"For 45 years now he has not been with us, but the light of his name..."
"We will never forget, each of us will always remember..."
"His triumph of the American dream, his achievements and awards in music..."
Nonsense and shameless lies.
Everything is forgotten, to the ground and to the root.
Show business glamorized Elvis, year after year, covering him with a translucent film, creating the appearance of the invisibility of the obvious: Elvis is the king of the poor in the south, the Sweet Lord of everyone who has only coppers in his pockets from birth.
You may not like it.
This may bug you.
I will tell you a very unpleasant story.
Get comfortable.
In the front row.
Las Vegas.
One of the days of the second decade of August, the Elvis summer festival, which began on August 10, 1970 (Elvis will give fifty-eight concerts in twenty-nine days).
It looks like you are lucky - the scene is in full view.
He's about to show up, get ready.
“I knew him very well in ordinary life, when we could hang around in the bedroom for days, endlessly reviewing old films.
Sometimes he was fond of some book and could read passages from it aloud for hours ... On stage, the man who was my husband was completely transformed - I did not know this new person at all.
He looked like a tiger - with grace, movements, he fascinated the hall and subjugated it to himself - a session of total hypnosis.
He radiated charm and danger: you could never know what he would throw out in the next second ... "
This is Priscilla Presley, Elvis' wife.
You probably don't know Elvis better than she does.
Where does this grace of a tiger come from?
What is it all about?
And what exactly is he saying to you now with a strange, if not defiant, smile?
Some of you all never been down South too much...
And that's right, why would you be there?
Although, maybe you grew up in the South - it’s very different, maybe you attended quite a decent school and your morning didn’t start with thoughts about which relatives and acquaintances to visit in order to dine once again ...
I' gonna tell you a little story, so you'll understand where I'm talking about...
O!
This is a brilliant story in its own way, it is worth listening to.
Down there we have a plant that grows out in the woods and the fields, and it looks something like a turnip green... Everybody calls it polk salad.
Now that's polk salad...
What the hell, really!
It's the same as if someone started a monologue about a swan from the stage.
Or swede... Turnip!
Used to know a girl that lived down there and... She'd go out in the evenings to pick a mess of it... Carry it home and cook it for supper, 'cause that's about all they had to eat.. .
But they did all right!..
They got out.
They got it all right in the end.
In a wonderful story about life in the South.
Just so you understand: Phytolácca americána is a brutally poisonous plant.
Yes, in American medicine it is used for some preparations, food is tinted with the juice of its berries, but this is all on the verge, but in order to eat it ... and make a “traditional southern dish” from it, you will have to collect only the leaves and the youngest shoots , after they will have to be boiled - while boiling for twenty-two minutes at the same time (water after boiling must be drained and replaced - it is “not useful”).
Only after such a heat treatment and a good rinsing of the cooked whole thing will it “look like spinach or asparagus”.
Now to the pan, salt, pepper and bacon, if you have it (bacon): the meal is served.
And now he sings.
This utterly strange Polk Salad Annie song - it is very perky, only too disturbing, but everything is quite skillfully dressed in a certain mysterious ...
Once upon a time there lived in the South, all alone, a fine girl, who at times had absolutely nothing to eat, and her name was Annie, and she knew how to pacify even alligators ...
Go to gallery page
— Everyday before suppertime
She'd go down by the truck patch
And pick her a mess of Polk salad
And carry it home in a tote sack
Polk salad Annie
'Gators got you granny
Everybody said it was a shame
'Cause the mama was working on the chain gang
Whoo, how wretched, dispiteful, straight-razor totin' woman,
Lord have mercy!!!...
Ho-ho!..
So also her mother was serving time in hard labor!
Well, family!
Why is he telling us this?
What is there tinkling under the luxurious armchair of the main hall of the International Hilton Hotel?
Aren't those your sandals, held together by curtain rings, from a tiny factory in the town of Tupelo?
Not?!
All local boys were repaired with these free rings "summer" shoes, or rather, what was left of it: they pierced through the top and bottom with ten rings, grabbed them to each other - than not ...
O!..
It's not with you - it's with Elvis and his cronies.
Just imagine how much they ate that same Polk salad with the whole company - probably without bacon at all, where did they get bacon from ...
Yes Yes!
Something like that comes to mind!
Elvis's dad, Vernon, is an uncouth redneck who once stole a whole, live pig by forging a bank check.
No luck, he served several years for this, but did the pig go into business?
Did it become bacon in a pan with a well-cooked salad?
That is the question...
He sings and sings about that damned Annie... What do we care about her, really?!
Some Louisiana wanker wrote a fashion hit, I think his name is Swamp Fox Tony White - and now we should all listen to it all performed by Elvis!
But he's damn good!
And there is no need to get into the meanings - we are in Las Vegas, money burns the soul, and it's time to play with the unclean on your own! ..
Tony Joe White is an interesting young man.
Why is he so close to Elvis?
Are they both southerners?
No one will understand what is in the head of the southerners ...
“I lived there for the first eighteen years of my life.
My ancestors endlessly grew cotton and corn, and somehow it turned out that often we did not have enough of the simplest food.
Yes... And I'm not at all ashamed to admit that we often ate this same Polk salad - that's why I wrote a song about it.
Do you understand?!
I have eaten it a thousand times!
And I've seen the rain a thousand times!
I write about what I know ... "
Go to gallery page
That's Tony Joe.
Swamp Fox - and another beggar.
No no!
Do not think bad - everyone firmly believes in the American dream!
And they, and the Fox, and the King, earned their money in an honest way - in America it is so sacred!
It's just... It smells a little like "white trash"... But you can get used to it, the main thing is not to think too much into the text!
The perfect solution to every problem!
He really does look like a tiger.
And he could eat all of you if he wanted to.
The trouble (and maybe happiness) is that someone who knows the wrong side of life will rather come to your aid than decide to bite off his head ...
Now let's be clear.
Who among you, in all the years of the King's life, in all the years after his departure, thought about the text of Polk Salad Annie?
Over why it was in Las Vegas that he sang it more than one hundred times - while more than an immodest dinner was served on VIP tables in the hall?
On what occasion did journalists at a press conference preceding the concerts in New York's Madison Square Garden dare to ask: “Mr. Presley!
Your family was very poor: did you go hungry?”
They were starving.
In the understanding of the golden billion.
How strange, as a child, Elvis and his family did not know, nor were they even in the queue for a black (at least) move to the golden billion.
Is this not "blessed" America?
And what was he to do?
Hungry more?
He grew to the sky and broke through the vault of heaven with his head.
He left the tablets of sound and went to his planet.
He did what he had to do and accepted the inevitable.
He died.
45 years ago, in the midst of the August heat, on such a day.
And he was a peaceful tiger, although even now I would not dare to wake him up ...
You can listen to it at least every day.
Connecting to it as a source of inspiration and strength.
However, given the scale of his personality and the power of his influence on humanity, you can at least sometimes delve into the lyrics that he sang for a reason.
They can be quite childish - like Puppet On A String or Wooden Heart.
Piercing to the reduced cheekbones - like Suspicious Minds or In the Ghetto.
Turned to the Heavenly Father - like I Believe in the Man in the Sky.
They can be anything.
You will not find one thing in them - vulgarity.
After all, he is the King.
Anyone who has tasted Polk Salad at least once in their life.
Down in Louisiana
Where the alligators grow so mean
Lived a girl that I wear to the world
Made the alligators look tame...
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.