On this day in 1935, Elvis the Pelvis was born.
Elvis Presley's family moved to Memphis when he was 13. After working as a movie theater usher and a truck driver, he began singing locally as "The Hillbilly Cat", then signed with a local recording company, then in 1955 with RCA. He did much to establish early rock and roll music, bringing black blues singing into the white, teenage mainstream. Teenage girls became hysterical over his blatantly sexual gyrations, particularly the one that got him nicknamed "Elvis the Pelvis".
When he died on 16th Aug 1977, he had sold over 600-million singles and albums. The first of his 33 films was Love Me Tender (1956); critics blasted most of his films, but they did very well at the box-office. Military service in the late 1950s and the "British invasion" of the 1960s reduced his concerts, though not his movie/recording income. He made a comeback in the 1970s, but his increasing weight and dependence upon stimulants and depressants took their toll.
Since his death, his Memphis home Graceland has become a shrine for followers. Elvis impersonators and purported sightings have become stock subjects for humorists.
I remember watching him in one of his better-known movies, Blue Hawaii, with my mother when I was a kid. So when I went to Hawaii in 2003, I made sure I stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel where parts of the movie were shot and where Elvis liked to stay whenever he was in Oahu. One of the earlier songs I learnt to play on the electone organ was also the Hawaiian Wedding Song from the same movie.
Robbie William's latest single Advertising Space is his own personal tribute to The King. Elegiac, mournful and profoundly cinematic, it describes a superstar's tragic fall from grace. Robbie jokingly describes it as his own 'Candle In The Wind'.
Happy Birthday Mr Pelvis, can't help falling in love with you again and again...