My Next Top Ten List

Tweet

August 16, 1977. My parents and I were living in a small cottage converted from a garage in Daytona Beach, Florida. My mom was in my room, and we were talking about something. My dad came in the room with a strange look on his face and said, "Elvis died." I spent the rest of the evening, well into the night, listening to various radio stations. All of them -- the country music stations, the rock stations, the pop stations, and even R&B stations (Elvis brought black music to a white audience while keeping its feel, unlike what Pat Boone did to R&B songs when he covered them) -- were talking Elvis and paying tribute. I've never heard anything like that on the radio. At only 42 years of age there had to be something wrong. Elvis was still doing concerts (in fact, his last concert was at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis), putting out albums ("Way Down" was on the charts when he died); and, although the popularity of his music had been eclipsed by disco and Alice Cooper, he was still a major superstar. Of course, now we know what happened: prescription pill popping. The King of Rock and Roll was gone. Amazingly, in the 39 years since that happened, his music and legacy maintains an extremely powerful presence. Consider how many other superstars have been gone for a few years (like Kurt Cobain or Whitney Houston), and Elvis -- who died almost four decades ago (that's two generations!) -- is outselling them! (Only Michael Jackson outsold Elvis on the "top-grossing dead singers" list last year.) That shows just how much a part of the American culture that Elvis is. And to think, when he guested on the Grand Ole Opry (at the request of Hank Snow, who was also managed by Colonel Tom Parker), Opry manager Jim Denny told him, "Son, you ain't goin' nowhere. You'd best go back to driving a truck." Jim Denny was fired the next year; and, unless you're a deep historian of country music you'll just walk past his plaque at the Country Music Hall of Fame and shrug at his name. Elvis' plaque (yes, he is in the Country Music Hall of Fame), however, will cause you to pause and reflect on the great music. So, needless to say, for the next ten days [EDIT: 25 days, by request] it's ELVIS MUSIC!!!! We miss you, Elvis. Here's a song that did NOT make the list: