Your Own Personal Elvis

My Elvis is the Elvis of the black leather suit, a man sinewy and clear of eye, performing with something to prove in his nationally televised comeback concert of 1968. I don’t know if I saw that show on NBC when it first aired – though 42% of those watching TV that night did – or if I only recall it from later years. But that’s how I choose to remember the singer who was so important to my mother that the day Elvis died was only the second time I’d ever seen her cry, and one of the last.

If you were alive when Elvis Presley was present on the planet, you likely have your own image of the man who revolutionized music in America, and the world. Just as many of us stop growing older in our own mind and imagine ourselves at that age forever more (and are shocked by the person now looking back at us in the mirror), we remember Elvis as we choose to see him.

Some, sadly, only recall the corpulent King, when he was spilling out of his jumpsuits on stage. Others see Elvis at his joyous, swivel-hipped best in the ‘50s, singing for screaming teenagers from a flatbed truck or maybe on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or in a gold lamé Nudie suit on the cover of the album 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.

For those who have no love for the man or what he became, perhaps it’s the shot of Elvis visiting Richard Nixon at the White House they remember, a meeting inspired by Presley’s offer to be a “Federal Agent-at-Large” – or a narc, as we kids would have called it back in the day.

For the generations that came of age during The King’s less courtly stage or after his death in 1977, it’s hard to imagine that obese and sweating singer as a sex symbol so virile he once made their mothers or grandmothers swoon.

And Elvis wasn’t the only one. At the dawn of rock and roll, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and the other early rockers all had their passionate fans. It’s easy to forget that while those early days were about music and race and money, they were also about sex and freedom and the pure joy of being young.

Recapturing some of that spirit may be part of why the Million Dollar Quartet was so popular on Broadway, and why you’ll find me at one of the performances of the musical revue (with some minor plot points mixed in) when it comes to Orange County in April.

The show dramatizes the epic day Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins sang and jammed together at Sun Records in Memphis. It was early in their careers, though Elvis was already a star. They played mainly gospel and country songs at the real meeting in 1956, but the show we’ll see at Segerstrom Hall wisely includes the more well-known songs of the era, including “Blue Suede Shoes,” “I Walk the Line” and “Great Balls of Fire.”

The actors don’t just impersonate the performers; they play the instruments and sing the songs, too. And quite convincingly, if a preview performance by the cast in Costa Mesa a few months ago was any indication.

Of course I know it won’t really be Elvis and the others on stage at Segerstrom Hall, but for a song or two I’ll try to imagine that it is, and that they’re all young, and so am I. And for a minute maybe I’ll be a kid again, watching TV with my mom, back when Elvis was the man in black.

Burn Some Love  
Elvis Presley appeared in Orange County only three times, once in 1976 and twice in 1973, all at the Anaheim Convention Center. But he played in San Diego, L.A. and Long Beach in that glory year of 1956. Were you at any of those shows? Comment below with your memories.