The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

Posted: 26 May 2013 03:14 AM PDT

From Tupelo to Timbuktu, Elvis rocked and rolled for everyone.

WE'RE driving through the backwoods of Mississippi. My wife and I have been heading north on the Natchez Trace – an old supply route that connected New Orleans to Nashville – and blazed right past a little town named Tupelo.

Elvis Presley's Mystery Train is echoing through the car stereo. We're on our way to see the King ... or his birthplace, at least.

Before he became the "King of Rock and Roll" and before all the screaming girls, swivelling hips and media stardom, there was a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi. That's where Elvis Aaron Presley was born to Vernon and Gladys on Jan 8, 1935.

The shotgun shack still stands in Tupelo. This reminder of the King's humble beginnings is the reason we're in Tupelo on a cool spring morning. We purchase two tickets for a tour and walk to the old, white house with a porch swing, preserved to appear as it did during the singer's boyhood years.

I don't know if you can call a walk-through of a two-room house a "tour", but that's what we've paid for and that's what we get. As we walk from the creaky porch into the front room, we're greeted by a very enthusiastic woman named Gail.

Gail gives us all the details: Vernon built the house, the family stayed until the boy turned 13, the house is original, the furniture is not, and on and on. The information is fine, but oh, the delivery is just superb!

If you've been on a few tours, you begin to recognise the dead-eyed stare of most guides as they pitter-patter through their spiel. It's understandable. I could be a tour guide at the site of the moon landing and I would be on auto-pilot by Day 3. Here it is. Move along. Zzzzz.

But not Gail. No, Gail could not be more excited to tell us anything and everything we want to know about Elvis Presley. The problem is that, earlier on this trip, we visited Elvis' Graceland Estate as well as Sun Studio in Memphis (details of which will appear in future columns). Our Elvis curiosities had been well sated by that point. We're the only two people on this two-room "tour", and we're not asking a ton of questions.

Not a problem for Gail. Before a pause can even consider becoming awkward, Gail launches into her own Elvis experience. She tells us she was born in Tupelo and has been an Elvis fan all her life. (Really, do you have another choice in Tupelo?)

She was fortunate enough to see Elvis in concert not once, but twice. And the second time she saw him, he came right down to her seat and flung one of his precious scarves around her neck.

Gail sort of shrieks and holds her hand against her heart while she tells us the story, almost as if she's about to faint.

I wonder if she relives the moment the same way every time she talks to new visitors. What an experience that must be 20 times a day. And now, we're told, the scarf is under glass at her Tupelo home. It's conveniently located in her Elvis room, of course.

This woman is awfully sweet and I appreciate her passion. If you're going to be an Elvis fan, plant yourself in Tupelo, build an Elvis room in your house and try not to fall over when you recall the moment when drops of Elvis' sweat hit your neck. Surely, this is paradise for Gail.

Before hitting the highway out of Tupelo – and its churches where Elvis sat and its drive-in restaurants where Elvis once ate and its sidewalks where Elvis possibly, once, could have stood, maybe – we made one last stop: the Tupelo Hardware Store. Rock and roll history isn't peppered with a lot of famous hardware stores, so you have to jump at the opportunity when it's presented.

As we walk into the store – a big, red brick building on Main Street – a man at the counter perceives the smell of "tourist" wafting through the door and waves us over, hollering "You wanna hear about Elvis' guitar?" Yes, of course we do.

The clerk proceeds to explain that we are standing on the very spot where Elvis declared his desire for an acoustic guitar hanging on the wall behind the counter. You can tell it's the spot by the shallow crater in the floor where 50 million Elvis fans have stood to take their picture.

The story goes that Elvis' mother, Gladys, remembered his wish and, in advance of her son's 12th birthday, returned to the store to buy it for a surprise gift. Presto: instant rock star, right? Well, it turned out what Elvis really wanted for his 12th birthday was a bike. Oh well, things seemed to turn out OK for the boy.

While many small-town hardware stores have gone the way of – well – Elvis, Tupelo Hardware remains alive. It probably doesn't hurt that they still sell guitars (as well as key chains and T-shirts). I chose to make my donation by purchasing a baseball cap.

But what I really wanted was a bike.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 26 Mei 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

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