Around Elvis

By the early 1970s ELVIS PRESLEY had weathered the British Invasion, a decade of lackluster motion pictures, exile from the Pop Charts and critical assaults by the media to re-assert his position as the dominant figure in entertainment and as a cultural icon of unpreced-ented stature. He not only sold out concert halls, arenas, stadiums, coliseums, forums and show-rooms, he set attendance records that still stand after more than thirty years, from the Hilton Hotel to Madison Square Garden to the Houston Astrodome, back home at the Mid-South Coliseum and finally at Market Square Arena. In every city, town and hamlet, throngs of adoring fans cheered him, mauled him and worshipped him. He recorded platinum albums of golden hits, filled movie houses to capacity with his award-winning rockumentaries, and played a concert via satellite from Hawaii that was seen by the whole wide world. For good measure he was even voted one of the "Ten Most Outstanding Young Men In America," by The Jaycees and was made a Drug Enforcement Agent "at large" by the President of the United States. Yet in spite of this, he was time and time again knocked out of his hometown headlines by the local high school football team that was blazing its own path to glory. It may have been ELVIS' World, but in Memphis he was just a part of the scene; and it was a scene that he was very much a part of . . .