Some of us are old enough to remember hearing that Elvis Presley died this week in 1977. In my case, I was driving home from a night class and listening to Bill O’Donnel and Chuck Thompson call an Orioles’ game on the radio. It was O’Donnel who reminded the audience that an Elvis special would follow the broadcast. What? I said. Anyway, it was quite a shock, to say the least, when he made reference to Elvis rushed to a hospital.
So it was 48 years ago, and the music is still going strong. It seems as though every day there is a new compilation of Elvis hits for sale. The man keeps on selling and drawing interest, even though half of the country was probably born after he died. The cash register still rings for Elvis all of these years later, and we can’t get enough of the man, as we see in this article from Charles Passy:
The fact that Mr. Presley, who died in 1977 at the age of 42, is continually rediscovered by new generations seems to only fuel Elvis tourism. Graceland, operated by a business partnership in conjunction with Mr. Presley’s daughter Lisa Marie, saw almost 600,000 visitors in 2014—a 5% increase from 2013 and the highest total in seven years.The partnership has its eyes on expansion: Ground has already been broken on a 450-room hotel/entertainment complex as part of Graceland, expected to open in 2016. A Graceland-organized temporary exhibition of Elvis artifacts, from cars to jumpsuits, is now running in London. And Graceland has plans to host a permanent exhibition in Las Vegas.
My guess is that Elvis’s eternal success is probably due to a couple of reasons:
- He died young, a sure way to become a legend. See James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. You can “live” a long time if your fans hang around 40-plus years after your death and they keep upgrading their collection from vinyl to cassette to 8-track to CDs and now digital. I am guilty of some of that.
- Elvis was a fantastic entertainer. His music still sounds great. This is where the new generation comes in. His music has energy. The sounds are bouncy, and the lyrics are about boys and girls, not some political message. Well, maybe “In the Ghetto” was the exception. Elvis singing about the ghetto is the song I skip. I’d rather hear “Burning Love”!
So Elvis lives on, or his music and image do, and we can’t get enough of him.
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