Hi everyone

What would have been Elvis' 71st birthday was celebrated in many countries yesterday or through the week with substantial radio, TV and print media coverage. Surprisingly, or some would say, not surprisingly, while several Elvis festivals thrived in places such as Australia and North Carolina, the official birthday tribute in Memphis was poorly attended. Perhaps EPE needs to rethink the nature of the annual birthday event.

Nigel & Piers

The latest on www.elvisinfonet.com:

• 71st birthday tributes
• Small crowds in Memphis for Birthday celebration
• Parkers Elvis festival draws record crowds
• Elvis in Tupelo documentary announced
• Elvis photograph exhibition empowers
• Jim Curtin auctions his Elvis collection for love
• Thiefs Elvis collection to be sold
• 'Elvis Is Back' on vinyl
• ElvisFest in North Carolina
• Year long Elvis celebration (EPE)
• Jerry Scheff's legal action unsuccessful
• 'Last Tango in Tahoe' CD released
• Elvis and the Memphis Mafia (book review)
• All Shook Up (reggae tribute) (CD review)
• Elvis DVDs in 2006
• Elvis CDs in 2006
• Lamar Fike opens up to EIN (Part 2)

"The Final Tour"

Breaking News

Oprah interview with Lisa & Priscilla on Aussie TV: Finally!, the episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show featuring Lisa and Priscilla Presley airs tomorrow (10 January) at 2pm on the 10 Network in Australia. This is well worth watching.

Tabloid says Lisa to marry at Graceland: The latest edition of the National Examiner (Jan. 16) reports that Lisa Marie plans to get married, at Graceland. The report states there may be two receptions, one for family, the other with her country friends.  Given the notoriously unreliable nature of the tabloids it will be interesting to see how much truth there is in this report. (Source: Carol in Ohio)

EIN Newsletter #72 The latest issue of our quarterly newsletter has been posted to all financial members. With a theme of "1972", its 28 pages are crammed full of Elvis, Elvis and more Elvis, including: candid color and b&w photos from 1972 Three Spotlight articles NOT featured on the EIN web site ("Separate Ways - Life In Private"; "1972 The Music"; "Elvis Live - Madison Square Garden, 1972") a selection of the latest news and views from around the Elvis world listing of new FTD & CD releases In addition, Issue #73 includes the Annual EIN Mega Quiz to test your Elvis knowledge. Five great Elvis prizes to be won!

Elvis fans celebrate his birthday: It's a day no Elvis presley fan forgets. Today marks the singer and actor's seventy-first birthday. Elvis started his career in 1954. In what film does his character spank a rebellious teenager was it Blue Hawaii, GI Blues or Kissing Cousins?

If you don't know the answer it's Blue Hawaii. This trivia is part of the celebration of Elvis` seventy-first birthday at the Black Velvet Nostalgia. Discounts, cake, cookies, and prizes had almost one hundred Elvis fans and collectors all shook up to add to their collections. Owner Marcia Abel has had her fare share of wild stories about this rock n roll heartbreaker. "Ladies jumping over tables trying to get to elvis on stage they didn't make it but they tried," Abel said. So what makes the king the king?

"I don't know I just like him, his music and I like the neat things he's done for people and I just think he's a neat person," one fan said.

Another fan said, "He's just so charismatic and he`s just very handsome besides that he was just a very kind person and he adored his mother and he treated people with respect and even no matter how much money he made he was still a person and he made you realize that.

Owner Marcia Abel said, "Nobody can sweat like Elvis, his voice, he could sing anything he could sing with music without music, he was just the best and besides he's good looking. Fans just can't help falling in love.

"Elvis there's never been one like him and there'll never be another one," Abel said. Elvis has not left this building or his fans hearts. Elvis starred in 33 films and had over 150 albums and singles for which he won three grammys. Elvis died of heart failure in 1977. (Source: KQ2 News)

Ernst Jorgensen compiling his Sun Records "coffee-table" Elvis photobook: Elvis Presley's dreamy eyes jump out in the ad promoting his Port Arthur appearance. He wasn't the star he would become, but the Louisiana Hayride knew that Mississippi boy with the hip moves had something. The Port Acres Fire Department sponsored the “Western Show” Friday, Nov. 25, 1955, at Woodrow Wilson Auditorium. Scotty & Bill and The Chelette Sisters and “many others” were promised. Boneau's record store offered advance tickets for $1.25; holdouts paid $1.50 at the door.

Ernst Jorgensen called The News from a house on a hill an hour's drive from Copenhagen. “It's cold,” he said. Jorgensen would love to reach local residents lucky enough to catch this Elvis show. It was a critical time in his career. Presley was switching from Sun Records to RCA and would soon become an international star.

The plan is to compile memories and snapshots of young Elvis into a coffee table book with CDs, something for the serious collector, Jorgensen said. The author imagines Elvis was feeling pretty good about himself, having signed with RCA on Nov. 21.

Carolyn Monte, one of those Chelette Sisters, now of Dallas, didn't know to be impressed at that Port Arthur concert. He was still just that good-looking boy.

“We had heard of him, but he wasn't that big of a deal at that point in time. We saw him as somebody who was entertaining Š a cute guy. He was the most gracious young man Š a gentleman all the way down the line,” Monte said.

Hanging around backstage gave you the real goods on a person, she said.

“He was one of the sweetest, kindest, most well-behaved and well-mannered young men you'd ever want to have your teenage daughters around,” she said.

Mary Jo was her oldest sister, who has since died.

“Elvis had an eye for her. He was a prankster by the way. He came up behind Mary Jo and put his arms around here and made this grotesque sound. It grossed her out so much. She said, ‘Get away from me.' Then he asked her to go to a cafe for a Coke. She said, ‘No way.' ” Monte recalled.

At that point, she said she was thinking, “Pick me!”

Contact this reporter at ddoiron@panews.com.

The book compilers got this memory from Doyle Reynolds:

I was at high school in Port Arthur. There was a little place where we had lunch called Skip's place, and they actually had a couple of Elvis records on the jukebox, so when he came to town, a lot of people were excited to see him, I wasn't going to see him. That day I was downtown Port Arthur, doing some work for my father, when I saw him drive by in his pink and charcoal gray Cadillac, and gosh what a lovely car, but what was even lovelier, and I hate to admit this, I was a hubcap thief, I said to myself I'm going to get these hubcaps.

My friend and I went down the Woodrow Wilson auditorium, and there was a little parking lot in the back, and I was sure I knew exactly where the car was gonna be parked, and we went back there with our screwdrivers, we jumped out to steel these hubcaps but they were wire wheeled. So we picked up the screwdrivers and got back to the car, and at this time the back of the auditorium opens, and three other young men ran out back to look at the car, and right behind them came a policeman or some kind of security and said “You guys get back in here, you can't go outside during the intermission”.

So they turned around and went back in and he then looked at us and said “You are no privileged characters, get back in.”

So we went in and I looked at the back of the stage was right at that back door, and I looked in there and saw a girl that I knew from high school, and she was part of The Chelette Sisters, they were kind of semi-famous around Port Arthur. They were on the same bill that night and I think they had already performed.

So I saw Mary Jo Chelette standing just inside the door. Garland Sonnier and I just walked in there, and she happens to be talking to Elvis Presley. There was a big heavy library table, he was kind of sitting on that, in the middle part of it, and she was talking with him. There was a guy on the other end of it counting money, so I kind of marched in there said hi to Mary Jo and Elvis.

He was about three years older than me. I said “I hear you like gospel music.” That just lit him up. We talked for a good while about gospel music, and he had gone to church with The Blackwood Brothers and The Statemen and they were really my heroes, my sister had dated one of the Florida Boys. We talked for about 15 - 20 minutes, maybe, I can't remember the transition here, but he goes out on stage and he had a red jacket, black shirt, black pants and a tie.

Guys around school were wearing derbys. I had this red derby, and Elvis goes out on stage singing, and I wasn't really paying much attention to him, I was talking to someone else, I was just a social butterfly back then. I was kind of on the edge of the stage, off to the right looking at the stage. He was very active on stage, he just moved and jumped, and I remember he had to stop and get a new guitar, because his strings were broken, he said “ I can't play with these three strings.” So he comes to the edge of the stage, gets another guitar, sees my derby, and ask me if he can wear that derby and he walks out on stage with that red derby, with his red jacket, and the other people are laughing. I think to holler at him to get it back. (Source: Port Arthur News)

Candle maker recalls time as Elvis flame

"Former Elvis flame ignites national candle line."

Virginia Anderson, who now lives in Hattiesburg and manufactures a line of premium scented candles, said she was 16 and living in Memphis in 1957 when she met Elvis Presley. Her cousin was visiting from Bakersfield, Calif., and her mother took them to see the gates of Graceland.

"He came down in his black Cadillac with his bodyguard," Anderson said. "I noticed he was kind of flirting with me. He went on out the gate and down the highway. He came back and the gatekeeper said 'Elvis wants to see you.'"

Presley asked her out on a date for the next night.

"I was, needless to say, all dolled up. I still have the dress hanging in my closet," Anderson said. "Elvis had just moved into Graceland in March. I went out with him on July 19, 1957. He had on a black lace shirt and black pants. He didn't have an undershirt on."

They went to a movie theater, using the side entrance, and left before the movie was over, Anderson said. Then they had dinner in a private dining room at a restaurant called Chenault's.

"That's where he got mad at me," Anderson said. "He thought I was looking at his bodyguard, Cliff. He made me cry and I asked to go home. I said it's hard to be out with a world idol and act like yourself. He said, 'I know, darlin'."

They ended up back at Graceland, where Anderson said Presley sang his songs to her, including his big hit at the time, "Teddy Bear." Their second date was two days later, on Sunday, when he picked her up on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

After that, he went to Hollywood to make a movie. Several months later, he took her out again, but that was the end of their relationship. She said she was a good girl and resisted his moves, even if she did break a date with her boyfriend to go out with Elvis.

"No girl could resist Elvis," she said.

Contact EIN 

Quote:

"Elvis Presley is the supreme socio-cultural icon in the history of pop culture"

(Dr. Gary Enders)

Quote:

" Elvis is the 'glue' which holds our society together....which subconciously gives our world meaning"

(Anonymous)

Quote:

"Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis"

(humorist Dave Barry)

Quote:

"He is the "Big Bang", and the universe he detonated is still expanding, the pieces are still flying"

(Greil Marcus, "Dead Elvis")

Quote:

"I think Elvis Presley will never be solved"

(Nick Tosches)

Quote:

"He was the most popular man that ever walked on this planet since Christ himself was here"

(Carl Perkins)

Quote:

"When I first heard Elvis' voice I just knew I wasn't going to work for anybody...hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail"

(Bob Dylan)

Quote:

"When we were kids growing up in Liverpool, all we ever wanted was to be Elvis Presley"

(Sir Paul McCartney)

Quote:

"You can't say enough good things about Elvis. He was one of a kind"

(Johnny Cash)

Quote:

"It isn't enough to say that Elvis is kind to his parents, sends money home, and is the same unspoiled kid he was before all the commotion began. That still isn't a free ticket to behave like a sex maniac in public"

(Eddie Condon, Cosmopolitan)

Elvis records reaching #2 & #3 on the Cashbox Pop Singles chart:

#2: A Fool Such As I (1959)

#2: A Big Hunk Of Love (1959)

#3: Hard Headed Woman (1958)

#3: One Night (1958)

#3: (You're The Devil) In Disguise (1963)

Elvis Facts:

Tickets for Elvis' show on March 29, 1957 in St. Louis cost $2.00 to $2.50

While in Germany Elvis was hospitalised with tonsillitis in October 1959

Despite being an illegal immigrant, photographic evidence shows Colonel Tom Parker traveled to Canada with Elvis in 1957

Elvis strongly believed there weren't enough good songs in King Creole to justify releasing a soundtrack album. RCA initially agreed, releasing two very successful EPs from the movie. A soundtrack LP eventually followed

During the 1960s Elvis had his own football team, Elvis Presley Enterprises, which played in the Menphis touch football league. In the 1962 final, EPE narrowlt lost to Delta Automatic Transmission. 6-13.

In Clambake, (Elvis) Scott Hayward's driving licence shows February 23, 1940...taking 5 years off Elvis' real age

In the 1970s Elvis was ofered $5m to stage a concert in front of the Pyramids in Egypt. When the Colonel declined the offer, Saudi billionaires raised the offer to $10m