Final Year and Death

This is Elvis, Benjamin Button style.    We start at the sad end and with each word you read you journey back in time til you finally reach the beginning and complete lifes circle.     Elvis is forever 42 and dead unless you read him back to life, lets get started. 

Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self.    Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts.    " In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". In Baton Rouge, Presley failed to appear: he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was cancelled.    In Knoxville, Tennessee, on May 20, "there was no longer any pretence of keeping up appearances.    The idea was simply to get Elvis out on stage and keep him upright".    Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most of touring commitments.    Shows in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota, were recorded for an album and CBS television special, Elvis In Concert.

In Rapid City, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk", according to Presley historian Samuel Roy.    "He was undoubtedly painfully aware of how he looked, and he knew that in his condition, he could not perform any significant movement."    The story was much the same in Omaha.    According to Guralnick, fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books."    A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat, recounting things like his favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past japes, but "mostly there was a grim obsessiveness... a paranoia about people, germs... future events", that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.    Presley's final performance was in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 26, 1977.     He was now living with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden, who later reported that she and Presley became engaged. His stepbrother David Stanley confirms that Presley proposed and gave her a ring, but says he believes he wanted to secure her companionship and had no intention of marrying again.

Presley's final resting place is at Graceland.   The book Elvis: What Happened?, written by Steve Dunleavy and the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1.    It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse.    According to David Stanley, he "was devastated by the book.    Here were his close friends who had written serious stuff that would affect his life. He felt betrayed. [But] what they wrote was true.   " By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments—glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated, and possibly caused, by drug abuse.    After re-examining Presley's X-rays in the 1990s, Nichopoulos concluded that he was probably also suffering from degenerative arthritis, fueling his addiction to painkillers.

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour.    That afternoon, Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor.    Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with "permanently chang[ing] the face of American popular culture" (see "Legacy").    Hundreds of thousands of fans, the press, and celebrities lined the streets of Memphis, many hoping to see the open casket in Graceland.     One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer's biggest-selling issue ever.    Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Among the mourners were Ann-Margret, who had remained close to him since they co-starred in Viva Las Vegas 13 years before, and his ex-wife, Priscilla.    Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third.    Presley was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, next to his mother. An attempt was made to steal his body eleven days later.    After zoning issues were addressed, the remains of both Elvis Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.

Ill Health and Death, 1973-77

Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973, Elvis and Priscilla agreeing to share custody of their daughter.    After the divorce, Presley became increasingly unwell.    He twice overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident.    He was later admitted to hospital and was, according to his main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, "near death" in November, the result of side effects of Demerol addiction. Nichopoulos says that Presley "felt that by getting [pills] from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street.    He ... thought that as far as medications and drugs went, there was something for everything."

Since his comeback in 1968, Presley had staged more and more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, the busiest schedule of his professional life.    Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.    In April, rumors that he would at last play overseas were fueled by a million-dollar bid for an Australian tour, but Parker was uncharacteristically reluctant, prompting those closest to Presley to speculate about the manger's past and the reasons for his apparent unwillingness to apply for a passport.    Parker ultimately squelched any notions Presley had of working abroad, claiming that foreign security was poor and venues unsuitable for a star of his status.

Soon thereafter, Presley's condition seems to have declined precipitously.    Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert in September: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees.    People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.'    He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "The lights go down, and Elvis comes up the stairs.    He was all gut. He was slurring.    He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged.    It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body.    It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible.    You couldn't hear him hardly. ... We were in a state of shock.    [Conductor] Joe Guercio said, 'He's finished...'. I remember crying.    He could barely get through the introductions on the stage."    Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move.    So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?'    I mentioned something once in a guarded moment.    He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right.    Don't you worry about it.'" Presley continued to play to sellout crowds.    Cultural critic Marjorie Garber has described the significance of Presley's physical transformation, particularly in the context of his Vegas appearances of the period: "heavier, in pancake makeup wearing a jumpsuit with an elaborate jeweled belt and cape, crooning pop songs to a microphone: in effect he had become Liberace.    Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers".

On July 13, 1976, Presley's father fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West, Sonny West, and David Hebler.    The dismissal took all three by surprise, especially Red West, who had been friends with Presley for two decades.    Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself.    Vernon Presley cited the need to "cut back on expenses"; another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans frequently gave rise to lawsuits and lawyers' fees. Presley historians David E. Stanley and Frank Coffey, however, have claimed that the bodyguards were really fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned.    After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974.    Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis.    Exemplifying the label's demand for new product, it was recorded on March 20, the very day that the Good Times studio album was issued, and came out just three-and-a-half months later.    It included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award.     (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of a total of fourteen nominations—were for gospel recordings.)    Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful.    In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home.    Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.

Between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977). The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight of the singles he recorded in the studio during this period and released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. "My Boy" was a number one AC hit in 1975; "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the AC in 1976; and "Way Down", released in June 1977, would top both the country and UK pop charts just days after his death. Three other studio tracks from these years issued posthumously as singles also rose to the country top ten. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came in 1976 with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt". "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."

Aloha from Hawaii 1973

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year.    His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance.    A 14-date tour started with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden.    The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in LP form a week later.    Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden would became one of Presley's biggest-selling albums, reaching triple-platinum status.    After the tour, the single "Burning Love" was released—Presley's last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart.    "The most exciting single Elvis has made since 'All Shook Up'", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau.    "Who else could make 'It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body' sound like an assignation with James Brown's backup band?"

Presley in Aloha From Hawaii, broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973.    The singer himself came up with his famous outfit's eagle motif, as "something that would say 'America' to the world."    Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting, and he was anyway frequently absent on tour.    In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion.    He often raised the possibility of her moving in to Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla.    The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, whom Presley had recommended as a karate instructor.    Priscilla reported that Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman." Presley lived with Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, from July 1972 until their breakup in late 1976.    Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18, 1972.

In January 1973, Presley performed two charity concerts in Hawaii for the Kui Lee cancer foundation in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii.    The first, staged on January 12, was primarily a practice run, serving too as a backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, Aloha from Hawaii was the first global live concert satellite broadcast, reaching approximately 1.5 billion viewers.    Budgeted at a record $2.5 million, the show raised $85,000—more than three times what had been anticipated. Presley's outfit became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert costumes with which his latter-day persona became closely associated.    As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure."    The accompanying album, released in February, went to number one, spending a year on the charts.    It proved to be Presley's last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.

The same month, a disturbance during a midnight show left Presley in a state of shock.    When four men rushed onto the stage in what appeared to be an attack, security men leapt to Presley's defense, and the singer's karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself.    Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone [must] die."    His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication.    After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now.    Maybe it's a bit heavy."

On tour and Nixon 1970

Presley returned to the International Hotel in January 1970 for a month-long engagement, performing two shows a night.   Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six more attendance-breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome in Texas. In April, the single "The Wonder of You" was issued—a number one hit in Great Britain, it topped the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart, as well.    MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August, for the documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is. Presley wore a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live performances in the 1970s.

Presley meets U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970Around this time Presley was threatened with kidnapping at the International.    Phone calls were received, one demanding $50,000—if unpaid, Presley would be killed by a "crazy man".    Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge.    The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows.    Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident.    After closing his Las Vegas engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on his first concert tour since 1958. Exhausted by the tour, he spent a month relaxing and recording before touring again in October and November.    He would tour extensively until his death, frequently setting attendance records.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a bizarre meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippie drug culture.    He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts.    Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility".    Presley told Nixon The Beatles exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture.    (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.    Belying his own comments, Presley regularly performed the Beatles songs "Yesterday", "Something", and "Get Back" in concert during the early 1970s.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley "One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation" on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization.    Three studio albums of new, non-movie Presley songs were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years.    The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus.    "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".

1968–73 Comeback Special

The '68 Comeback Special produced "one of the most famous images" of Presley.    Taken on June 27, 1968, it was adapted for the cover of Rolling Stone in July 1969. Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career.    Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28.    His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would die at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker, finding it difficult to obtain financing for more feature films, shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra-Timex show in 1960.    Parker maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a one-hour special.

Recorded in late June, the special aired on December 3, 1968 as a Christmas telecast called simply Elvis.    Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed live with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live appearance as a performer since 1961.    The live segments saw Presley clad in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days.    Director and coproducer Steve Binder had worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was not just the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned.    When the ratings were released the next day, NBC reported that Presley had captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience.    It was the network's highest rated show that season.    Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home.    He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy."    The New Rolling Stone Album Guide calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."

By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", one of the key songs written for the special, reached number 12.    The soundtrack of the special broke into the top ten.    According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man."    Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life.    I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio since Elvis Is Back!    As described by Dave Marsh, it "is a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years.    He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single "In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley's first top ten hit since "Crying in the Chapel" and his first non-gospel top ten since "Bossa Nova Baby" back in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: "Suspicious Minds", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "Kentucky Rain".

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing.    Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world.    The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement.    He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?"    In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley.    He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31, after Barbra Streisand opened the new venue.    Presley assembled top-notch accompaniment, including an orchestra and some of the best soul/gospel backup singers available.    Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been a disaster.    Parker oversaw a major promotional push, with billboards, full-page advertisements in local and trade papers, and souvenirs in the hotel's lobby.    He intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year.    For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

Presley took to the stage with no introduction.    The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note.    A second standing ovation followed his performance, and a third came after his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love".    Backstage, many well-wishers, including Cary Grant, congratulated Presley on his triumphant return which, in the showroom alone, had generated over $1,500,000.    At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene.    "No," Presley said, "that’s the real king of rock and roll."    The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at a salary of $1 million per year.    Newsweek commented, "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.   " Rolling Stone called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection."    In November, the double album From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis was released; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions.    "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts—Presley's first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as showgirl.    She recalls of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him.    I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled.    He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'"    Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

 

Elvis Is Back, Movies 60-67

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5.   The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans.    Back in Memphis, he wasted no time in returning to the studio.    His first recording session, on March 20, was attended by several representatives of RCA; none had heard him sing for two years, and there were inevitable concerns about his ability to recapture his previous success.    The session was the first at which Presley was taped using an advanced three-track machine, allowing stereophonic recording, higher fidelity, and postsession remixing.    A second session in early April yielded two of Presley's best-selling singles, the ballads "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"    Many of the other tracks recorded during the two sessions appeared on Elvis Is Back!    Greil Marcus described its defining sound as full-on Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph.    Elvis's singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic." Released only days after the second session, Elvis Is Back! reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12, as a guest on The Frank Sinatra-Timex Special, an ironic move for both stars given Sinatra's not-so-distant excoriation of rock and roll.    Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March—the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker, who had made the arrangement months in advance, secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for six minutes of singing.    He hoped that the appearance would help boost Presley's popularity with Sinatra's older, pop-oriented following; still, he made sure that 400 Presley fan club members were in the studio audience.   The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number one album in October.    His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later.    It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in Great Britain, remarkable figures for a gospel album.    In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, raising over $60,000 for 24 local charities.    During a luncheon preceding the event, Presley was awarded a plaque by RCA for worldwide sales of over 75 million records.    Another benefit concert, raising over $62,000, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii, after Parker read an article stating that no "permanent memorial stands in salute to the dead of Pearl Harbor".    It was to be Presley's last public performance for seven years.

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy moviemaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical-comedies.    Of the 27 films Presley made during the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs.    The rapid production and release schedules of the films—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music.    According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie".    As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse".    Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that Presley hated many of the songs chosen for his films; he "couldn't stop laughing while he was recording" one of them.    Most of the movie albums featured a couple of contributions from respected songwriters such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.    But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Whatever the quality of the tunes, some observers argued that Presley generally sang well, with commitment, and always played with distinguished musicians and backing singers.    Rock critic Dave Marsh disagreed: on most of the soundtrack recordings, to his ears, "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and 'Rock-a-Hula Baby.'"

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums hit number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "Return to Sender" (1962).     ("Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.)     But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished.    During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top ten hit: "Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960.    As for non-movie albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art, recorded in May 1966 and released in 1967.    It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance.    As described in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs."

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Elvis proposed to Priscilla. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic movies and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."

Military Service and Mom's Death 58-60

"Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presely's tenth number one pop hit a couple of weeks into the new year.    It had been only 21 months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time.    Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood mid-January.    Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be their final collaboration with Presley.    A studio session on February 1 marked another ending: it was the last occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley.    He died in 1965.    On March 24, Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private, under the service number US 53 310 761, at Fort Chaffee near Fort Smith, Arkansas.    Captain Arlie Metheny, the information officer, was unprepared for the media attention the singer received on arrival at Fort Chaffee.    Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus, and photographers accompanied him into the base.    Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: "The Army can do anything it wants with me."    Later, at Fort Hood, Texas, Lieutenant Colonel Marjorie Schulten gave the media carte blanche for one day, after
which she declared Presley off-limits to the press.

Parker visited occasionally with news of sales and to discuss strategy, and to obtain Presley's signature when necessary to proceed with arrangements.    Another visitor, Eddie Fadal, a businesman Presley had met when on tour in Texas, said the singer had become convinced his career was finished—"he firmly believed that."    During a two-week leave in early June, Presley cut five sides in Nashville.    He returned to training, but in early August his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her, arriving in Memphis on August 12.    Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged forty-six.    Presley was devastated.    Their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

Presley aboard USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) en route to Friedberg, Germany, September 29, 1958Presley completed basic training at Fort Hood on September 17, before being posted to Friedberg, Germany, with the 3rd Armored Division, where his service began on October 1.    Some months after his mother's death, Presley was introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant while on maneuvers.    He became "practically evangelical about their benefits"—not only for energy, but for "strength" and weight loss, as well—and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging.    The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances.    Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity while in the service.    To supplement meager under-clothing supplies, Presley bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.    He also donated his Army pay to charity, and purchased all the TV sets for personnel on the base at that time.

Currie Grant, a friend of Presley's in Army Special Services, spotted 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu at a club used by army personnel and their families.    He introduced her to the singer at Presley's home in Bad Nauheim on September 13, 1959.    They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship.    Presley had not elected to join Special Services, which would have allowed him to avoid certain duties and maintain his public profile.    However,

Priscilla has said that he was eager to serve in the detachment, where he would have been able to give some musical performances and remain in touch with the general public.    In her autobiography, she states that it was Parker and RCA who convinced Presley he should serve his country as a regular soldier to gain respect from thepublic, despite the singer's worries that this might instead ruin his career.    He continued to receive massive media coverage, with much speculation echoing his concerns about his career. 

   However, RCA Victor producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had planned ahead with the February and June 1958 recording sessions.    Armed too with unreleased songs from earlier sessions, they aimed to supply a regular stream of releases during Presley's two-year hiatus.    The strategy was successful. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the number one "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959.    RCA also managed to generate four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

Crazed Crowds and Movies

The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, "He’d start out, 'You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,' and they’d just go to pieces.   They’d always react the same way.    There’d be a riot every time."    At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, fifty National Guardsmen were added to the police security to prevent crowd trouble.    Elvis, Presley's second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one.    On October 28, he returned to the Sullivan show, hosted this time by its namesake.    After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned Presley in effigy.

His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21.    Though he was not top billed, the film's original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on the popularity of his latest single: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts on November 3.    To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role.    The film was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office, becoming the 23rd-highest grossing movie of 1956, despite being released fewer than five weeks before the end of the year.    Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and jammed with them.    Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley recordings, he made sure the trio's performance was captured on tape.    (Johnny Cash is often thought to have performed with them, but he was present only briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity.)     The recording, long speculated about, would eventually surface in 1977 on a bootleg titled The Million Dollar Quartet, and RCA would finally release an authorized version a few years later.    1956 ended with a front page report in the Wall Street Journal suggesting Presley merchandise had grossed more than $22 million in sales, and a revelation by Billboard that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since record charts began.

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist.    Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity.    In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley "did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl.    From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Shiek, with all stops out." Then, displaying his range and defying Sullivan's wishes, Presley closed with a gentle black spiritual, "Peace in the Valley".    At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley "a real decent, fine boy".    Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: "Too Much", "All Shook Up", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear".    Between film shoots and recording sessions, he also found time to purchase an eighteen-room mansion eight miles south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland.    Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley's third straight number one album.    The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley's next movie.    The songwriting team effectively produced the sessions, and they developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his "good-luck charm".    Their title track was yet another number one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP.    Presley undertook four brief tours during the year, as well.    He continued to generate crazed audience responses.    In Detroit, a newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed."    In Philadelphia, Villanova students pelted him with eggs. In Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show,  destroying the stage.

Frank Sinatra, who had famously inspired the swooning of teenaged girls in the 1940s, did not have a high opinion of the new musical phenomenon.    In a magazine article he was credited as writing, he decried "the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear—I refer to rock 'n' roll.    It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people.    It smells phoney and false.    It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore."    Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man.    He has a right to say what he wants to say.    He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when

he started years ago."    Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis' Christmas Album.    Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: "Santa Claus Is Back In Town", an innuendo-laden blues.    The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number one albums to four and would eventually become the best selling Christmas album of all time.    After the session, however, Moore and Black—still
drawing only modest salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success—resigned.    Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks letter, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time.    On December 20, Presley received his draft notice.    Paramount and producer Hal Wallis had already spent $350,000 on the forthcoming film King Creole, and the draft board granted Presley a deferment to finish it.

First National TV 56-57

The "iconic cover" of Presley's debut album, featuring a photo taken July 31, 1955.    On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville.    Extending the singer's by now customary backup of Moore, Black, and Fontana, RCA enlisted pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Chet Atkins, and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill out the sound.     The session produced "Heartbreak Hotel/I Was The One", which was released on January 27.

To increase the singer's exposure, Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS's Stage Show for six appearances over two months.    The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.    For his first appearance, on January 28, Presley was introduced by Cleveland DJ Bill Randle. He stayed in town and, on January 30, recorded at RCA's New York studio.    The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem "Blue Suede Shoes". Public reaction to "Heartbreak Hotel" was sufficiently strong that RCA released it as a single in its own right on February 11.    The same month, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart.    Neal's management contract was terminated after Presley's parents expressed a wish for Parker to become the sole representative for the singer's recording contract. Parker became Presley's manager on March 2.

RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety.    There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune.    The others would centrally define the new sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presely's stage repertoire for some time, covers of Ray Charles, Little Richard, and The Drifters.    As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing of all.    Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them.    He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases."    It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. Cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar...as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new
music."

After Parker negotiated a lucrative deal with NBC for two Milton Berle Show appearances, Presley made the first on April 3—from the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, where he was cheered by an audience of appreciative sailors and their dates.    A few days after, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when the plane lost an engine and almost went down over Texas.    That same month, twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number one pop hit.

Presley began a four-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip on April 23—billed this time as "the Atomic Powered Singer" (a name Parker thought would be catchy as Nevada was a major site for atomic weapons testing).    The shows were so badly received by critics and the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests that Parker cut the engagement to two weeks.    Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. While there he was also struck by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys'
performance of "Hound Dog", a hit in 1952 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton.    He soon made it the closing number of his act. In mid-May he began a tour of the Midwest, taking in 15 different cities in as many days.    Following a May 14 concert in La Crosse, Wisconsin, someone associated with the local Catholic diocese wrote an urgent letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, warning that "Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ...
[His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. ... After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley's room at the auditorium. ... Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls ... whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph."

The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour, of California and Arizona.    On this occasion, Berle persuaded the singer to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son."    Thus unencumbered, during the performance Presley abruptly halted an uptempo version of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm, launching straight into a slower version accentuated with exaggerated and energetic movements of his body.    Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy.    Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway."    Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos".    Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing".    To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult."

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC's The Steve Allen Show, recorded in New York.    Allen, no fan of rock and roll, believed that his show should be one "the whole family can watch" and introduced a "new Elvis" in white bow tie and black tails.    Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a basset hound in a top hat and bow tie.    As described by television historian Jake Austen, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition".    Allen, for his part, later wrote that he found Presley's "strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing" and simply worked the singer into the customary "comedy fabric of our program".    Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career.    Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show.    Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, "No, I haven't, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. ... I don't see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music. ... I mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?"

The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with "Any Way You Want Me" and "Don't Be Cruel".    The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with the singer through the 1960s.    A few days later, Presley made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none.    I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight."    In August, a Florida judge called Presley a "savage" and threatened to arrest him if he shook his body while performing in Jacksonville.    The judge declared that Presley's music was undermining the youth of America.    Throughout the performance, which was filmed by police, he kept still as ordered, except for wiggling a finger in mockery of the ruling.    The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog", provided "Love Me".

Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings.    Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked the singer for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000.    The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience.    Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident.    According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Having viewed clips of the Allen and Berle shows, Sullivan told his producer that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants—so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night.    This is a family show!"    Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots."    In truth, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows.    Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style—screaming.    More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.