Last week, frequent ElvisBlog commenter Katgirlblue wrote,
”Wow! You were a teenager in 1956?!! You actually witnessed the early explosion of rock ‘n roll and the Elvis revolution!? I can only imagine how great that must have been…. I’m so jealous.”
That reminded me I had written an article that touched on this subject in the Winter 1999 issue of Elvis International magazine.
The article went back to the year when I discovered Elvis. Of course, everybody discovered Elvis that year. He blasted into stardom and took us teenagers along for the ride.
However, 44 years later (back in 1999), I couldn’t remember exactly when I first connected with Elvis. So, I watched videos of all of Elvis’ 1956 TV appearances to find clues.
It was pretty fun research to do, and it paid off. I was able to make an exact determination of my Elvis epiphany and wrote about it.
For this ElvisBlog post, I scanned the article, cut it up, and pasted it in sections. I stuck in relevant pictures to break up the long blocks of text. I hope you enjoy my personal Elvis story.
Elvis with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey
(Magazine format changed from 2-column to 3-column at this point)
It’s an interesting endeavor for a writer to critique something he wrote twenty years ago. I am disappointed in myself for for the double that year. The folks at Elvis International didn’t catch it either.
As I read it today, this story seems to wander a bit. It starts out about the Artist of the Century, and then goes into my search to determine when I discovered Elvis. It was seeing him on the Milton Berle show, but then I continued to describe his appearances on the Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan shows. And finally, because Sullivan showed him from the waist up, I explained how Elvis used his eyes and hands to connect with us fans.
If I had been writing ElvisBlog back then, I would have had enough subjects for four different posts.
Anyway, in spite of the wandering narrative, I hope you enjoyed this.
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