Elvis Presley, known to many as the hip-gyrating rock and roller of their parents’ generation and also that guy in Forrest Gump, passed away in his sleep on Thursday at the Deep Lakes Nursing Home in Hugoton, Kansas. He was 73.
The rock music legend and idol of impersonators everywhere had dropped out of the public eye in the late seventies due to his doctors advice regarding a malignant tumor they found in his left lung. Mr. Presley received treatment at eh University of Minnesota Medical Center for four years, eventually kicking the cancer. By this time, however, Van Halen and other heavy metal groups had taken over the commercial music scene and Elvis decided to let his legacy live on rather then be like Michael Jordan and keep coming back into the unforgiving public eye. He was reported to have watched his own funeral in amusement, glad that so many people cared about his movies and musical performances, and often cited that his disappearance would likely go down in history as” the greatest act of show-business since Jimi Hendrix played the Star-Spangled Banner live with that bitchin’ white Mexican Fender copy.”
Presley was perhaps best known for stealing black music such as soul and R&B and turning it into something a white guy could jig to. His hip-wiggling performances, it is said, “reddened many a mother’s face and captured many a teenage girl’s heart.” While Elvis was certainly a heart-throb at the time, he did have trouble with alcoholism and in his later performing years gave concerts that were, according to Elvis historian Adrianne Gentling, “basically indecipherable gobblygook. He would do weird stuff like call down aliens from the stars and promote various baby formulas. It got pretty crazy when he was drunk on stage.”
Elvis’ music touched lives worldwide and can still be purchased at many music retailers such as Wal-Mart, iTunes, and your local used record store. Says music critic Damien Stoll of www.cheaptunereviews.com, “You listen to the music of Elvis and you get taken to a whole other world. For a rock musician, a lot of things considered ‘staples’ of the rock genre are absent. There’s no electric guitars, no double-bass work, no dazzling two-hand-tapping solos - none of that. It’s just a guy playing a mediocre acoustic guitar and making us picture him moving his hips. But despite all this, his influence is no doubt very evident in the work of the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Buddy Holly, and Black Sabbath. Well, maybe not Sabbath.”
The famous entertainer moved into Deep Lakes Homes in 1990, after years of drug and alcohol use started taking their toll and dementia set it. He seemed to enjoy the retirement home a great deal, and most of the other old folks at the home agreed that Elvis was “a bit forgetful, but generally very pleasant and cracking jokes.” “He also really like to play Scrabble on Mondays, “ says long-time resident Elma Ponzani. The funeral will take place at First Memorial Funeral Home at 145 Marshall Ave. at 5:30 pm on Tuesday.
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2 comments:
hey my man, respectfully, please stop the bull. Elvis is alive today and kicking under thefederal protection plan. Someday, when he really dies, the truth will come out, like recently over who was the real deep throat. I iked your story, it makes more sense than the idiotic version, so idiotic that no one has dared ever questioned it, that he died on the throne, what a way for the king to go !
All in good fun man, all in good fun. Glad you liked it.
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