“Folks always look good in their coffins.”
- Elvis Presley
It's Dead Elvis day. Elvis left the stage and the building 49 years ago today. If you've ever spent time in Memphis in mid-August it might make you speculate that it was the humidity that killed him and not drugs. I joke, kind of.
34 years in that city gifted me with many an Elvis story and some strange interactions. I could write a book. I did write a song, Dead Elvis Day, where I tried to capture a few memories.
For those of us that weren't around, it's impossible to understand what it was like when Elvis first burst onto the scene in 1956. We can't comprehend the force of nature he was. That's too bad because most of us only know of him from his various states of decline and the caricature he became in the second half of his life. Despite that, and all these years after his death, he's still the most famous person on earth.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it still make a sound? If Elvis never existed, would there still be rock and roll?
Alex Chilton, one Memphis icon sings about the biggest of all: