Elvis Presley
There are two kinds of men in the world: Beatles men and Elvis men. My dad was an Elvis man. Elvis men are loners and individuals who do not play well with others. They blaze their own path and make no apologies. My dad had every Elvis album ever made and today, they are the pride of my own record collection.
In the 1970’s, before cassette tapes or CD’s, we had records. And whenever my dad wasn’t watching a John Wayne movie on TV, he was listening to an Elvis record, which meant that by default, I listened to them too.
The drunken stupor that characterized the last few years of his life and immortalized on so many of the late live recordings notwithstanding, Elvis had the sweetest baritone voice I’ve still ever heard. Elvis is the King. I like the 50s and 60s Elvis of rock and roll, country, and even gospel, but when he wraps them all into one grand show in the 70s with the sequence spandex suits and the lace scarves...magical.
My dad's own life mirrored Elvis' to such an extent that its scary. First off, as I've said, they lived by the same creed. And aside from the fact that my dad was 350 pounds in the 70s, he actually looked like Elvis. And like him, by the end of his life, he was alone. But unlike Elvis, before my dad died, he had a reconciliation with everyone: his friends and his family, which puts the Elvis obsession into a nice perspective for me.