Me and Elvis Presley

While searching my brain for something to write about I read a note posted on FB about a couple of comics doing Elvis Impersonations. I watched first Jim Carey, then Andy Kaufman and both were good and funny. Andy's even more so because his normal talking voice was so high-pitched and strange, but when he sang and spoke "Elvis," he somehow got down into that low register that was more along the lines of the voice of Elvis.

That plus an incident which happened a couple weeks back, while listening to live music, someone requested one of the singers to sing an Elvis song. These musicians don't often sing cover songs but if requested and someone can do a version and the tip is reasonable then someone will try. The song was "Blue Suede Shoes." I immediately was reminded of my first and only time I saw Elvis in person.

It was in 1955, in Lubbock Texas and Elvis was traveling with The Louisiana Hayride. I was sixteen years old, a senior in high school and was not especially a big Elvis fan. I had heard of him, everyone in my part of TX had heard of the Rockabilly Kid. You all realize, of course, this was a few months before the "Ed Sullivan Show," and a few months before this young singer from Tupelo, MS and Memphis, TN became 'THE KING."

I don't remember the other girls I went with to Lubbock. Been too many years. I do remember we had seats rather far back in the auditorium. I think the premise back then was first in line got to rush down to the front rows. And if I'm not mistaken the tickets cost something like $2.50 There were other entertainers on the show but we came to see Elvis.

The bad thing for me, I broke my glasses that day. One of the lenses popped out and I only had that one pair of glasses. I remember looking through and being able to see really well with my right eye and everything kinda blurry with my left eye. And part of the time I covered my left eye and just looked with my right eye so I didn't have that blurry spot. I remember being upset over breaking my glasses. Such a bum deal to go to a concert and you can't see very well.

The news had gone around the country that when this Elvis guy sang that girls screamed and some swooned. My mother told me that it was like that when Frank Sinatra first started singing. Girls screamed to the top of their lungs, "Ohhhh Frankie," and some girls fainted. I thought the whole idea was one of the silliest things I'd ever heard. Screaming over some guy up on stage singing a song and I swore that I was not going to scream. And I didn't.

You believe that don't you? Honestly, I didn't scream at first, but after a little while, I discovered myself screaming, too. A whole coliseum full of mostly young teenage girls yelling and screaming is contagious. At first, I thought I was crazy, but then I realized it was mob hysteria. You know when the crowd outside the jail want the sheriff to send the prisoner out so the crowd can string him up. The whole town is yelling and shouting and carrying on and getting bolder and louder. Then when the good guy sheriff stands up to the crowd and fires his gun in the air that shuts up the menfolk and he tells them to get on back home. The crown quietens down, looks at each other sheepishly and leaves. That's mob hysteria. But we didn't look at each other sheepishly, we just looked at each other and screamed some more.

When Elvis came out on stage and the initial screaming quieted down to a dull roar, he said, something along these lines, "I'm going to sing a song written by a really good friend of mine. A good friend for many years." Then he turned to his lead guitar player and asked "What was that fellow's name?" "Carl Perkins," said the guitar man. "Oh yeah, Carl Perkins," said Elvis and he started singing "Blue Suede Shoes."

I'm not totally sure what else he sang, seems like he said That's All Right, Mama and Jailhouse Rock but I wouldn't swear to it. It was fun and I had a good time but I never became a huge, big Elvis fan. Not exactly sure why. I liked most of his songs, but I liked Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty and Hank Williams Sr better. Maybe because they seemed real to me and Elvis didn't.

Years later, we moved to Memphis, TN. It was 1972 and Elvis was living in Memphis at Graceland. My late husband, Elmer built Germantown Mall while we lived there. One of the stores in the mall was a wonderful jewelry store, owned by two brothers. One brother, Lowell, ran a store in downtown Memphis and the other brother, Les, ran the store in the mall. Elvis was friendly with Lowell but Les was the artist jeweler.

So Elvis came out to the Germantown store, after the mall was closed, fairly often to buy jewelry for his playmate of the month. However, Les could never tell anyone when he was going to come out because if he told and fans came out, the store would lose his business. Les couldn't even tell his wife. By then I would have enjoyed meeting Elvis because he was a big star and I just thought it would be cool to meet him and shake his hand and tell him I had seen him back in Lubbock all those years ago. But it never happened. Never got to meet him.

Les did tell us that he could always tell how serious he was about a woman by the jewelry he bought. The $10,000 to $30,000 was just an okay lady and the $40,000 and up range was a special woman. Les designed the TCB pins that Elvis gave to his band and male pals meaning ‘Taking Care of Business’ and the TLC pins given to female pals that meant ‘Tender Loving Care’. Les designed most of the jewelry Elvis wore.

One of those rumors that went around our high school was that Elvis had played at a dance hall in Lubbock called the Cotton Club. And the story went that a young lady with cantaloupe sized bazooms came up next to the stage, wearing her little tank top and asked Elvis to autograph her body. Supposedly he wrote Elvis on the right one and Presley on the left one, but I wouldn't ask Polifacts to check it because that most likely was one of those urban legends.

Even though we lived in Memphis when Elvis died and for a few years afterwards, I never visited Graceland. However, our Grape Family Reunion will be in Memphis this summer and I've joined in the family group to visit the home of the King. May he RIP.

NO NAME BLOG

by Fran Rizer

When I was a young divorcee, there was a very popular singles club where many of us liked to go listen to the live band. A young, fairly good-looking man stood outside the door every Friday night. When I went with a date, he ignored us, but when I went on girls' night out, he propositioned us as we entered.

"Wouldn't one of you like to save some time, skip this place, and just go home and spend the night with me?" he asked.

One night, I stopped and said, "Don't you think you're being ridiculous? Nobody's going to just meet you at the door and go home with you."

The man smiled. "You don't understand," he said. "Girls and women are hardly ever rejected. Men and boys face rejection frequently. I don't bother wasting a whole lot of time and money only to be rejected at closing time." He winked and ended his comment, "This might seem ridiculous to you, but sometimes I get lucky."

As I've interacted with other writers through the years, I've often thought of that man standing at the door, hoping to get lucky without investing time or money. In the world of writing, females are rejected as often as males, and we hope that acceptances are more than just "getting lucky."

Now, I could go two ways with this opening. I might talk about folks who write without investing time to edit and rewrite, then can't understand why their manuscripts are rejected, or I could take this opening in another direction.

The word - R E J E C T I O N - echoes in my mind to the tune of Elvis Presley singing "Suspicion." But, speaking of Elvis (young photo on right), does everyone remember that when he went to Nashville, the big dogs told him, "Go on home to Memphis and back to driving a truck.

You'll never make it."

When a publisher was presented with the Diary of Anne Frank (photo on left), the reader's response was, "a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances, and adolescent emotions." He also thought the characters were unappealing and lacked familiarity. Continuing to justify its rejection, he wrote, "Even if the work had come to light five years ago when the subject was timely, I don't see that there would have been a chance for it." His conclusion was that publishing wouldn't be worthwhile.

Am I the only one who was required to read The Good Earth in high school? The book won a Pulitzer and its author, Pearl S. Buck (photo on right), won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The manuscript was originally rejected because, "Americans aren't interested in anything to do with China."

George Orwell (photo on left) had his novel Animal Farm (1945) rejected because "Nobody will print this. It's impossible to sell animal stories in the United States." This allegorical novella, along with the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four have together sold more copies than any other two books by any twentieth century author. George Orwell was a pen name. His real name was Eric Arthur Blair. BTW, if you like biographies, his life is fascinating.

Many of you are familiar with the fifth-grader who cautioned me that Dr. Seuss was rejected eighteen times before his first book was published. In researching this, I found out Seuss was actually declined twenty-seven times for the first book and additionally turned down for some of his works after becoming successful. I'll save Dr. Seuss for fuller treatment on another day.

Several other Sleuth Sayers have already addressed the subject of rejection, and Rob wrote a fantastic piece about being turned down on February 1, 2012. Why am I writing about rejection? To me, it's personal today. A deal that was almost closed fell apart. I comfort myself with the tales of people who were rejected yet made it bigger than I ever even dreamed.

What will I do now? Exactly what all those others did. I'll just keep on keepin' on. Talent and craftsmanship count, but success requires perseverance as well.

I could go on with stories like these forever, but the night is late and I feel the need to call it a day so this can be posted on time. I entitled this NO NAME BLOG because I couldn't think of a good title. My brief tale about Mick Jagger and his picture to the right have given me the perfect name for this article.

When The Rolling Stones sought a recording contract, they were told they'd never get anywhere with "that ugly lead singer."

Here's Mick illustrating my title: THE LAST LAUGH!

Until we meet again. . .take care of YOU.