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.
On a day that put the brrr into birthday, 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.
Although an Eskimo Pie might have been more appropriate, the centerpiece of the event was an eight-tier cake, one for each decade since Elvis’ birth, or perhaps one for each toe lost to frostbite on the average pair of feet in attendance. The white cake with buttercream frosting was topped with a crown and girdled with a sugary reproduction of an Elvis jumpsuit belt, chains and American eagles and all.
Priscilla Presley, Elvis’ first and former and only wife, cut the cake, without aid of ice pick. “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; their mother, Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, 46; and Lisa’s two adult children, actress Riley Keough and musician Ben Keogh.
Lisa Marie later pressed the flesh, shaking hands with some of the fans who lined the metal barriers that created a wide open 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. “I don’t want to be a downer, but we did just lose someone quite important,” she said in mentioning Guercio, who led the Presley band from 1970 to 1977 and introduced such Elvis signatures as the star’s “Thus Sprach Zarathustra” theme music.
“Downer.” That’s a down-to-earth word, which may be why Lisa Marie has fans of her own, none more enthusiastic than Colleen Corrigan, 47, of Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, making her sixth visit to Memphis with her husband and son — also fans — since her unusual 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.’ ”
The unusual vision inspired Corrigan’s late love for not just Elvis but his family: Her vanity license plate reads YISA LSM — the initials for “Lisa Marie Presley,” preceded by Elvis’ baby-talk pet pronunciation of his daughter’s name.
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.”
Plodek’s friend and fan club associate, Elke Hohmann, 46, represented a different type, the lifelong Elvis aficionado. “My father was born in 1944 and was an Elvis fan,” she said. “When we were young there was only Elvis music in the house, nothing else — Elvis, Elvis, Elvis. So it was like we were born in Elvis.”
Toshiko Okada, 73, of Japan said she was drawn to Memphis by what she called “big energy from Elvis.”
“He passes over generation, over borders over everything,” confirmed Angie Van Bever, 57, who was at Graceland with 23 members of the Elvis Presley Society of Belgium, including people from France and Sweden.
“I’m very close to my mum, and my mum’s a huge Elvis fan, and I always thought this place would make me happy,” explained first-time visitor Ben Zabel, 32, of Brisbane, Australia.
Andreas Heil, 50, of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, said he made plans five years ago to make his one and only Memphis visit on Jan., 8, 2015, to commemorate Elvis’ 80th birthday. “There are milestones in life, and this is one,” he said.
Elvis as octogenarian? The mind boggles, but it might have been. Dylan is 73, Ringo is 74, fellow Sun recording artists Jerry Lee Lewis and B.B. King are 79 and 89, respectively.
When Elvis died he was only 42, but if he had lived, “he would still be recording,” Heil said, “because Elvis is music. He is the passion of music.”
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