Tennessee Ernie Ford & The Jordanaires~ "GREAT GOSPEL SONGS"

The Jordanaires were an American vocal quartet, which formed as a gospel group in 1948.

They are known for providing background vocals for Elvis Presley, in live appearances and recordings from 1956 to 1972.

The group has also worked in the recording studio, on stage, and on television with many other country and rock and roll artists.

The Jordanaires
The Jordanaires with Elvis, 1957
Background information
Origin	Springfield, Missouri, U.S.
Genres	Gospel, country, rock & roll, folk
Years active	1948–2013
Associated acts	Foggy River Boys, Elvis Presley, Eddy Arnold, Ricky Nelson
Website	jordanaires.net
Past members	Ray Walker Curtis Young Gordon Stoker Bill Matthews Bob Hubbard Warren (Monty) Matthews Culley Holt Hoyt Hawkins Neal Matthews, Jr. Don Bruce Hugh Jarrett Duane West Louis Nunley

 

Group history

Early years

The history of the Jordanaires can be traced back to the early 1940s, and the original Foggy River Boys, which were made up of the Matthews brothers, all ordained ministers: Bill (b. LaFollette, Tennessee, 1923), Monty (b. Pulaski, Kentucky, 1927), Jack, and Matt.

In 1948, Matt and Jack left to become full-time preachers and were replaced by Bob Hubbard (b. Chaffee, Missouri, 1928), also a minister, and bass singer Culley Holt (b. McAlester, Oklahoma, 1925), and pianist Bob Money.

After three years Money was replaced as pianist by Gordon Stoker. At that time, they formed the new group as the Melodizing Matthews, in Springfield, Missouri, but soon changed the name to the Jordanaires, after Jordan Creek in Missouri.

This starting lineup lasted until 1949; at that time, Bob Hubbard was drafted and was replaced by Hoyt Hawkins. Later that year, Monty and Bill Matthews left.

Hawkins switched to baritone, and new lead Neal Matthews was recruited. Don Bruce came in as a new first tenor; however, he was drafted the next year.

The group narrowed to a quartet, with Stoker taking over as first tenor. They became members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1949.^[1][2]

They recorded for Capitol Records in the early 1950s, and began providing vocal accompaniment behind solo singers in Nashville, Tennessee.^[2]

The lineup changed again in 1954, with Cully Holt leaving and new bass Hugh Jarrett coming in.

The quartet became well known in the southern gospel realm, and what made them stand out from other quartets of that time was how they would bring spirituals (such as "Dry Bones") to a predominantly white audience.

While continuing to turn out gospel albums of their own, the group become better known for the signature background harmonies they have provided on dozens of secular records.^[3]


Jarrett remained until 1958; at that time, he was replaced by Ray Walker.

With Elvis Presley

One Sunday afternoon in 1955, the Jordanaires played a show in Memphis with Eddy Arnold to publicize their new syndicated TV series, Eddy Arnold Time (for the program the group used the name Gordonaires).

They sang "Peace in the Valley", and when the show was over, Elvis Presley, an emerging singer, talked with them and said, "If I ever get a recording contract with a major company, I want you guys to back me up."^[4]

He was on Sun Records at that time.

On January 10, 1956, Presley recorded his first session for RCA with guitarist Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and drummer D. J. Fontana. "I Got a Woman", "Heartbreak Hotel", and "Money Honey" were recorded.

Presley asked his new label RCA Victor if the Jordanaires could appear on the recordings.

The next day Gordon Stoker was called by Chet Atkins to do a session with a new young singer named Elvis.

RCA had also just signed the Speer Family. Atkins asked Stoker to sing with Ben and Brock Speer so he could use them.

The recording session for "I'm Counting on You" and "I Was the One" was the first session Presley did with vocal background.

By April 1956, "Heartbreak Hotel" was No. 1.

After having done several more recording sessions in New York with Moore, Black, and Fontana, Presley flew to Nashville on April 14, 1956, to record "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You".

Stoker was called again, to sing a vocal trio with Ben and Brock Speer.

After the session, Presley took Stoker aside and told him (not knowing, at the time, why all the Jordanaires were not there) that he had wanted the Jordanaires.

This time, Stoker saw to it—and Presley used the quartet on nearly every one of his recording sessions for the next 14 years.

The quartet also appeared in some of Presley's movies, and on many of his television appearances.

As Presley was about to start performing at the Hilton in Las Vegas, the Colonel's office called for the Jordanaires to work with Presley in the shows.

They had 35 recording sessions already booked for the dates he needed, so they could not go.

They got in touch with the Imperials, who had done the How Great Thou Art Elvis Presley album with them, and the Imperials took the place of the Jordanaires.

After Elvis

The lineup consisting of Gordon Stoker, first tenor and manager, Neal Matthews, second tenor and lead, Hoyt Hawkins, baritone, and Ray Walker, bass, would be the group's most stable lineup, lasting throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

In January 1978 the group performed a medley of Presley's songs on the NBC TV special Nashville Remembers Elvis on His Birthday.

The group changed again in 1982, when Hoyt Hawkins died. His replacement was Duane West, formerly of Sonny James' backup group, the Southern Gentlemen.

In 1990, the group provided backing vocals for Presley's former Sun Records labelmate Johnny Cash on his Mercury Records album Boom Chicka Boom.

The lineup remained constant for the rest of the decade, with West leaving due to illness in 1999 (he died June 23, 2002). His replacement was Louis Nunley, formerly of the Anita Kerr Singers.

Neal Matthews died April 21, 2000. He was replaced by new lead Curtis Young.

Hugh Jarrett died at 78 on May 31, 2008 from injuries sustained in an auto accident in March.^[5]

Gordon Stoker died at 88 at his Brentwood, Tennessee, home on March 27, 2013 after a long illness.

His son Alan confirmed that the Jordanaires were formally dissolved, per his father's wishes.^[6]

Ernest Jennings Ford (February 13, 1919 – October 17, 1991), known professionally as Tennessee Ernie Ford, was an American recording artist and television host who enjoyed success in the country and Western, pop and gospel musical genres. 

Noted for his rich bass-baritone voice and down-home humor, he is remembered for his hit recordings of "The Shotgun Boogie" and "Sixteen Tons".

Tennessee Ernie Ford
Background information
Birth name	Ernest Jennings Ford
Born	February 13, 1919 Bristol, Tennessee, United States
Died	October 17, 1991 (aged 72) Reston, Virginia, United States
Genres	Country & Western, Pop, Gospel
Occupation(s)	Singer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, Guitar, violin

 

 

Biography

Early years

Born in Bristol, Tennessee to Maud Long and Clarence Thomas Ford, Ford began his radio career as an announcer at WOPI-AM in Bristol, Tennessee.

In 1939, the young bass-baritone left the station to study classical singing at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Ohio.

First Lieutenant Ford served in the United States Army Air Corps in World War II as the bombardier on a B-29 Superfortress flying missions over Japan.

After the war, Ford worked at radio stations in San Bernardino and Pasadena, California.

In San Bernardino, Ford was hired as a radio announcer.

He was assigned to host an early morning country music disc jockey program titled Bar Nothin' Ranch Time. To differentiate himself, he created the personality of "Tennessee Ernie," a wild, madcap, exaggerated hillbilly.

He became popular in the area and was soon hired away by Pasadena's KXLA radio.

Ford also did musical tours. The Mayfield Brothers of West Texas, including Smokey Mayfield, Thomas Edd Mayfield, and Herbert Mayfield, were among Ford's warmup bands, having played for him in concerts in Amarillo and Lubbock, during the late 1940s.

At KXLA, Ford continued doing the same show and also joined the cast of Cliffie Stone's popular live KXLA country show Dinner Bell Roundup as a vocalist while still doing the early morning broadcast.

Cliffie Stone, a part-time talent scout for Capitol Records, brought him to the attention of the label.

In 1949, while still doing his morning show, he signed a contract with Capitol. He also became a local TV star as the star of Stone's popular Southern California Hometown Jamboree show.

RadiOzark produced 260 15-minute episodes of The Tennessee Ernie Show on transcription disks for national radio syndication.

He released almost 50 country singles through the early 1950s, several of which made the charts.

Many of his early records, including "The Shotgun Boogie", "Blackberry Boogie," and so on were exciting, driving boogie-woogie records featuring accompaniment by the Hometown Jamboree band which included Jimmy Bryant on lead guitar and pioneer pedal steel guitarist Speedy West.

"I'll Never Be Free," a duet pairing Ford with Capitol Records pop singer Kay Starr,^[1] became a huge country and pop crossover hit in 1950.

A duet with Ella Mae Morse, False Hearted Girl was a top seller for the Capitol Country and Hillbilly division,^[2] and has been evaluated as an early tune.^[3]

Ford eventually ended his KXLA morning show and in the early 1950s, moved on from Hometown Jamboree. He took over from band-leader Kay Kyser as host of the TV version of NBC quiz show Kollege of Musical Knowledge when it returned briefly in 1954 after a four-year hiatus.

He became a household name in the U.S. largely as a result of his hilarious portrayal in 1954 of the 'country bumpkin,' "Cousin Ernie" on three episodes of I Love Lucy.

In 1955, Ford recorded "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" (which reached number 4 on the country chart) with "Farewell to the Mountains" on side B.

"Sixteen Tons"

Sixteen Tons album cover

Ford scored an unexpected hit on the pop charts in 1955 with his rendering of "Sixteen Tons", a sparsely arranged coal-miner's lament, that Merle Travis first recorded in 1946 reflecting his own family's experience in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

The song's authorship has been claimed by both Travis and George S. Davis.

Its fatalistic tone contrasted vividly with the sugary pop ballads and rock & roll just starting to dominate the charts at the time:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;

I owe my soul to the company store...^[4]

With Ford's snapping fingers^[4] and a unique clarinet-driven pop arrangement by Ford's music director, Jack Fascinato, "Sixteen Tons" spent ten weeks at number one on the country charts and seven weeks at number one on the pop charts.

The record sold over four million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.^[5]

It made Ford a crossover star, and became his signature song.

Later years

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2015)

Ford subsequently helmed his own prime-time variety program, The Ford Show, which ran on NBC television from October 4, 1956, to June 29, 1961.

The show was named not after Ernie, but rather, the sponsor – Ford automobiles. Ford Theatre, an anthology series, had run in the same time slot on NBC in the preceding 1955–1956 season.

Ford's program was notable for the inclusion of a religious song at the end of every show; Ford insisted on this despite objections from network officials who feared it might provoke controversy.

This became the most popular segment of his show. He earned the nickname "The Ol' Pea-Picker" due to his catch-phrase, "Bless your pea-pickin' heart!" He began using the term during his disc jockey days on KXLA.

In 1956 he released Hymns, his first gospel music album, which remained on Billboard's Top Album charts for 277 consecutive weeks; his album Great Gospel Songs won a Grammy Award in 1964.

After the NBC show ended, Ford moved his family to Portola Valley in Northern California.

He also owned a cabin near Grandjean, Idaho on the upper South Fork of the Payette River where he would regularly retreat.

A photo of Ford with country singer Hank Thompson and Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby appeared in the 1988 book, The Ruby-Oswald Affair, by Alan Adelson.

From 1962 to 1965, Ford hosted a daytime talk/variety show, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (later known as Hello, Peapickers) from KGO-TV in San Francisco, broadcast over the ABC television network.

In 1968, Ford narrated the Rankin/Bass Thanksgiving TV special The Mouse on the Mayflower. The mouse narrator seen at the beginning of the special, William the Churchmouse, was a caricature of Ford.

Ford was the spokesman for the Pontiac Furniture Company in Pontiac, Illinois in the 1970s.

He also became the spokesman for Martha White brand flour in 1972.

Ford's experiences as a navigator and bombardier in World War II led to his involvement with the Confederate Air Force (now the Commemorative Air Force), a war plane preservation group in Texas.

He was a featured announcer and celebrity guest at the annual CAF Airshow in Harlingen, Texas, from 1976 to 1988.

He donated a once-top-secret Norden Bombsight to the CAF's B-29 bomber restoration project. In the late 1970s, as a CAF colonel, Ford recorded the organization's theme song "Ballad of the Ghost Squadron."

Over the years, Ford was awarded three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for radio, records, and television. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990.

Offstage, both Ford and wife Betty contended with serious alcohol problems; Betty had had the problem since the 1950s.

Though his drinking worsened in the 60s, he worked continuously, seemingly unaffected by his heavy intake of whiskey.

By the 1970s, however, it had begun to take an increasing toll on his health and ability to sing. After Betty's substance abuse-related death in 1989, Ernie's liver problems, diagnosed years earlier, became more apparent, but he refused to reduce his drinking despite repeated doctors' warnings.^{[citation needed]}

In 1990, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

His last interview was taped in September 1991 by his long-time friend Dinah Shore for her TV show. His physical deterioration by then was quite obvious.

Ford received posthumous recognition for his gospel music contributions by adding him to the Gospel Music Association's Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1994.

Personal life

 

Ernie and Betty Ford at home in 1962.

Ford was married to Betty Heminger from September 18, 1942, until her death on February 26, 1989; they had two children – Jeffrey Buckner “Buck” Ford (born January 6, 1950) and Brion Leonard Ford (born September 3, 1952 in San Gabriel, California – died October 24, 2008 in White House, Tennessee, of lung cancer at age 56).

Less than four months after Betty's death, Ford, who had long suffered from severe alcoholism, married again. On September 28, 1991, he fell into severe liver failure at Dulles Airport, shortly after leaving a state dinner at the White House hosted by then President George H. W. Bush.

Ford died in H. C. A. Reston Hospital Center, in Reston, Virginia, on October 17 – exactly 36 years after "Sixteen Tons" was released, and one day shy of the first anniversary of his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.^[6]

Ford was interred at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, Palo Alto, California.^[7]

His second wife, Beverly Wood Ford (1921–2001), died ten years after Ernie and her body was interred with her husband's.^[8]

Source: Wikipedia.org

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Elvis Presley~ "Blue Christmas"

Elvis Aaron Presley^a (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. A cultural icon, he is commonly known by the single name Elvis.

One of the most popular musicians of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954, working with Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience.

 Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was the most important popularizer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who went on to manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number-one hit.

He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African-American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in Love Me Tender.

Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He staged few concerts however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided.

 In 1968, after seven years away from the stage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated comeback television special that led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours. In 1973 Presley staged the first concert broadcast globally via satellite, Aloha from Hawaii. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42.

Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular culture. He had a versatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country, pop ballads, gospel, and blues. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music.^[1][2][3][4]

Nominated for 14 competitive Grammys, he won three, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame.

Elvis Presley
Publicity photo for Jailhouse Rock (1957)
Background information
Birth name	Elvis Aaron Presley
Born	January 8, 1935 Tupelo, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	August 16, 1977 (aged 42) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres	Rock and roll, pop, rockabilly, country, blues, gospel, R&B
Occupations	Musician, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano
Years active	1953–77
Labels	Sun, RCA Victor
Associated acts	The Blue Moon Boys, The Jordanaires, The Imperials
Website	elvis.com Elvis Presley's signature

Life and career

Early years (1935–53)

Childhood in Tupelo

Presley's birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi

Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to 18-year-old Vernon Elvis and 22-year-old Gladys Love Presley,^[5] in the two-room shotgun house built by his father in readiness for the birth. Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn.

As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually tight bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church where he found his initial musical inspiration.^[6]
Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: On his mother's side, he was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys's great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee.^[7]b

 His father's forebears were of Scottish^[8] or German^[9] origin. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family. Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition.^[10][11] The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance.

In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by the landowner. He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.^[12]

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average".^[13]

He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, saw his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth.^[14]

A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle.^[15][16] Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."^[17]

Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. The family was by then living in a largely African-American neighborhood.^[18]

A devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him in to the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques.^[19]

When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.^[20]

 Health deterioration and death (1973–77)

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973.^[220] He was now becoming increasingly unwell. Twice during the year he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident.

Toward the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semicomatose from the effects of Demerol addiction. According to his main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley "felt that by getting [drugs] from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street."^[221] Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever.^[222]
Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.^[223]
Presley's condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.'

He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?"^[224] Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body.

It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions".^[225] Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move.

So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'"^[225] Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. As cultural critic Marjorie Garber describes, he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: "in effect he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers."^[226]

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son's financial affairs—fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West (Presley's friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to "cut back on expenses".^{[227][228][229]}

Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits.^[230]

However, Presley's stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency.^[231] Presley and Linda Thompson split in November, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden.^[232] He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again.^[233]

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974.^[234]

Parker sold RCA on another concert record, Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis.^[235] Recorded on March 20, it included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award.^[236] (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.)

Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful.^[237] In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home.^[238] Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.^[239]
For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977).^[241]

The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone.

 "My Boy" was a number one adult contemporary hit in 1975, and "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the adult contemporary chart in 1976.^[242]

Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt".^[243] "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."^[244]

Final year and death

Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts."^[245]

 In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand".^[246] Presley failed to appear in Baton Rouge; he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was cancelled.^[246]

Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. In Rapid City, South Dakota, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk", according to Presley historian Samuel Roy, and unable to "perform any significant movement."^[247]

Guralnick relates that fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books."^[248]

A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.^[249]

"Way Down", Presley's last single issued during his lifetime, came out on June 6. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena, on June 26.

Presley's gravestone at Graceland

The book Elvis: What Happened?, cowritten by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1.^[250]

 It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers.^[251] By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.^[221]

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.^[252]

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture".^[253] Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer's biggest-selling issue ever.^[254]

Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement.^[255] Presley left her nothing in his will.^[256]

Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third.^[257]

Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother.^[258] Within a few days, "Way Down" topped the country and UK pop charts.^[242][259]

Following an attempt to steal the singer's body in late August, the remains of both Elvis Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.^[255]

Since his death, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Elvis. A long-standing theory among some fans is that he faked his death.^[260][261]

Fans have noted alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin and numerous accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace.^[262]

Source: Wikipedia

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