Jes' a plain old Hillbilly Cat

If Elvis Presley were still alive (which he isn’t, in case you hadn’t heard) he’d be 72-years-old on Thursday. My God, that’s almost as old as Keith Richards looks – if you maybe add about 10 years.

Elvis has been dead now for 30 years, yet in the hearts of some (aside from the 32,000 impersonators) he’s still very much alive. For whatever reason known only to his devoted fans, that sad, addicted, portly guy who left the building for keeps three decades ago, never departed at all.

Despite being in the generation that should be devoted to everything the ‘Hillbilly Cat’ stood for, I was never truly in awe of him. No, I correct myself. I think his early stuff, his Sun Record stuff, is brilliant and revolutionary and wonderful to hear. Blue Moon of Kentucky is still one of my favorites, and if you want to really hear EP in his youthful glory and to understand why he smacked the world of music in the chops back in 1955-56 then you would do well to avail yourself of a copy of the Sun Sessions. That was back in pre-sellout days when this blonde-haired (yes, he actually had blonde hair) pretty lad earned outrage in parents around the world. He was very, very cool.

And then came the army. And then came the Tom Parker deal with RCA, and then came the wretched movies (which he personally detested) and then came blandness, and ultimately came Vegas lounge acts. Nothing awful about it per se. Such an approach has earned fortunes for Wayne Newton and Tom Jones. But, and it’s a big ‘but’, there was a time when Presley was so much better than that. So much ‘more’ than that. Oh well, sic transit gloria mundi.

My Dad hated Elvis when he was first on the Sullivan show (Elvis, that is, not my Dad.)

“He’s a drug addict,” said Pop. “You can tell by the bags under his eyes.”

Cool, thought I. A genuine drug addict right there on the Sullivan stage, sharing space with Jackie Mason, Henny Youngman, Senor Wences and Topo Giggio. Of course, he wasn’t a drug addict – then – he was a simple truck-drivin’ young dude who copied his hair style from Tony Curtis, was good to his mama, and didn’t even take a drink or smoke cigarettes.

Actually though, even when Elvis was in his prime, I turned more in the direction of Jerry Lee Lewis (I’m still a huge fan of that evil man, who happens to be still alive and performing magnificently, surprisingly), Carl Perkins (who was ripped off by the Elvis consortium for his superior version of Blue Suede Shoes, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard.

Little Richard especially distressed my mother much more than did Elvis, who she thought was kind of handsome and liked the fact he was good to his mother.

No, she didn’t like Little Richard, and it was absolutely nothing to do with his being black. My mother literally had no racial prejudices, and was a huge fan of such singers as Nat King Cole, Al Hibbler and Billy Eckstine. It was just that LR was a little too outré with his mile high ‘conk’, his flamboyant clothes, and his effeminacy.

Anyway, I could go on and on, so I won’t. Just take a moment Thursday to think of Elvis and appreciate the fact that he didn’t deserve the indignity of dying well past his prime, sitting on the john.

He could have been so much more than that.

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