ELVIS NEWS! - Elvis Presley from Poland Website

First Recordings Selected For Library Of Congress
Billboard - January 28, 2003

U.S. Librarian of Congress James A. Billington yesterday (Jan. 27) announced the first group of recordings to be entered into the National Recording Registry, which was initiated by Congress in 2000, Billboard Bulletin reports. The 50 selections were chosen from hundreds of entries forwarded by an advisory board comprising leaders in music, recorded sound, and preservation. Fifty more titles will be added each year.

Among the recordings are the Berliner Grammaphone Co.'s first recording of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" (1897); Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925-28); the Victor Co.'s Bristol, Tenn., sessions of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers (1927); Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" (1939); and Stravinsky conducting the New York Philharmonic in the first recording of his "The Rite of Spring" (1940).

More contemporary choices include Elvis Presley's Sun sessions (1954-55); Frank Sinatra's "Songs for Young Lovers" LP (1955); Tito Puente's "Dance Mania" LP (1958); the Miles Davis Sextet's "Kind of Blue" (1959); "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" (1963); and Aretha Franklin's single "Respect" (1967). The most recent selection is the 1982 breakthrough rap hit by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, "The Message."

The Library of Congress will store "best copies" of the recordings in its state-of-the-art conservation vaults; U.S. record companies still hold the original masters. Congress has funded the project for the next seven years.

For more information, visit the National Recording Registry's official Web site.

-- Barry A. Jeckell, N.Y.

Elvis Makes Fine Showing in ROLLING STONE Poll
------------------------------------------- EPE 1/23/2003

Results are in on the Rolling Stone Music Awards 2002 polls - a Critics' Picks poll of music critics and the magazine's staff and a Readers' Picks public poll. In the Readers Picks our man appears as follows:

Albums
3rd Place for ELV1S 30 #1 HITS

Singles
1st Place for A Little Less Conversation

Artist of the Year
3rd Place

Most Welcome Comeback
3rd Place

Click here to go to Rolling Stone for the full poll results.

American Veteran Awards TV Special Features New Elvis Award
------------------------------------------------------ EPE 1/22/2003

The 8th Annual American Veteran Awards telecast will be on The History Channel on Sunday, February 9, 2003 at 7:00 PM ET/PT. (Check local listings.) The awards ceremonies were taped in November 2002. It was in this latest presentation that the American Veteran Awards, a project of Veterans Foundation, Inc. introduced a new award - the Elvis Presley Best Patriotic Song Award. The first Elvis award was presented to country duo Brooks & Dunn for their song Only in America.

The AVA contacted Graceland/EPE seeking permission to name the award in honor of Elvis and asking our cooperation and assistance. Our thanks to the AVA for this wonderful recognition for Elvis and our congratulations to Brooks & Dunn for being the first recipients.

Check out the American Veteran Awards web site for more information.

Priscilla Presely on Larry King Live
Priscilla Presley will appear as a guest on CNN's Larry King Live on Wednesday, February 5.

Presentation of Gold and Platinum Awards for ELV1S 30 #1 HITS
(EPE-UPDATE: See streaming video of ceremony highlights!) 1/20/2003

Watch highlights

from the 2003 Elvis Presley Day proclamation ceremony and record awards presentation!

(CMT) NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Elvis Country
By Chet Flippo - January 16, 2003

The new CD Elvis: Great Country Songs (RCA) is both a collection of fascinating songs and an insightful history primer. Elvis almost single-handedly killed commercial country music in the 1950s, yet he was also a part of its later resurgence.

Presley's career was partly sparked by his 1954 cover version of Bluegrass inventor Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky." Elvis later -- in his one and only appearance on the Grand Ole Opry -- apologized to Monroe for supercharging his song and speeding it up. Monroe was very gracious to Presley -- unlike Opry boss Jim Denny who advised Presley to go back to driving a truck -- and later speeded up the song himself. Presley was also launched by key appearances on the enormously popular and influential country radio barn dances -- the Big D Jamboree in Dallas and the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport. And he obviously recorded enough country songs and was such a country influence that he was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He charted more than 80 singles on the Billboard country chart and racked up 10 No. 1 country hits.

But when Elvis and rock 'n' roll took the U.S. by storm in the mid- and late-1950s, country music almost vanished on radio. Country stations throughout the South, especially, flipped to rock formats and country crept toward irrelevance and extinction as a radio format. Today's Country Music Association (CMA) was formed as a self-defense against rock ‘n’ roll. In 1958, the reeling Country Music Disc Jockey Association (which formed in 1954) reorganized itself as the CMA as a chamber of commerce for country music, formed by a coalition of country music song publishers and radio stations struggling to fight back. The number of fulltime country radio stations in the U.S. dropped to 81 in 1961 (today it's more than 2,000) before a recovery began.

Elvis' signing by RCA Records (away from Sam Phillips' Sun Records in Memphis in 1955) also led directly to RCA opening an office and then a recording studio in Nashville, which fostered the establishment of Music Row and the growth of Nashville as a music center.

Although much of his work was tinged with country overtones and recorded with country sidemen and backing vocalists, Elvis' first overt country album didn't come until 1971. Titled Elvis Country (“I'm 10,000 Years Old”), it included such country standards as Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away," Bob Wills' "Faded Love," Eddy Arnold's "I Really Don't Want to Know," Jack Greene's "There Goes My Everything," Flatt & Scruggs' "Little Cabin on the Hill" and Anne Murray's "Snowbird." Not to mention the song that inspired the album subtitle: "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago."

The new collection opens with Presley's first No. 1 country hit, 1955's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget," jumps into the original echo-chambered "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and goes on to include 22 other notable Presley country takes. There are previously unreleased versions of Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," the Pointer Sisters' "Fairytale," "Just Call Me Lonesome," "There Goes My Everything" and "Green, Green Grass of Home."

If you've never heard Presley's cover of Hank Williams' "Your Cheatin' Heart," recorded by Elvis in 1958 with the Jordanaires, you owe it to yourself to savor Elvis making that song very much his own.

This is missing a few essential things I would like to see included, most notably his take of the George Jones hit "She Thinks I Still Care" (which is included on the RCA box set Elvis: Today, Tomorrow & Forever) and the great "There's a Honky Tonk Angel (Who Will Take Me Back In)" from the 1975 album Promised Land.

His last studio recording -- included here -- was the classic Jim Reeves hit "He'll Have to Go," cut on a mobile recording unit in the Jungle Room at Graceland Oct. 30, 1976, less than a year before Elvis' death. The big Elvis voice was still there. The powerful voice that always carried a subcurrent of such urgency that it demanded that you listen.

The package also reprints a 1955 RCA in-house promotional memo, which begins, "In Elvis Presley, we've acquired the most dynamic and sought-after new artist in country music today, one who's topped the 'most promising' category in every trade and consumer poll held during 1955!"

Her Presley roots radiate from Lights Out
By Bill Ellis, The Commercial Appeal - January 16, 2003

Lisa Marie Presley
... CD single "Lights Out"

That voice coming over FM 100, the one that could be a huskier Sheryl Crow, is Lisa Marie Presley, whose single Lights Out has been getting advance spins by the station.

"We got a leaked copy of the song last week," says Chris Taylor, program director for the Hot Adult Contemporary radio station (WMC-FM 99.7).

"I was hearing rumblings it was heard in other cities. . . . We finally got a copy a couple days ago, and played it on the morning show. We challenged listeners to guess the artist and 99 percent of the people guessed who it was, all except one guy who thought it was Pink."

The song is the slated lead single for Presley's coming debut album, "To Whom It May Concern," which has been given an April 8 release date by the album's label Capitol Records.

Delivered in a roots rock vein, Lights Out is a song that seems to address Lisa Marie's feelings about being the daughter of Elvis Presley; Lisa Marie is Presley's only child. Among its lyrics is a chorus that states: "Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis / That's where my family's buried and gone." (To hear a snippet of the song, go to http://lisamarie.tripod.co.jp/lisanews.htm.

Taylor said the single was serviced to FM 100 on Tuesday, though the station sneaked it beginning last Friday. It is in new music rotation, meaning it gets a few spins daily, a good reaction given that FM 100's target audience is not typically Elvis-crazy.

"People have been anticipating what it must sound like because of who she is," he says. "It's edgy enough, pop enough, adult enough that if she were going to showcase to the world who she is, this is a good direction."

Taylor says that according to radio monitoring service MediaBase, FM 100 was the first station to play Lights Out nationally. Other stations locally are considering playing it, including the Memphis Pig (WMPS-FM 107.5).

"We're looking at it," says Pig program director Steve Richards. "It's a good-sounding record and it has a lot of Memphis references."

Former Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission president Jerry Schilling, who managed Lisa Marie for several years in the early '90s, heard FM 100 play the song and was pleased at the result.

"Since she was 6 years old, Lisa has had music in her soul," says Schilling. "(Elvis-backing vocalists) The Sweet Inspirations used to bring her records and she would listen like an artist. I would see her in her room putting the needle back on the parts she wanted to hear."

Schilling says Lisa Marie, 34, shied away from a career in music for years, one reason being the perception of living up to her father's legendary legacy. Nevertheless, Lisa Marie had several offers on the table in the early '90s, including a production deal at one label that Schilling says he snagged without using her name "to make sure that what I was hearing was good."

"We were closing a deal at Epic Records and we had a firm offer from RCA," continues Schilling. "And she called me and said, 'I can't sign the deal.' I said, 'What do you mean?' I thought she was kidding. She said, 'Jerry, I just can't do it, and you'll know why.'

"And a couple of days later she married Michael Jackson."

Lisa Marie married Jackson in 1994. They divorced less than two years later in 1996. Her third marriage, to actor Nicolas Cage, ended in November after mere months.

Lisa Marie announced her singing talents at the Mid-South Coliseum's "Elvis in Concert '97." There, she sang a combined live/video duet with her filmed father a la the Natalie Cole/Nat King Cole song Unforgettable. Lisa Marie then gave fans a preview of her album - a self-penned tribute to her father, Nobody Noticed It - that was part of last year's spectacle, "Elvis - The Concert," at The Pyramid.

Lisa Marie signed with Glen Ballard to his Capitol imprint Java Records in 1998. Ballard, a Natchez native and Ole Miss grad, is best known for his work with Alanis Morissette, but has an extensive list of credentials from Aerosmith and Michael Jackson to No Doubt and Christina Aguilera.

Ballard did not produce "To Whom It May Concern," though he shows up as a songwriter on several tracks (notably Lights Out). Lisa Marie also co-wrote several tunes with first husband Danny Keough and former Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan.

Lisa Marie is principal lyricist on the record, which includes such song titles as The Road Between, Gone, Indifferent, Excuse Me, To Whom It May Concern, So Lovely, SOB, Savior and Better Beware.

"I'm so happy for her," says Schilling. "I don't care if she has great success or no success. I think it's important for her as a human being to give it a shot. But I think she's going to be huge because she can sing."

Lights Out
(Written by Lisa Marie Presley, Glen Ballard and Clif Magness; lyrics by Lisa Marie Presley)

You were a million miles behind
And I was crying every time I'd leave you
Then I didn't want to see you
I still keep my watch two hours behind

Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis
That's where my family's buried and gone
Last time I was there I noticed a space left
Next to them there in Memphis
In the damn back lawn

I didn't know that I was in the crowd
And the fresh cut grass stopped growing
Everything on my shelf has fallen
I still keep my watch two hours behind

Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis
That's where my family's buried and gone
Last time I was there I noticed a space left
Next to them there in Memphis
In the damn back lawn

Was that bridge I was crossing
Somewhere I stopped walking
I guess I fell off on my own

I heard all the roads they lead to Memphis
Except for the one I'm stumbling down
And I'll be damned if I ever get this little son of a bitch from Memphis
Well it's all there I guess
And I haven't forgot

Tony Curtis still likes the limelight, and returns in a staging of his famed film
By Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe - 1/15/2003

MEMPHIS - ''Is that Graceland there?'' asks Tony Curtis. ''Oh my God, look at this,'' he says, indicating the gates, the grounds, the columns. Then he notices a woman at the wheel of a bus blocking the entrance. Regard gives way to irreverence: ''What is that lady waiting for? Ah, the return of Elvis!''

Curtis didn't come to Memphis to visit Graceland. He's here because he's touring in a musical version of ''Some Like It Hot,'' the gender-bending 1959 comedy he starred in - a film some consider the funniest movie ever made. The tour is also why he's coming to Boston. ''Some Like It Hot'' has its press opening tonight at the Wang Center and runs through Sunday.

But since Curtis is in Memphis, he's decided to see the home of its most famous son, an old acquaintance, who dyed his hair black in imitation of Curtis and adopted the same duck-tailed pompadour.

''Elvis, Elvis,'' Curtis murmurs as a reporter accompanies him up the driveway. ''One day I was working at Paramount Pictures. I was walking on the back lot, and there was a big camper. A door opened, and a guy reached out and pulled me in: Elvis. `Mr. Curtis, it's been such a pleasure to watch you in the movies. When I was a kid, I loved you so much, Mr. Curtis. It's a privilege to meet you.' I said, `Listen, don't call me Mr. Curtis. Call me Tony.' He said, ` OK, Tony.' `What can I call you?' He said, `Mr. Presley.''' Curtis explodes with laughter.

He can afford to laugh. Elvis has been gone 25 years now. Curtis keeps rolling along: 120 movies behind him, five months of touring ahead.

Curtis looks terrific. The body's thickened, the hair's white, but every 77-year-old should have such thickening, such whitening. ''Boy, this is the survivor of all time,'' says Barry Paris, who collaborated with Curtis on his 1993 autobiography. ''And not just a

survivor, but much more when you look at all he's done.''

''I've been in movies 52 years,'' Curtis says. ''Still around. People recognize me. Otherwise, you'd be sitting on some porch in North Hollywood overlooking nothing. I've got a telephone book at home, about 30 years old, everybody in it gone.''

They just don't make lives like Curtis's anymore. He's been married to movie stars (Janet Leigh, Christine Kaufmann). He's the father of a movie star (Jamie Lee Curtis). His fifth wife, Jill, is more than four decades his junior. He lives outside Las Vegas (where else?). Yes, he's a little over the top - profane, unapologetic, a cheerfully loose cannon - but there's nothing forced about it. He's emphatic the way a fire alarm is: It's just part of his job description. Tony Curtis is a movie star, thank you very much, and loves every minute of it.

''I do, I do,'' he says in that unmistakable head-cold voice. Gargling in the East River couldn't produce a more Noo Yawk accent. ''I've never been able to understand how other actors could not appreciate it,'' he adds. ''There isn't an autograph I sign that I don't look in the person's eye. Let them meet me, and I meet them. It's a glorifying feeling, the way people look at you.''

Before leaving for Graceland, Curtis talks to a reporter and photographer in his hotel lobby. A woman musters the nerve to ask to take his picture. He does her one better. Handing her camera to the photographer, Curtis has him shoot them together. ''At last we meet,'' he tells her. It's earnest and jokey and natural all at once. The declaration leaves them both beaming.

Curtis came in at the end of Hollywood's legendary studio era. He became a very big star as a teen idol in the early '50s. ''I was an attractive lad,'' he says, ''very disarming in my behavior. Somewhat gregarious - and funny. I always tried to be funny because I knew to get close to a girl you got to make her laugh. You can't buy her a good dinner and talk about philosophy.''

Curtis graduated to more serious roles, and even bigger stardom. He earned an Oscar nomination for ''The Defiant Ones'' (1958). He worked with A-list directors such as Carol Reed (''Trapeze,'' 1956), Stanley Kubrick (''Spartacus,'' 1960), and John Huston (''The List of Adrian Messenger,'' 1963).

The movie that showed Curtis could act - could really act - was ''Sweet Smell of Success'' (1957). He plays a sleazy New York press agent named Sidney Falco. Early on, he's at a bustling Manhattan jazz club, surveying the room, while his cigarette-girl mistress tries to get his attention. ''Sidney, are you listening to me?'' she pleads. ''Avidly, avidly,'' he says with all the sincerity of a cat cautioning a canary.

''Avidly, avidly'': In the dazzlingly disingenuous expression of those six breathy syllables you pretty much have Tony Curtis's persona. Always there's an avidity to him, a hunger. It's the eagerness of a man so clearly on the make he disarms you with the transparency of it all. Yet there's also a certain detachment, a sense of being in on this big, ongoing joke for which he is both teller and punch line. Few stars have ever been better at having it both ways on camera - or off.

A phenomenal balancing act, it finally caught up with him in the late '60s. Curtis gave what he considers his finest performance, the title role in ''The Boston Strangler'' (1968). Then things began to go wrong. The movies got worse. The parts got smaller. He got deeply into drugs.

''You start out like a king,'' Curtis says, ''and end up like a pauper - for a while.'' He savors the last three words, then shrugs. ''I worked my way through it.'' He checked into the Betty Ford Center twice during the mid-'80s. The second time worked.

The career goes on, but there's no question ''Some Like It Hot'' remains its peak. Curtis remembers being asked to a meeting to discuss the project. ''I got really excited,'' he says. ''To have Billy Wilder [the film's director] interested in me? Well, I got over there early.''

In the movie, Curtis and Jack Lemmon play Joe and Jerry, a pair of musicians on the lam from the mob in Prohibition-era Chicago. They become Josephine and Daphne to hide out in an all-female band whose singer is Marilyn Monroe. ''I was very nervous about getting dressed up as a girl,'' Curtis admits. ''Jack was like a three-dollar hooker. He came out swinging. ... We realized it was the perfect symmetry for the two of us. Let him be the flaunty one, let me be the more quiet one.''

Curtis's days in drag are far behind him. In the musical, he's Osgood Fielding III, the playboy millionaire who romances Daphne. It's the fourth-biggest part, but Curtis is the show's headliner; as the movie's sole surviving principal, he connects the musical to its source. The tour, says producer and general manager Rich Martini, ''would not have happened without him.'' Martini attributes ''a big chunk of its success'' to Curtis's presence in the cast.

Curtis is enjoying himself onstage, but that wasn't always the case. ''The original producers did me dirt,'' he says. ''I wasn't able to get enough rehearsals. The wardrobe wasn't the way I wanted it to be. I wasn't a singer, a dancer, and I had to hire some people to help me. We had only three weeks to prepare. I didn't even know the part yet! ... But we worked at it, it evolved, and now my Osgood Fielding is a really intriguing fellow. Eccentric, handsome millionaire: There isn't anything in the world he can't have.... It's typecasting!''

The tour opened in Houston, in June, and ends in Portland, Ore., in May. ''I'm having a lot of fun,'' Curtis says. ''I come on and I do it without doing it, you know?''

He displays a similar nonchalance taking the tour at Graceland. Not even the Jungle Room fazes him. ''Neat,'' Curtis says. ''Intriguing.'' Just once does polite interest turn into something greater. At the end of the Trophy Building, there's life-size oil of Elvis. A candidate for the National Gallery it's not. Yet Curtis, an artist whose own paintings have been shown in museums and galleries, lingers over it. He asks the guide several questions, then excitedly turns to his wife, who joined him during the Graceland tour. ''Jilly, Jilly, that's by Ralph Wolfe Cowan. Remember the guy? He did my portrait, too.'' On canvas, no less than on the back lot at Paramount, stardom is its own fraternity.

The tour ends in the Meditation Garden, with the gravesites of Elvis and his parents. Tony Curtis, survivor, respectfully regards the scene before posing for photographs with his wife. Taking aside a reporter, he recalls some advice a stuntman once gave him about action movies. ''He said, `Never walk if you can run. And never run if you can fly.' I use that as a modus operandi.''

Original "Masters" of Elvis's Presley first records
are for sale. For details of the sale

Click here!

Third peek at Clinton library collection in the works
By Elisa Crouch - Arkansas Democrat Gazette, AR

In Little Rock, Christmas 2003 will ring with Bill Clinton and the King.

A third preview of the Clinton presidential collection will showcase collectors’ books, gifts from all 50 states and a sample of Elvis Presley memorabilia.

Five days before the "Holidays in the White House" exhibit closes in the River Market District, presidential library planners announced Monday that they are already working on the next one, which will open in the Cox Creative Center on Nov. 24.

Called "America Presents: A Collection of Gifts and Books to the Clinton Presidency," the future exhibit will be the final preview before the William J. Clinton Presidential Center opens its doors in the fall of 2004. "Everyone has advised me not to do another one of these things," said Skip Rutherford, president of the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation, surrounded by the current exhibit’s Christmas trees and photographs.

After all, Rutherford noted, archivists indexing Clinton’s materials will be busy helping put together the library’s permanent displays.

Despite all of the work ahead, Rutherford, a public relations executive, said he couldn’t resist a little more marketing. "The more we could talk about this library in advance, the more we could do to promote this neighborhood, we should do," he said.

Organizers have found that the preview exhibits give visitors a better idea of what to expect when the presidential library opens. The facility will include a museum, an archive, the Clinton School for Public Service and a policy school. Its steel form is taking shape on a 28-acre city park east of the River Market District.

Beyond its museum and educational components, the Clinton library also will serve as a place to store — and for historians to study — the former president’s White House documents and memorabilia — not a place where visitors can thumb through books.

With access restricted to such items, the preview exhibits offer a rare opportunity for the public to see pieces of history that have been amassed during the Clinton years.

The "America Presents" exhibit will feature a variety of crafts and folk art, as well as several pieces from Clinton’s Elvis collection. "You know, President Clinton’s Secret Service code name was Elvis," Rutherford said.

The former president’s Elvis collection tops several hundred pieces — gifts from friends and other folks who heard Clinton was a big fan of the Memphis Flash. "I have some great pictures, including the famous one of Elvis on the train from Tupelo to Memphis," Clinton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazettein November 2001. "I also have a scarf he autographed at a 1971 concert."

Other items include an Elvis Presley phone, a book of Elvis recipes, the King’s cookie-jar piano and a clock featuring Presley in a blue plaid shirt, blue pants and blue suede shoes.

Clinton’s Elvis assemblage is a mere fraction of the 625 tons of material he collected during his eight years in the White House, which includes 100 million pages of documents, 2 million photographs and more than 75,000 artifacts.

Since "Holidays in the White House" opened Nov. 11, about 11,600 visitors have dropped by, volunteers say. "Exhibits like this are very important for us," said Bobby Roberts, director of the Central Arkansas Library System, which operates the Cox Creative Center, 120 Commerce St. "Anything we can do to cooperate with the new library coming to town, we want to do that."

Mayor Jim Dailey said the Clinton library preview exhibits provide a forecast of the crowds the Clinton Presidential Center will draw. Last year, more than 12,000 walked through the first preview exhibit. This time around, visitors from numerous countries and 47 states have signed the exhibit’s guest book. "We still haven’t had anyone from Hawaii, Alaska or Vermont," said Lynda Dixon, a Clinton foundation volunteer.

'The King's' Car Puts In An Appearance
An appearance by a limousine once owned by Elvis Presley highlights the opening of the 2003 Philadelphia International Auto Show, which is now under way in Philadelphia.

Full Story

Elvis track named as 'world-shaker'
Ananova - January 13, 2003

Click here!
SUN 209
... Elvis Presley – That’s All Right (45rpm)

Elvis Presley's 50-year-old classic That's All Right has been named the song that shook the world.

The track, which was his first release and which many say gave the world rock'n'roll, was chosen by the experts and musicians as the most influential track yet made.

The Beatles are the highest-ranking British act for the song which cracked the US, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, which is at number two in the list for a special edition of Q magazine.

That's All Right, recorded in 1954, was never actually released as a single in the UK but the Elvis's delivery started his musical career in the US on a high.

American music bible Billboard called the singer "a potent new chanter who comes through with a solid performance" in their review of the track, which he recorded for his mother.

Music legend Bob Dylan, who recorded the song himself three times in the Sixties said: "When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that nobody was going to be my boss. It was like busting out of jail."

God Save The Queen by The Sex Pistols, a song largely banned by radio stations, came third in the list. The punk classic, a call to arms for disaffected youth, was given a 25-year anniversary makeover last year.

The most recent song on the list is My Name Is by Eminem from 1999 which is at 37.

Other Nineties tracks to make the grade include Sir Elton John's Candle In The Wind '97 at 50, Firestarter by Prodigy from 1996 (91), Wannabe by the Spice Girls from 1996 (23) and Oasis's 1994 single Live Forever (78).

Top ten of Q’s 100 Songs That Changed The World:

1. Elvis Presley – That’s All Right.

2. The Beatles – I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

3. Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen.

4. Sugarhill Gang – Rapper’s Delight.

5. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit.

6. Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit.

7. Bob Dylan – Like A Rolling Stone.

8. Run DMC – Walk This Way.

9. New Order – Blue Monday.

10. Band Aid – Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Elvis Presley Reissues Chronicle Phases Of His Career
LAUNCH Yahoo! - 01/13/2003

(1/13/03, 7 a.m. ET) -- To coincide with Elvis Presley's recent 68th birthday, RCA/BMG Heritage has released four essential Presley reissue compilations that chronicle various phases of his career.

Longtime Presley friend Diamond Joe Esposito explained that the most important thing to remember about Presley is his music. "Overall, the most important thing that I want people to remember Elvis about is his music and how he made them feel when he sang," Esposito said.

Each of the reissue discs represents a key segment of Presley's musical career--seminal early tracks are included on Elvis 56; love songs make up the tracks on Heart And Soul; Hollywood hits highlight Can't Help Falling In Love; and classic country is heard on Great Country Songs.

The releases have been mixed and mastered directly from the original source tapes using DSD technology, and each one features rare photos and expansive liner notes.

Elvis 56 returns to the year 1956--a remarkable year for Presley, when he spent a full 26 weeks of the year at Number One, selling 12.5 million singles and 2.75 million albums in the U.S. alone. The disc features 22 tracks including "Hound Dog," "Tutti Frutti," "Shake, Rattle And Roll," "Ready Teddy," "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," and "Heartbreak Hotel," including a previously unreleased alternate version of that song.

Heart And Soul also contains 22 tracks featuring Presley's most romantic ballads and love songs, such as "Love Me Tender," "Can't Help Falling In Love," "It's Now Or Never," "Always On My Mind," "Suspicious Minds," "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me," and "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

Can't Help Falling In Love - The Hollywood Hits features songs from the 33 movies Presley made between 1956 and 1972. Tracks include "Jailhouse Rock," "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear," "Rock-A-Hula Baby," "Return To Sender," "Viva Las Vegas," and "Roustabout."

Great Country Songs takes Presley back to his roots, highlighting such classic tracks as "Blue Moon Of Kentucky," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Kentucky Rain," "Green, Green Grass Of Home," and "He'll Have To Go."

-- Sue Falco, New York

Hot Sounds: Four new Elvis compilations
The Commercial Appeal - January 11, 2003

Elvis 56
RCA/BMG Heritage

Heart & Soul
RCA/BMG Heritage

Great Country Songs
RCA/BMG Heritage

Can't Help Falling in Love - The Hollywood Hits
RCA/BMG Heritage

Add four compilations to the endless list of Elvis Presley product. Building on the multiplatinum success that "Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits" has generated - and released this week to coincide with what would have been the King's 68th birthday on Wednesday - are the single-disc anthologies "Elvis 56," "Heart & Soul," "Great Country Songs" and "Can't Help Falling in Love - The Hollywood Hits."

The titles are self-explanatory, genre wrap-ups of the singer's many sides from rock and country to love ballads and film tunes. The records also inaugurate RCA's new streamlined approach to Presley's catalog, whereby product has been upgraded through both remastered sound from original source tapes and new packaging that will help consolidate the bounty of releases internationally.

How do they sound? Wonderful. If you picked up "Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits," you know that this latest remastering makes the music as present and alive as it has ever been. And at more than 20 tracks a disc, each record - three with bonus material - presents a full, classy portrait.

"Elvis 56" contains 22 sides from his first year after leaving Sun for RCA, including alternative takes of Shake, Rattle and Roll and Heartbreak Hotel; the ballads collection, "Heart & Soul," features the first stereo releases of Love Me Tender and I've Lost You; and "Great Country Songs," which leads off with several Sun classics, has five previously unreleased alternative takes including first takes of Green, Green Grass of Home and There Goes My Everything. Only "Can't Help Falling in Love - The Hollywood Hits" eschews bonus tracks, though it does distill the most inconsistent part of Presley's career down to the chestnuts.

RCA knows that Presley fans will do anything to get closer to their object of affection, and that means investing in just about every available altered format of the performer's music. These new releases, presented with care, scholarship and sonic improvement, make perhaps the strongest case yet for the continued reissues. At the same time, fitting Presley's catalog into such obvious categories does something of an injustice to a man whose legacy is without category.

- Bill Ellis

RCA Presents Worldwide Gold and Platinum Awards
Joe DiMuro, RCA Records, joined EPE CEO Jack Soden in welcoming fans from all over the world in attendance at Wednesday's Elvis Presley Proclamation and Record Awards Presentation on the lawn at Graceland. Awards from 27 territories ranging from gold to triple platinum were carried onstage and displayed. For complete information on these awards, click here!

Fans from all ages and all places joined in Memphis for the 2003 Elvis Birthday Celebration. In addition to the Proclamation and Record Awards Presentation, highlights include the Collectors Club Reception and the Fan Club President's Event.

Fans Celebrate Elvis Presley's Birthday
By WOODY BAIRD, Associated Press Writer

MEMPHIS, Tennessee - Christine Lewis wrapped herself in the flag — an Elvis flag — to celebrate what would have been the King of Rock 'n' Roll's 68th birthday.

Lewis, 52, of Somerset, England, was among 600 to 700 fans gathered Wednesday on the front lawn of Graceland, Elvis Presley last residence, to cut a cake and sing "Happy Birthday." Celebrants stood in line up to 1 1/2 hours to get onto the grounds for the party.

"I could imagine him being here. I cried so much," Lewis said.

For the occasion, she wrapped herself in a flag with red and blue stripes and white stars. Inside the largest star, in the center of the flag, was an image of Presley.

Lewis and several traveling companions stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel, which is across the street from Graceland and part of the Elvis estate's sprawling layout of gift shops and museums.

"It's all been so wonderful. Very moving," she said.

Doreen Jones, 67, and husband, Trevor, 66, traveled from Southport, England. As is common for fans from abroad, they also took side pilgrimages to Tupelo, Mississippi, the small town where Presley was born, and to Nashville.

It was Mrs. Jones' first visit to Graceland, which was decorated by Presley with almost as much flash as one of his bespangled jumpsuits.

"It was absolutely marvelous, the atmosphere and the colors," she said.

Presley's grave is in a small garden beside Graceland, but Mrs. Jones was unable to talk about that part of the tour. "I just can't," she said, her voice breaking as her eyes filled with tears.

She was quickly comforted by other fans.

For the birthday, Graceland managers cut a blue and white cake before a display of framed gold and platinum awards for "Elvis 30 1 Hits," an album released last year on the 25th anniversary of the singer's death.

The album has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide and the awards were from 27 countries, including the United States.

The anniversary of Presley's birth on Jan. 8, 1935, draws several hundred fans each year and this year's crowd was somewhat larger. By contrast, a weeklong commemoration of the anniversary of his Aug. 16, 1977, death attracts 20,000 or more.

Presley died at age 42 of heart disease and drug abuse.

Sherrye Scott, 50, a local fan, sported an Elvis concert jacket and Elvis T-shirt decorated with a sparkling teddy bear pin.

Scott said she often stood outside the Graceland gates when Elvis was alive trying to get a glimpse of him.

She still remembers the day in 1969 when he came down from Graceland to talk with her and other fans.

"We got kisses, hugs and autographs," Scott said. "He loved his fans. He was so giving."

Presentation of Gold and Platinum Awards for ELV1S 30 #1 HITS
------------------------------------------------------------------ EPE 1/8/2003

Following is the list of gold and platinum awards for ELV1S 30 #1 HITS to be presented at Graceland today during the Elvis Presley Day proclamation ceremony. Note that sales requirements for gold or platinum status vary from country to country.

Africa - Platinum (over 50,000 sold)

Austria - Platinum (over 40,000 sold)

Australia - Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Belgium - Platinum (over 50,000 sold)

Brazil - Double Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Canada – Six Times Platinum (over 600,000 sold)

Chile - Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Denmark - Platinum (over 50,000 sold)

Finland - Double Platinum (over 60,000 sold)

Germany - Not labeled gold or platinum (over 300,000 sold)

Hong Kong - Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Italy - Platinum (over 100,000 sold)

Japan - Platinum (over 250,000 sold)

Korea - Gold (# units not noted on award)

Mexico - Gold (# units not noted on award)

Netherlands - Platinum (over 80,000 sold)

New Zealand - Triple Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Norway - Platinum (over 40,000 sold)

Portugal - Gold (over 20,000 sold)

Singapore - Triple Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Spain - Double Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Sweden - Double Platinum (over 120,000 sold)

Switzerland – Platinum for A Little Less Conversation (JXL Remix) (over 40,000 sold) on same award with Double Platinum for ELV1S 30 #1 HITS (over 80,000 sold)

Taiwan - Platinum (# units not noted on award)

Thailand - Platinum (# units not noted on award)

United Kingdom - Triple Platinum (over 900,000 sold)

United States - Triple Platinum (over 3 million sold)

A gold or platinum award from France is expected, but for some reason has not for today’s presentation. Gold and platinum from other countries could come in the weeks ahead. Upgrades to gold and platinum status in various countries could come as sales continue. So far, nearly 9 million units of ELVIS 30 #1 HITS have been shipped to retailers around the world.

Tampa music producer buys Elvis' grand piano for $685,000
(Associated Press) January 8, 2003

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- When it comes to pianos, Elvis Presley isn't the king -- but he's close.

A white grand piano once used by Elvis to jam with "The Killer,'' Jerry Lee Lewis, sold this week to the tune of $685,000.

That's more than the 1999 auction price of $662,500 for Marilyn Monroe's baby grand piano but less than the $2.1 million paid in 2000 by British pop star George Michael for the piano on which Beatle John Lennon composed the song "Imagine.''

Memphis guitarist and music producer Robert A. Johnson and partner Larry Moss sold the Knabe grand piano Monday to a Tampa, Fla., music producer who hopes to put the piano on a casino-sponsored promotional tour, then turn it into an exhibit in a proposed Don Kirshner rock museum in Disney World.

Michael Muzio, chairman of Blue Moon Group Inc. in Tampa, also acquired Johnson's Memphis Music label. He said has projects in the works with musicians Cheap Trick, Eddie Money and the Bar-Kays. The sale also included several other pieces of rock memorabilia, including an Elvis guitar.

Muzio said he paid a total of $1.3 million for the properties, including Memphis Music, which will be merged with his company. He also owns the dance-band label Nebulous Records and the hip-hop label Blue Moon Records. He said Johnson will remain as president of Memphis Music, which will be ``more of a rock label.''

The sale came the same week as Elvis's 68th birthday celebration. His birthday is Wednesday.

The piano was originally used from the early 1930s to 1957 in Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, where it was played by such artists as W. C. Handy, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Cab Calloway.

Graceland memorabilia consultant John Heath said Elvis bought the piano after he bought Graceland and used it until 1969, when his wife gave him a new Steinway grand piano for his 34th birthday.

Elvis friend George Klein said Elvis loved to play the piano at home rather than guitar and often played for family and friends. He said one of the most memorable moments at the Knabe grand came one night soon after Elvis's return from his stint in the Army.

"Elvis had rented a theater and we were planning to go out when (Sun Studio founder) Sam Phillips called,'' Klein said. "He said he and Jerry Lee (Lewis) were in the neighborhood and asked if they could drop by.''

In the days before home video cameras, the historic moment was not recorded. But Klein and others watched as Elvis and Lewis played together on the piano for more than an hour.

"When Jerry Lee left, Elvis kept sitting there saying, 'That guy's a genius, a genius.'''

Elvis Convention 2003 In Randers Denmark

April 5th will be the date when Elvis Unlimited Convention will take place in Randers, Denmark. This years Convention will be totally different from all the other Elvis shows that have been in Denmark. The overall tema for this show will be the 30th anniversary for the "Aloha From Hawaii" show. The basic song line up will be from the legendary show, plus of cause many more songs.

Our special guests this year will be The TCB Band and The Sweet Inspirations. There will not be only one lead singer at this show, but a good handful of great Danish and international singers. The profit from the show will directly to the Danish children cancer foundation.

The ticket price will be 360.- Danish Kroners. Please call +45 8642 9696 or e-mail:info@elvispresley.dk for more information.

Elvis Unlimited

Store Voldgade 16
8900 Randers
Denmark
Tel. +45 8642 9696
Fax. +45 8642 8484

Elvis Presley's greatest hits collection has become his biggest selling album.

On the eve of what would have been The King's 68th birthday, record firm BMG said Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits had beaten his previous best, the Elvis Christmas Album.

His number one hits package has sold more than nine million copies around the world.

The Christmas release - first issued in 1957 and re-released in 1973 - has not yet topped the eight million level.

Darren Henderson of BMG said: "This rounds up a phenomenal year for Elvis Presley proving that his music is indeed timeless.

"A new generation has discovered Elvis Presley and we look forward to continue supporting the influential role that Presley plays in music and culture."

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Presley's death and saw him notch up a posthumous number one with "A Little Less Conversation". It was his 18th number one, edging him ahead of The Beatles' 17.

BMG shakin' with DVD-Audio format
By Chris Marlowe

LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Following its market trial of Elvis Presley (news)'s "Elvis 30 #1 Hits" in DVD-Audio, BMG has announced its support for the format. The global music division of Bertelsmann AG is planning to release 12 or more DVD-A titles this year and ramp up production after that.

The Presley compilation debuted in the top spot of the relevant charts when it came out Sept. 24 as a regular CD and again Dec. 10 as a DVD-A. As of last month, Presley's DVD-A had sold about 15,000 copies, nearly half of which were in the United States.

"We are pleased to bring our artists and their music to fans in this exciting format," BMG chief operating officer Michael Smellie said. "DVD-Audio provides consumers with a new level of musical entertainment with both exceptional sound quality and a compelling visual experience."

Of the major labels, BMG, Warner, Universal and EMI now have DVD-A releases in their catalog. Analysts say DVD-A represents a noticeable improvement in sound quality over CDs. Recordings in the format are also far more difficult to copy, a characteristic that makes them an attractive alternative to CDs from the music industry's point of view.

DVD-A discs provide uncompressed, multichannel, high-definition audio, typically at 24-bit, 129 kHz sampled audio, compared with 16 bits and 44.1 kHz for CDs. Additionally, DVD-A enables a greater dynamic range because it can support a higher quality of pulse-coded modulation. They can also display video, graphics and text on a compatible device.

On the negative side, these discs cannot be played in a standard CD player. The vast majority of them will play flawlessly in an ordinary DVD video player, however, and there are specialized players on the market.

Adding to the potential confusion, there is a standard called Super Audio CD, or SACD, competing to replace the CD. Developed by Sony and Philips -- the same team that came up with the CD 20 years ago -- SACD also provides significantly better sound quality and visual capabilities in a harder-to-copy format; it even has an embedded watermark. It does this by recording the analog signal at a high (2.8224 MHz) sampling frequency and converting it to 1-bit data.

Sony has been joined by Virgin, Telarc, DMP and other labels in releasing SACD recordings since the format launched in 2000. They take advantage of disc capacity to add a hybrid version so that they can be used in existing CD players, though the improvements are only possible on a specialized player.

BMG is the global music division of Bertelsmann AG. It owns more than 200 record labels in 42 countries, including Ariola, Arista Records, J Records, Jive Records, RCA Records and RCA Label Group -- Nashville.

Collectors are all shook up over fake Elvis stuff
By BROOKS BARNES, The Associated Press - 1/6/03 9:03 AM

The Wall Street Journal

The sequins are coming off the Elvis Presley memorabilia market.

Thanks to hype surrounding the 25th anniversary of the singer's death last August, the King of Rock 'n' Roll is enjoying the biggest financial success of his posthumous career. But all the attention is sending a torrent of fake concert posters, alleged handwritten lyrics, stage outfits and other Elvis collectibles cascading onto the estimated $250 million market for his memorabilia, experts say.

Top auctioneers including Sotheby's Holdings Inc. and Christie's International have had to pull so-called Elvis items on the eve of sales or refund money to buyers when the items were later shown to be fake; Christie's alone confirms that since 2000, it has refunded about $26,000 to buyers of questionable Elvis memorabilia.

The proliferation of fakes is so great that the San Francisco-based auction house Butterfields says it has considerably curtailed its acceptance of Elvis consignments. Butterfields pioneered the big-money Elvis market, holding the first major auction of Elvis memorabilia ever in 1994, and two more later in the decade, setting records like $63,000 for the King's old American Express card and $26,480 for his sunglasses. "The problem is that rock memorabilia has gotten so expensive that it's worth it to fake items," says Catherine Williamson, head of entertainment memorabilia for Butterfields.

Fakes are causing headaches for more celebrities these days, partly because the universe of what passes for "memorabilia" keeps expanding. "There's really no limit to what crazed fans will pay money for," says Tim Luke, a Jupiter, Fla., dealer and Sothebys.com affiliate. Indeed, Christie's sold a scrapbook containing a piece of John Lennon's uneaten toast for about $1,900 several years ago, and one of Carol Channing's eyelashes sold at auction last year for $75.

Fake items abound in this world; hundreds of supposed John Lennon autographs actually postdate his 1980 death. But Elvis "is the worst," Mr. Luke says. Beyond the sheer volume and variety of odd King collectibles -- a set of birthing forceps supposedly used to deliver him sold on eBay this fall for $600 -- Elvis himself was generous, giving away thousands of belongings during his lifetime. Complicating matters further, his executors never comprehensively cataloged what he owned. When Elvis, who would have turned 68 on Wednesday, died in 1977, entertainment memorabilia was largely viewed as garage-sale flotsam. As a result, says a spokesman for the estate, scores of items simply "wandered out" of the star's home.

Today's megastars are taking note. Madonna, for one, recently hired a team to catalog her memorabilia, in large part to guard against fakes sinking her collectability in the future. (She started getting serious about the effort after the Hard Rock Cafe trumpeted ownership of one of her molars; she says one isn't missing. Hard Rock declined to comment on the dental dispute.) Darlene Lutz, the singer's art adviser, says her team is archiving items with a computerized cataloging system similar to those used by museums. The white wedding gown Madonna donned in 1984 for her "Like a Virgin" MTV awards performance was among the first entries. "She knows it's her only shot at controlling what happens to everything," Ms. Lutz says.

For its part, Graceland, the Memphis headquarters of the Elvis Presley estate, says it's seen a dramatic spike in requests from collectors to help determine what's real. But rendering opinions on what's authentic and isn't, says Graceland lawyer William R. Bradley, "would open us up to all kinds of liability." What's more, Graceland trimmed its budget in 2002 due to a downturn in foreign tourists, leaving the estate with a staff of three archivists, down from five. "We're overloaded," a spokesman says.

Experts say the proliferation of fakes is dragging down prices for authentic Elvis memorabilia. One notable example: The "Sun 209," the first 45 Elvis recorded for the tiny Sun Studios, traded for $2,500 three years ago. But prices have sunk to around $1,500 since unscrupulous dealers started peddling bootlegged re-releases as originals. (The real 45s have three circular indentations called "push marks" under the label that form a triangle -- but the re-releases are otherwise nearly identical.)

Items without pristine ownership histories are increasingly going unsold on the auction block. In October, Florida collector Bill Williams put up for auction a guitar some experts believe is the first instrument Elvis ever played. But because Mr. Williams didn't have hard evidence backing up the claim -- a photo of Elvis playing it, for example -- no one bought it.

"Fakes are making buyers incredibly leery," says John Heath, a leading Elvis collector and appraiser in Marion, Ark. He recently paid $12,000 for several 1956 concert handbills he saw on eBay that he says turned out to be "unequivocally bogus." (Among other problems, he discovered a handbill was never printed for Elvis's 1956 concert at the New Frontier Casino in Las Vegas, although he had bought one.) Kevin Pursglove, a spokesman for eBay, says the firm never vouches for authenticity, instead leaving the issue "entirely between buyers and sellers."

One particularly troublesome collectors' niche: autographs by the King. Boston manuscript dealer Kenneth Rendell, a longtime handwriting expert by profession, estimates that 95 percent of the Elvis autographs currently listed on online auctions are forgeries. Dealers sometimes offer handwritten lyrics to Presley's famous songs but they're almost always fake, he says. It turns out: "Elvis absolutely hated to write."

Certainly, some Elvis items are holding their value. The King's elaborate jumpsuits sell for around $100,000 each. (Up-close concert photos help prove he actually wore them; he also perspired so profusely in his later years that many are sweat-stained.) Only a few dozen posters for his 1970s concerts are known to exist and are valued at about $20,000 in good condition. And a signed program from a 1950s national tour he did with a group of bands -- he wasn't headlining yet -- can bring $1,200, according to Mr. Luke, president of TreasureQuest Auction Galleries.

Still, even experts can be fooled: In September, Mr. Luke put a gold record for the Elvis song "Promised Land" up for bids on Sothebys.com. But a potential bidder tipped him off that Elvis's 1975 recording of that song never went gold. Mr. Luke checked and yanked the item from the sale. Sotheby's declines to comment on Elvis fakes, but a spokeswoman confirms that it is currently investigating a recent claim from one buyer that a $60,000 dinner jacket allegedly worn by the King might not have been.

With all the bogus material floating around, some vigilant collectors are taking extra steps to verify their prizes' authenticity. After Healther Mozart paid $5,500 at Christie's in 1999 for a pink and black 1955 jacket worn and autographed by Elvis, the San Francisco collector hired a Michigan laboratory that uses chemicals to date materials. The results: The ink was from the 1980s. She says she demanded a refund and got it. (Christie's confirms the incident.) "I'm not one of those people who believe Elvis was still around signing things in the '80s."

Did Elvis succomb to tour veto?
By G. Brown - The Denver Post

Speculation lays blame on Parker

Sunday, January 05, 2003 - Fresh from the smash success of the "Elvis 30 #1 Hits" collection, which has sold more than 8 million copies to date worldwide, fans are imagining a 68-year-old Elvis Presley. He would have turned that age on Wednesday.

The question still remains: How did another image of "the King" - the ballooning waistline, a prisoner to prescription drugs - hold residence alongside the young, sleek rebel who changed the face of music in the '50s? In 1977, he died at the age of 42 in his Memphis mansion. The death certificate said heart attack. The tedium of a crushing routine would be nearer the truth.

It all started in the early '70s, when Elvis had taken on the beast of Las Vegas.

"His manager, the late Col. Tom Parker, was very afraid of security measures. That's why he started Elvis' comeback in Vegas, as opposed to going on tour. He wanted a secure environment, where he could control things," RCA Records historian Ernst Jorgensen said recently.

Mostly, Presley stayed put in his penthouse kingdom. The result was a profound inner loneliness, and Vegas turned into a slippery slope. Despite declining health, he maintained a full schedule of live appearances. When he made his final, awful descent, he was a compromised performer.

"It's a damn shame," band member Glen D. Hardin told Mojo magazine. "Things might have turned out differently for him if he'd been able to tour the world. I think he would've put himself in tip-top shape, and really enjoyed it, just to be in a different place, and have some different food, and meet some different people.

"What's crazy is that all of us worked with other people, and we were traveling all over the world, and he didn't. He couldn't. That was all wrong."

In his brusque manner, the colonel vetoed the notion of touring internationally time and again, citing obstacles such as tax problems, security issues and production details. And Parker, nee Andreas Cornelis van Kujik, hid the fact that he was an undocumented alien.

"But I sincerely doubt that America would have made any problem for its most famous artist's manager so he couldn't get back into the country. He'd been there since 1929. I don't think they would suddenly throw him out," Jorgensen said.

At the time, the colonel tried to do what he knew how to do. He had absolutely no experience in what it would require to take an entourage like Elvis' around the world. That would have been one stumbling block.

Traveling and crossing borders in the early '70s, when most musicians had some supply of something that they shouldn't have, may have also scared the colonel.

"And it could have been Elvis himself. There's a tendency to blame everything that was wrong with his career on the colonel, and everything that was great on Elvis," Jorgensen said. "That's a little too comfortable. I believe that if Elvis had really wanted it, it would have happened. He didn't want it enough to overrule the colonel and say, 'Well, this is what I need to do.' It wasn't that he couldn't stand up to the colonel. There were other instances where he definitely did so.

"We can't ask the colonel. And if we could have, he wouldn't have answered, anyway. Historians like to have that single simple explanation that cuts through everything, but I don't think it's here - it's a number of elements put together. Had Elvis lived for another 20 years, he probably would have toured abroad."

What else might Elvis be doing if he were alive today? He considered his singing career primarily as a means to an end. His real ambition was to be a movie star.

"Hopefully, he'd have been doing some incredible acting roles, which he had been pushing for," said "Diamond Joe" Esposito, one of Elvis' close confidants who spent 2002 plugging his "Elvis: His Best Friend Remembers" VHS and DVD.

"He really wanted to be a serious actor. His creative disappointment led to his unhappiness."

Because of studio pressures and Parker's greedy shortsightedness, Elvis made 33 mostly forgettable movies that left him largely thwarted in what he had hoped would be an important motion-picture career.

He recorded his fair share of lazy, thoughtless songs for them. Forty years ago this month, at a session in Hollywood, he cut not only "No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car" but also "You Can't Say No in Acapulco."

So it is easy to overlook just how many great songs were originally written for Elvis' movies, from early classics like "Jailhouse Rock," "Teddy Bear," "Love Me Tender" and "Can't Help Falling in Love" through such later gems as "Viva Las Vegas" and "Wooden Heart."

Check out "Can't Help Falling in Love," a collection of Hollywood hits, one of four single-CDs to be reissued on Tuesday that chronicle key areas of Presley's career. The other genre-based titles are "Heart and Soul" (love songs), "Elvis 56" (seminal early tracks) and "Great Country Songs."

Lisa Marie Presley's Debut Album Due In April
Yahoo Daily News

Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie Presley (news) is following in her father's footsteps: Her debut solo album is due out April 8 via Capitol Records, according to her official website (lisapresley.com). The 34-year-old singer penned all of the songs on the collection.

The project has been in the works for several years. Producer and label head Glen Ballard told us nearly three years ago that Presley's debut would be a diverse offering: "I think that it's a pop record, but it also has elements of blues, funk, country, R&B, hip-hop--it's sort of the confluence of whatever modern-day Memphis is right now." He added, "It has a lot of influences, and it continues to grow and evolve. It sort of grew up in the soil from which she sprang."

Elvis rode high on charts, at box office in 2002
By Michael Lollar, The Commercial Appeal - January 4, 2003

Elvis Presley, who would have been 68 next week, is the rare performer who could have a hit single, a hit album and a hit movie in a single year - all a quarter-century after his death.

As Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises celebrate the birthday Wednesday, they will be reaping the rewards of last summer's "banner" 25th anniversary tribute to Elvis and looking ahead to entertaining a new generation of Elvis fans.

The birthday celebration opens today and ends Wednesday with a ceremony that includes gold and platinum record presentations from more than 21 countries for the album "Elv1s: 30 #1 Hits." The album went triple-platinum with more than 3 million sales in the United States and more than 8 million sales worldwide.

The album was part of a confluence of Elvis projects that just happened to fall within the same year. It began in the spring when Nike Europe asked EPE for rights to commission a remix of an obscure Elvis song, A Little Less Conversation, as part of a World Cup soccer promotion. When the ad was released, the song caught on and suddenly became a dance-club hit and the No. 1 song in Britain and much of the rest of Europe.

The 25th anniversary tribute drew more than 75,000 fans to Memphis for "death week" events with national media, including the Today show, in town. Graceland spokesman Todd Morgan said Graceland had expected widespread national interest in the 25th anniversary, but the unexpected success of the dance-club number in the spring "kicked everything into higher gear than anyone expected."

"It sort of set a tone for a lot of the media coverage by creating attention for Elvis's work. Sometimes his music gets lost in crazy stories or sensational books, but the song drew attention to the very thing that made Elvis what he was - his music. Here's a guy gone for 25 years with a hit song all over Europe. People came to Memphis thinking, 'OK, he's really not going away. Maybe we'd better have another look.' "

Then there was the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch, with Elvis a running theme.

The Harris Poll conducted a nationwide survey on the Internet just before the 25th anniversary last year, finding that 34 percent of Americans considered themselves Elvis fans, 10 percent had visited Graceland, and 17 million (8 percent) have attempted an Elvis impersonation.

At EPE, CEO Jack Soden said this year's birthday and death-week tributes won't try to match the 25th anniversary phenomenon. "That would be like asking what The Pyramid will do this year to follow the world championship fight last year."

But the success of the 25th anniversary left Graceland feeling like an Oscar winner. "You win an Oscar and you start seeing better scripts and more opportunities," says Soden, who is looking forward to the next "just right" remix of an Elvis song. "It makes you aware that another one would be great fun, but a bad remix would do more harm than good. Numerous remixes have already been listened to and rejected."

Morgan said the combined effect of 2002 Elvis events "set the stage for a new era" by attracting not only a broader fan base but also several potential entertainment projects. Projects coming up this year include releases of "ultimate editions" of Elvis's 1968 TV special and his 1973 Aloha from Hawaii concert.

Coming in 2004 will be the 50th anniversary of Elvis's career, which began with the 1954 release of his first song, That's All Right Mama. Morgan said EPE hopes to release "the ultimate documentary of Elvis's life" during that year.

For fans who want to celebrate Elvis's birthday, some of the main events include:

Today: Elvis Fan Club Presidents' Banquet and Dance at The Peabody Grand Ballroom, 6 p.m.

Sunday: 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. gospel brunch at Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant. Evening tours of Graceland, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Monday: Tenth anniversary commemoration of the Elvis stamp issued in 1993. There will be a 10:30 a.m. ceremony at Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant. Two special cachets, envelopes honoring the Elvis stamp and the "ELV1S: 30 #1 Hits" album, will be issued by the Memphis post office and available in Graceland shops and the postal station in Graceland Plaza across from Graceland.

Tuesday: Elvis Collectors Club Graceland tour and reception, 5:30 to 9 p.m. At 7:30 p.m. Stan Perkins, son of rockabilly legend Carl Perkins, will perform at Elvis Presley's Memphis.

Wednesday: 11:45 a.m. Elvis Presley Day proclamation ceremony with city and county officials on the front lawn of Graceland and a ceremony by BMG/RCA records awarding gold and platinum records for worldwide sales of the latest Elvis album. From 2 to 4 p.m. there is an open house at Presley Place, the charitable organization for the homeless. From 5 to 6:30 p.m., novelist and short story writer Bobbie Ann Mason reads from and signs her new short biography of Elvis Presley (Viking-Penguin Lives, $19.95) at Burke's Book Store, 1719 Poplar. Call 278-7484.

Elvis revealed: Southern author captures key moments in the King's life
By Alan Bostick, The Tennessean - January 04, 2003

There are those who'll want to know why best-selling Kentucky novelist Bobbie Ann Mason, author of such acclaimed titles as Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country, decided to add to the massive library already devoted to that singer from Memphis.

''I feel that it's not academic and it's not critical, and it's not a critical authority on the music. I didn't do any of those,'' Mason said. ''I was trying to present a closer view of what it was like for Elvis to be Elvis. Who was he? What shaped him and why did he do what he did?''

Presley enthusiasts know that he would have turned 68 years old this coming Wednesday. He was born Jan. 8, 1935, in East Tupelo, Miss.

The latest addition to Viking's ongoing Penguin Lives biography series, which numbers more than two dozen books, Elvis Presley: A Penguin Life is a small book containing a modest 178 pages. Speaking from her home in Kentucky, the soft-spoken Mason said the book, despite its size, is not intended ''just to be short bios like Cliff Notes or something, but more a writer's approach.''

At some point the novelist, not surprisingly, hit upon a ''novelistic'' approach, which she went on to define.

''What I tried to do, in order to illuminate Elvis, was to choose various moments in his life that appealed to me as being very revealing or central, moments that a novelist would choose where there would be description and feeling. I felt I could take moments like that and bring something to it.''

One such moment, she explained, was her analysis in the book of a photograph of Elvis, in his Army uniform, eating breakfast with his father and grandmother while living in Germany. ''I was very captivated by that, because it revealed so much to me about the loss of his mother. I really zeroed in on the table, because it was so Southern.''

Here's part of that passage: ''They're in Germany, but the characters in the picture have brought Memphis with them. On the table, near the milk carton, is a tin of McCormick's black pepper. Like many Southerners, Elvis topped his plate of food with a thick layer of pepper. The pepper tin on the table was a familiar sight in the South. The pepper was never transferred to a pepper shaker but remained in its homely package because it had more holes — perfect for crop-dusting the plate.''

Here as elsewhere, Mason related to Elvis at a personal level. She said of the tin of pepper: ''I recognized it. It was on our kitchen table all my life. My dad used to pepper the whole plate the same way Elvis did.''

Such ''moments,'' she thought, were fertile ground for her own creative forays into Elvis' self and world.

Another important element in the Elvis story, and one she feels may have been somewhat overlooked, is the family's move in Memphis to a ranch house on Audubon Drive, which preceded the more celebrated residence of Graceland. Mason spoke of the house as a special accomplishment for the family, one that later could be outdone but never repeated in quite the same way.

''After that house, there was nothing any better they could get,'' Mason said. ''They did get Graceland, but it couldn't be the same thrill. To understand what Graceland means today, you have to understand what led to it.''

Her essential aim in this book, though she acknowledged a dislike to think in terms of ''themes,'' was to contribute toward ''a sympathetic understanding of Elvis and the Elvis phenomenon.''

''Among a lot of people, there is a lack of understanding,'' Mason said. ''He was turned into a joke, and I resent that. It seems to me that there was a real person there dealing with something almost insurmountable, and that was the particular kind of fame that Elvis had. When he became famous in 1956, the response to him was unlike anything anyone else had previously experienced. I don't think you can even make a comparison to Frank Sinatra. (Sinatra) wasn't changing music; he was doing music that was already identifiable. Elvis had no guide.''

One way of reading her book is as a description of how Elvis himself and the course of his life were determined, at least in some measure, by his background, by the social forces that helped shape and mold him. It's only with caution that Mason speaks of that interpretation.

''There were limits to what he could do, to what he could do personally,'' Mason said. His environment ''shaped him, but it also made it possible for him to do what he did. He just sprang forth, because he couldn't be contained by it. He had this need to get out and to be somebody and to express himself. He didn't know how to deal with it all, but who would?''

Mason, who has long written about the South and its people, and has specific memories about growing up here that would also be familiar to Elvis, said she was approached by the publisher three or four years ago to do the biography: ''I could understand why I was being asked and very much wanted to be part of the series, but non-fiction is not the thing I choose first. So it was harder for me, harder for me to write this book than to write a novel. I had to work with so many facts and figures, and tried to be very careful about that.''

Paul Slovak, Viking's associate publisher who was involved four years ago in the launch of the biography series, which weds creative writers to subjects with whom they might enjoy special connections, said the idea was in part to try something different.

''We wanted to do something other than the standard long biographies that take years to write with lots of research and archival work done,'' Slovak said from his New York office. ''We had a feeling there would be a lot of people out there who would not want to read a 600-page biography of, say, St. Augustine. But if we got somebody really brilliant like Garry Wills to write something shorter, they would enjoy the particular passion or perspective that the non-biographer would bring to a biographical subject.''

Slovak said teaming Mason with Elvis was one of the very first projects that occurred to the publishers, even if some two dozen books have preceded her contribution to the series.

Getting there

Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason is scheduled to sign copies of her new biography, Elvis Presley: A Penguin Life, at 6 p.m. Monday at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Green Hills. More info: 385-2645.

------------------------------------------------------- EPE 1/3/2003

The First Day of Issue ceremonies for the official USPS Elvis postage stamp were on Elvis Presley's birthday, January 8, 1993 at Graceland. The Elvis stamp, with over 517 million sold, remains the most highly publicized and biggest selling commemorative postage stamp of all time. During the 2003 Elvis Birthday commemorations, Graceland/EPE and the United States Postal Service invite Elvis fans to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the historic Elvis postage stamp. Special cachets, two commemorative posters, special cancellation marks and a special event are all described in the following sections:

Commemorative Cancellations - Elvis Stamp and ELV1S 30 #1 HITS

On January 4, 6, 7 & 8 , 2003 (not Sunday the 5th) at the Graceland Station post office across the street from Graceland Mansion, postal staff will hand cancel any mail you bring with you (to mail out from here or to keep), using either of two special commemorative cancellation marks. One cancellation commemorates the tenth anniversary of the Elvis stamp. It features the Graceland gates, slightly open with the years 1993-2003 in between. Underneath the gates are two lines of text: Elvis Stamp Release - 10th Anniversary January 4-8, 2003 Memphis, TN 38116 Graceland Station. The other cancellation commemorates the worldwide smash hit record ELV1S 30 #1 HITS. It features the features the ELV1S logo and this text: January 4-8, 2003 Memphis, TN 38116 Graceland Station. This cancellation service is FREE. The only way to get this cancellation on your own mail is to bring your items in person. However, there is another way to get the cancellations. Read on.

Commemorative Cachets - Elvis Stamp and ELV1S 30 #1 HITS

Two special cachets have been created. These are envelopes, each with special artwork, two original 1993 Elvis stamps and a special cancellation mark. One cachet has artwork related to the Elvis stamp, with the two Elvis stamps canceled with the 10th anniversary cancellation described above. The other cachet envelope has artwork related to ELV1S 30 #1 HITS, with the two Elvis stamps canceled with the special E1 cancellation described above. Each cachet is priced at $5.00. These will be available in person through several Graceland/EPE stores and through Shop Elvis here on Elvis.com.

The specific gift shops are these: Gallery Elvis store and Good Rockin' Tonight music and video store in Graceland Plaza; Souvenirs of Elvis (main store and attached smaller store) in Graceland Crossing; the lobby gift shop at Heartbreak Hotel; and the gift shop at Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant. Also available at these locations will be original First Day of Issue cachets held back from 1993. In Gallery Elvis sheets of the 1993 Elvis stamp will be available. All items are available in Shop Elvis here on Elvis.com starting sometime on January 4th.

Metal Poster and Wooden Plaque - New 10th Anniversary Elvis Stamp Commemoratives

Graceland/EPE and the USPS have licensed two special wall hangings commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Elvis stamp. Each is a large image of the stamp artwork. One is a metal poster, the other a wooden plaque. Both are marked as 10th anniversary commemoratives. Both are available in all the Graceland stores listed above. Both are available now through Shop Elvis here on Elvis.com. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these items will benefit Presley Place, a transitional housing facility in Memphis that is part of the Estival Communities program of the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA).

All U.S. Post Offices throughout America will have the option of displaying and retailing the metal poster and wooden plaque. The decision is up to the management of each individual post office.

10th Anniversary of the Elvis Stamp - Celebration at EPM

10:30 AM, January 6, 2003 at Elvis Presley's Memphis, 126 Beale Street. Free admission. A brief program of guest speakers and the screening of an exclusive, unreleased 20-minute video of highlights from the stamp's First Day of Issue event at Graceland in 1993. Among those scheduled to participate in the program are: Memphis Postmaster General Butch Parker, MIFA executive director Margaret Craddock and EPE CEO Jack Soden. Also see the full Elvis Birthday Celebration calendar of events.