Every weekday WHO-TV showed reruns of Emergency! (cleverly titled Emergency One! for syndication purposes), and it was on every day through the summer, it's episodic format making it easy to dip in and out, watching a little at a time, then leaving.
This particular day was gray and unnaturally still, tornado weather as Mom called it, so I stayed inside, plopped down and watched an episode from the beginning, the one in which series regular Bobby Troup's character, Dr. Early, undergoes surgery and the sight of his fur-covered chest makes him look disturbingly like a cousin of the yeti. Halfway through, the local station cut in with a news bulletin.
Tornado warning, I thought, but no: "We interrupt this program to report that entertainer Elvis Presley has died at his home in Memphis..."
That, of course, was thirty years ago today. Presley's significance had shrunk so much during his lifetime, he had made himself so utterly irrelevant, that my reaction was probably typical of twelve-year-olds everywhere: "Isn't he that guy from all those awful movies they show on Valour Theater?"
In death, of course, his legend would be reborn, though even then, they never get it right, casting him as either some sort of harmless, campy icon or as a tragic figure of near-Shakesearean proportions.
Nothing he did was campy. The movies and lame recordings (clooected on the cruel but accurate bootleg compilation album Elvis' Greatest Shit) which sapped his spirit, the endless touring which drained his strength, all done at the insistence of Andreas "Tom Parker" van Kuijk, none of this was camp, it was simply bad. The white jumpsuits, the Jungle Room, those hideous porcelain monkeys--well, that simply reflected Presley's personal tastes, which were appalling, but not unexpected for a white trash kid who suddenly became famous beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Hideous, sure, but not campy--it wasn't intentionally bad.
And as for tragic--well, maybe, but not according to the accepted template, which says Elvis burned brightly for a brief period, got drafted, then did nothing worthwhile until his '68 comeback, then slid back into drugs, lethargy and death.
Nonsense. Some of the best music he ever did came after his army stint. Much of it was buried, two or three good cuts on otherwise indifferent albums, but his first two post-army singles, His Latest Flame (Marie's The Name) and Little Sister, are pure genius, absolutely essential stuff.
(Allow me to geek out for a moment here. Little Sister is driven largely by the awesome guitar of Scotty Moore, who had been with Presley since the very beginning, largely defining his sound, and who is thus one of the architects of modern music. Later, Elvis hooked up with James Burton, my personal pick for Greatest Rock Guitarist Ever. I could spend all day going on about Burton, but if nothing else, the fact that he hired the guy shows that, however bad Elvis' taste in clothing and decor, when it came to music he knew what he was doing.)
He always made good music, and even in the seventies, still released some consistently fine albums. (They're almost impossible to find in their original forms these days, but I'm 10,000 Years Old and Moody Blue are all killer.) Yes, the movies, touring, and various edicts from Colonel van Kuijk took a lot out of him, but he kept making music, some of it awful but much of it very good. Is this a tragedy, or just a guy who never recaptured his early greatness? In which case, why don't we describe Paul McCartney as a tragic figure?
Here's Elvis Presely at his best, playing quite fine lead (earlier in this segment, he swiped Scotty Moore's guitar) and singing the shit out of Trying To Get To You. Damn, that guy could sing:
