this day in elvis history

Today marks the 49th anniversary of the release of Elvis' film debut, Love Me Tender.

I quite enjoy the Elvis films. I accept them for what they are often have them on in the background while doing other things. King Creole is actually a good movie, but that may have more to do with the presence of Walter Matthau than Elvis or the script. Any film with Matthau is a film worth watching. Elvis wasn't much of an actor, but he had a good screen presence and never got in the way of the other actors, and that was really all he was there to do anyway.

I have never seen Love Me Tender, but I do not care much for the song. Truth be told, I could really do without most of the Elvis catalogue between the Sun years and bloated "Suspicious Minds" era finale. Rockabilly Elvis and jumpsuit Elvis were something to behold, but the rest of it, in my personal opinion, seems a bit overrated. The Elvis Christmas album they were playing in the grocery store the other day was hokey at best, and his version of "Hey Jude" that I heard in the Memphis airport last week was a worse insult to the song than Paul McCartney running it into the ground at every all-star concert and sporting event over the past couple of decades.

But the worst Elvis travesty has to be "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Songs in which the singer stops and talks to the listener are never a good idea, but there has always been something about the monologue in the bridge of "Lonesome" that is genuinely creepy. I have no doubt that my hell would be a continuous stream of the worst Elvis songs imaginable with reverb heavy monologues added to each, and that is the primary reason why I live a life so pure in spirit.

Still, I have a healthy respect for the king and find only fair to allow for a rebuttal: