in the 1980s and early 1990s. He is best known for his work with Mojo Nixon between 1985 and 1989. With Nixon, Roper served mainly as an instrumentalist. said it first in the song ``Elvis Is Everywhere.'' (``Who built the pyramids?/Elvis!/Who built Stonehenge?/Elvis!'') But Chadwick, who holds degrees from Oxford, Yale and Dartmouth, takes the notion to the top of the egghead charts. ``The Elvis universe is expanding, and as we expand into new dimensions, Elvis is there with us,'' he said. ``The only rival to Elvis is a commercial product, Coca-Cola.'' Chadwick often walks a fine line between serious study of the King and goofing on Elvis. As an English professor at the University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1848, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford and three branch campuses located in Booneville, Tupelo, and Southaven. , he was celebrated and vilified for his course comparing Herman Melville's South Pacific adventures with Elvis' Hawaii movie trilogy. His coming academic summit will feature a number of Elvis impersonators, including El Vez, ``the Mexican Elvis.'' A closer look But when it comes to reassessing Elvis in the '90s, Chadwick makes a clear-cut argument: It is time to give Chubby Elvis a breather and take a closer look at the rest of his career. ``It's not true that his following exists of all aging baby boomers See generation X. ,'' Chadwick said. ``There is a misperception mis·per·ceive tr.v. mis·per·ceived, mis·per·ceiv·ing, mis·per·ceives To perceive incorrectly; misunderstand. mis , largely promoted by the American media, of the fat, bloated, washed-up rock singer. When this is the only image of Elvis that is known, it's the one young people tend to ridicule.'' So what does Elvis have to offer the young adults hooked on modern rock? Great songs, Chadwick said. All they have to do is cue up a CD. ``Generation X, by name, implies that there are no heroes,'' Chadwick said. ``Elvis is one of the last possible heroes a generation can focus on. When they listen to the music and avoid the stereotypes, they may likely turn to him as a hero.'' Guralnick, who has spent much of the last 10 years researching and writing Elvis' two-part biography, believes youths can find resonance in Elvis' awkward adolescence and how he found identity in music. ``The story of Elvis is the story of every kid coming up,'' Guralnick said. ``Correctly perceived, it's relevant to every generation. The music he played and sang is classic American music in the American vernacular. As long as that's relevant, his music will be relevant.'' Just when it looked like Elvis had been reduced to a white-trash clown, Guralnick's even-handed portrait in ``Last Train to Memphis'' restored his true-life image. It reveals a young man who soaked up music like a sponge as he explored the Beale Street Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles. It is a significant location in African-American history and the history of the blues. blues clubs, the African-American Pentecostal churches, local record stores, and every nook and cranny Noun 1. nook and cranny - something remote; "he explored every nook and cranny of science" nooks and crannies detail, item, point - an isolated fact that is considered separately from the whole; "several of the details are similar"; "a point of information" of the radio dial. ``People make a big mistake underestimating the activeness of Elvis' intelligence,'' Guralnick said. ``At 18, he had virtually schooled himself in every form of music there was. He was a self-taught ethnomusicologist. He was simply consumed by music.'' But to limit the scope to Elvis' musical activity only captures part of his story. As the man who would be King, ``he had the greatest ambitions, even from the beginning, a consuming ambition not just to be a star in country and western, but a movie star,'' Guralnick said. TV and Elvis Elvis went on to make 31 feature films, but it was TV that established his fame. His fame, in turn, established TV as the ultimate star-making tool. ``Elvis and television were made for one another,'' Frank Coffey writes in his newly released paperback ``The Complete Idiot's Guide to Elvis'' (Alpha Books). ``The young medium was searching for stars, especially those who would appeal to teens and the huge baby boomer baby boomer also ba·by-boom·er n. A member of a baby-boom generation. Noun 1. baby boomer - a member of the baby boom generation in the 1950s; "they expanded the schools for a generation of baby boomers" boomer generation, which, by the mid-1950s, was just beginning to exercise its financial might. Elvis was perfect for the camera. . . . Without the tube, Elvis would, of course, have been a star; with it, he became a national phenomenon, and by 1957 he was a millionaire.'' In 1956, TV brought not just Elvis' voice, but his suave looks and outrageous moves into millions of homes. No one, up until that point, had used the medium in quite the same way. Only a generation before Elvis, musicians built careers mostly through radio, records and live performances, or, if they were lucky, by appearing in movies. Months after turning 21, Elvis had all that exposure and more: By breaking big on TV, Elvis achieved almost instant recognition. On Sept. 9, 1956, an estimated 53 million Americans saw Elvis on ``The Ed Sullivan Show,'' a record that stood until the Beatles broke it in 1964. Besides two Sullivan appearances, Elvis performed that year on ``The Milton Berle Milton Berle (July 12, 1908 - March 27, 2002) was an Emmy-winning American comedian who was born Milton Berlinger. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948-1955), he was the first major star of television. Show,'' ``The Steve Allen Show,'' and six times on Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey's ``Stage Show.'' Still the King The exposure catapulted Elvis' career and hit America like a tidal wave tidal wave, term properly applied to the crest of a tide as it moves around the earth. The wavelike upstream rush of water caused by the incoming tide in some locations is known as a tidal bore. : In 1955, Elvis was still selling records out of a car trunk. By October 1956, he was playing before 26,000 screaming fans at the Cotton Bowl. That very month, Variety magazine dubbed him ``The King of Rock 'n' Roll rock 'n' roll: see rock music. .'' More than 40 years later, the title still sticks. ``Part of it was timing, part of it was looks,'' said Coffey, also co-author of ``The Elvis Encyclopedia.'' ``I don't think there's ever been a better-looking man on stage than Elvis Presley. His looks are stunning. The guy just had it in a big way.'' In cementing his celebrity, Elvis also projected a flamboyant, outrageous image. At the Cotton Bowl show, he rode to the stage in a Cadillac convertible. He wore pink jackets and mascara. He sneered. And he was a Southern white boy singing African-American-influenced music. ``Elvis was so over-the-top and so different and so distinctly Southern,'' Coffey said. ``We forget how risky he was, how threatening he was, how overtly sexual he was. You look at him today, he's totally contemporary.'' Elvis didn't seem so contemporary in 1977. ``Toward the end of Elvis' career, he could certainly make a lot of money touring for a cult audience, but creatively, a lot of people thought he was a dead issue,'' Schickel said. ``In a sense, he was the first Elvis impersonator.'' As journalist Greil Marcus Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism. argued in ``Dead Elvis,'' death transformed him from Elvis the Cow into Elvis the Cash Cow Cash Cow 1. One of the four categories (quadrants) in the BCG growth-share matrix that represents the division within a company that has a large market share within a mature industry. 2. . Elvis was remarketed as a saint, creating a new swirl of attention and merchandise sales. COMING SUNDAY IN L.A. LIFE . . . The Daily News reveals shocking pictures of Elvis around the Valley. Have you spotted the King lately? If so, let us know by sending in your encounter with the King. Mail to Where's Elvis?, Daily News Features Department, P.O. Box 4200, Woodland Hill, CA 91365. E-mail us at lalifenewsaol.com. Fax us at (818) 713-3545. Include your full name, city of residence and a daytime phone number, in case we have questions. The deadline is Wednesday. IMPORTANT DATES IN ELVIS' DEATH There are lifelines. Call this a a deadline. Aug. 16, 1977 Elvis found dead in a Graceland bathroom. Jan. 8, 1979 Elvis Presley Chapel in Tupelo, Miss., his birthplace, is dedicated. Aug. 15, 1981 Film ``Elvis and the Beauty Queen'' is released, starring Don Johnson as the bloated Elvis. June 7, 1982 Graceland opens to the public. Aug. 16, 1987 More that 500,000 fans visit Graceland for the 10th annual Candlelight Service. Feb. 7, 1988 ABC ABC in full American Broadcasting Co. Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928. airs ``Elvis and Me'' miniseries based on Priscilla Presley's 1985 book. May 24, 1988 Elvis reportedly spotted at Felpuasch's Supermarket in Vicksburg, Mich. November 1991 National Park Service lists Graceland on its National Register of Historic Places This article is about the U.S. Register. For the National Register of Historic Places in Canada see Canadian Register of Historic Places. The National Register of Historic Places . Jan. 8, 1993 (Elvis' birthday) U.S. Postal Service The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) processes and delivers mail to individuals and businesses within the United States. The service seeks to improve its performance through the development of efficient mail-handling systems and operates its own planning and engineering programs. issues 500,000 stamps featuring a young Elvis. October 1994 ``Last Train to Memphis'' by Peter Guralnick is published. A persuasive portrait of a pivotal artist. June 15, 1997 RCA Records releases ``Platinum: A Life in Music,'' a four-disc set that celebrates Elvis the musician. CAPTION(S): 2 Photos, 2 Boxes Photo: (Color) Is that Elvis at Universal Studios? For more sightings of the King see Sunday's L.A. Life Photo illustration by David Sprague/Daily News (2--Color) no caption (Elvis Presley) Box: (1) COMING SUNDAY IN L.A. LIFE ... (See Text) (2) IMPORTANT DATES IN ELVIS' DEATH (See Text) |
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