Memphis celebrates Elvis
Singer’s wife, daughter attend birthday bash
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – “Blue Hawaii.” “Blue Suede Shoes.” “Blue Christmas.”
Now, you can add blue lips, blue noses and blue toes to the Elvis color chart.
Hundreds of fans from around the world gathered Thursday on the front lawn of Graceland to sing “Happy Birthday” to the King of Rock and Roll and to moan several choruses of the deep-freeze, arctic-blast, I-can’t-feel-my-face blues.
The public ceremony, which began after 9:30 a.m., when the temperature was 12 degrees, marked the 80th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth in Tupelo, the Mississippi town that was the future superstar’s home until his family moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13.
The centerpiece of the event was an eight-tier cake, one for each decade since Elvis’ birth.
Priscilla Presley, Elvis’ former wife, cut the cake. “Thank you for passing his legacy down to all the young kids,” said Priscilla, 69, aware that two of the youngest kids in attendance were her twin granddaughters, Harper and Finley Lockwood, 6, who shared the small outdoor stage with their grandmother and their mother, Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, 46.
Lisa Marie later shook hands with some of the fans who lined the metal barriers that created a space around the stage near the north edge of the lawn in front of the mansion-turned-tourist attraction. She also paid homage to Elvis bandleader Joe Guercio, 87, who died Sunday in Nashville.
Colleen Corrigan, 47, of Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, was making her sixth visit to Memphis with her husband and son – also fans – since her conversion to Elvisism only a half-decade past.
“In 2010, I had this dream that we were in a park and the next thing you know Elvis was standing in front of me, tall as a redwood tree, and he said, ‘I know you guys have a pet hamster. My daughter has a pet hamster, too, and I would like you to put their cages together.’ ”
Another latecomer to the King-dom is Regine Plodek, 59, a member of a German fan club, Elvis Presley Gesellschaft. She said her son was such an Elvis fan that she visited Memphis with him in 2004, and “when I stand by the grave and go to the house, I changed – I was a big Elvis fan.”
When Elvis died he was only 42, but if he had lived, “he would still be recording,” said Andreas Heil, who came from Amsterdam for Elvis’ birthday, “because Elvis is music. He is the passion of music.”