Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935.  If he were still living, he would be 75 years old today.

I often experience a peculiar disconnect on the milestone birthdays of iconic personalities who died too young.  I can’t help but wonder how age would have impacted their influence on culture, especially pop culture.  Think about it.  Marilyn Monroe, for instance, would be 83 years old if she were still living.  Would her image as a blonde sex kitten be as strong if she had not perished so tragically that hot August night in 1962?  Or would we think of her as just another rarely seen actress whose star cruelly faded like that of so many other aged actresses who Hollywood cast aside once their beauty was no longer that of a 20 or 30 year old?

Even though I was never a big Elvis Presley fan, he was nevertheless a big presence in my early life.  The week I was born, Elvis’s single “Don’t” supplanted “At the Hop” as the number one single in America.  I can imagine that song playing on the AM radio as my father drove my mother and me home from the hospital in the family’s 1956 Chevy Bel Air.  It was early 1958, and Elvis was at the peak of his career.  He had already made history with huge hits like “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, and the now amusingly controversial “Hound Dog”.  “Don’t” would be his last single released before he enlisted in the Army the following month.

I spent most of my childhood in Texas, but many of my relatives lived in Memphis, my father’s hometown.  Around 1960, my grandmother moved to the outskirts of that city, into a house on Graceland Drive.  The house was less than a mile from Elvis’s mansion of the same name.  Every visit with my grandmother took us right by the entrance to Elvis’s estate.  I would marvel at the huge crowds gathered by the locked gate.  Some would stand on another’s shoulders trying to peer over the brick wall for the unlikely possibility they would catch a glimpse of the King wandering the grounds.  Later, even after Elvis’s death, the crowds would remain almost as large as they had been before.

My parents were very religious, and their religiosity influenced the views they held about my grandmother’s neighbor.  Even his reverant recordings of great hymns like “How Great Thou Art” did little do discourage their disapproval of Elvis’s lifestyle.  My father knew about Elvis and Priscilla, and couldn’t believe her parents would allow their 14 year old daughter to date the 24 year old superstar.  His disapproval grew more intense in the early ‘60’s, when Priscilla, still several years away from marrying Elvis, moved into the Graceland estate before graduating from high school.  Thus, my family’s amusement at the crowds lined up in front of the mansion was tinged with a strong dose of censure. 

After the Beatles toured America in early 1964, Elvis began to fade from our awareness (except when we drove by his house on those family visits to Memphis).  His 1968-69 comeback was a big hit with me and my siblings, however.  I was enthralled with “Kentucky Rain”, and in later years, I wondered if the song’s lyrics were really autobiographical.  Perhaps the singer was not seeking his long lost love in the cold Kentucky rain, but was actually trying to find himself, the young man he once was before stardom and Hollywood turned him into a sad parody of what he could have been. 

Even more than “Kentucky Rain”, I loved “In the Ghetto”, released on the same album.  Finally, Elvis was relevant again.  I remembered clearly the images of burning ghetto neighborhoods in Detroit, Newark, and even Memphis.  If his earliest songs from the mid-1950’s reflected the emergence of a new rock and roll culture, racially integrated and full of hope for the future, “In the Ghetto” depicted that dream destroyed, turned into a nightmare of poverty and violence.  Sometimes, when Elvis sang the words “And his mama cried”, I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, too.  I was just 11 years old, but I was coming to a late ‘60’s adolescent awareness of America’s broken promises.  Elvis, just as much as the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkle, introduced me to popular music’s potential for social awareness and responsibility.

Regrettably, the 1970’s saw Elvis slide back into the trap he had fallen into before his 1968 comeback.  I was in my late teens, and sadly watched this rock and roll idol devolve into a tacky Vegas stage act.  Even so, several of my friends were excited when it was announced that Elvis would perform a concert in our college town the summer of 1977.   Although I laughed at my roommate when I found out he had bought tickets, I was quietly envious.  I would be out of town on a summer job, and would not be able to attend.  I had to admit that the spectacle of an Elvis concert, and bragging rights to tell others about it years later, caused me to be a little jealous. 

Of course, that concert never happened. 

My job that summer required me to go door-to-door in the rural Carolinas.  I stopped at one house, and the residents inside were crying.  Elvis was dead, they said.  A little boy, about 10 years old, ran in tears to his upstairs bedroom.  The scene was repeated several more times that afternoon.  The death was being compared to the assassination of President Kennedy.  “You’ll always remember where you were when you heard Elvis died,” one man told me.  And he was right.

Elvis Presley would be 75 years old today.  He has been gone 32 years. 

Happy birthday, Elvis, and requiescat in pace.