katcountry1073.com
Today, thousands of fans gathered in Graceland to celebrate the birthday of the late Elvis Presley by cutting cake and opening a new exhibit in Memphis Tennessee.
Few celebrities reach the iconic and legendary status of one, Elvis Aaron Presley. One could call him the royalty of American folklore, after all, we did dub him “The King.”
Elvis enjoyed the same company as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, a true iconoclast who captured the American attention and tugged at the post war morality of a 1950’s swing dancing America. Many consider him the founder of Rock and Roll. Creator or not, he certainly became the poster boy, with his deep southern voice belting our pop ballads, gospel and blues, while his hips gyrated to the delight of adolescents and cringes of their parents. He was the first generation of highly publicized stars, and his journey into that realm remains the stuff of legend in any conversation regarding the history of modern American music.
Today would have been the 78th birthday of the biggest star of American music who, instead is still dead after being found unresponsive on his bathroom floor at the age of 42 in 1977. His abbreviated life brought America to the ugly realization that the slick, smooth talking embodiment of youth could so easily fall victim to the horrors and life degrading effects of the rock and roll lifestyle. Not only was he our first rock hero, he was the first hero to so publicly fall from grace. Shortly before his death in 1977, Tony Scherman described the transformation from young heartthrob to sad and decrepit, “Elvis Presely had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopeia he daily ingested.”
Later that year, he was found dead on his bathroom floor, allegedly from an overdose. Still some fans hold onto the notion he staged his own death in the hopes of living out his retirement in peace, like Henry Hill at the end of Goodfellas, some kind of utopian Federal Elvis Protection Program fit for the King.
Source: The Times Herald and The Star Ledger
Source:
https://celebrityhearsay.com/hottest-stories/remembering-elvis-the-king-would-have-turned-78-today/