Elvis Legacy Spans Kitsch, Christian Reflection

When Elvis Presley fans press singer Joe Moscheo about his days performing as back-up singer to Presley in the 1970s, Moscheo says he faces questions that go far beyond the music.

"They want to know, 'Do you think Elvis is in heaven?'" Moscheo writes in his new book, "The Gospel Side of Elvis," a reflection on Presley's roots in a high-spirited gospel tradition from his youth in Tupelo, Mississippi.

"It's so much a part of who Elvis was," Moscheo says. "So much has been written about his weaknesses, whether it's women or drugs, that it's hard to believe he had this other side."

But Moscheo, who became a member of Presley's entourage during his revived career as a live performer in Las Vegas, says many fans who make the pilgrimage to Presley's Memphis Graceland estate these days are pondering big questions.

"They're coming from around the world and it's almost like they're going to church," he said of the Elvis faithful. "It's so obsessive."

Moscheo's book -- like Elvis-themed refrigerator magnets, T-shirts, ash trays, bumper stickers and hundreds of other trinkets -- were on sale at Graceland this week as tens of thousands of devotees made the trek to Memphis to pay their respects on the 30th anniversary of Presley's death.

The solemnity and even spirituality of the event for fans set against its heavily commercial overtones for an estate that made an estimated $40 million on Presley's legacy last year makes for a jarring contrast in the eyes of some critics.

But then, contradiction was a hallmark of Presley's career in the view of many biographers.

Feared as a rebel for his hip-rolling dance moves as he touched off the rock-and-roll revolution in the late 1950s, Presley craved legitimacy. When the Junior Chamber of Commerce named him one of the outstanding young Americans of 1970, he was so proud of the honor that he carried the trophy everywhere with him everywhere on tour.

Increasingly dependent on a range of painkillers, anti-depressants and other prescription drugs, Presley famously offered to help President Nixon in the war on drugs in 1970.

The world's most popular singer by record sales and a box-office success in Hollywood, Presley died alone at Graceland in August 1977 at age 42 after expressing doubts about whether he would ever find love again.

Elvis was not only the "dangerous, sexy new American dream of 1956," he was also "the fat, sweaty and sequined" embodiment of how badly it seemed to have gone wrong by the early 1970s, said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

"Once you get away from the sacred space surrounding the Elvis myth at Graceland, you realize that one of his greatest legacies is kitsch," Thompson said.

UP THE DRIVEWAY AT GRACELAND

Other academics have argued that Presley's rags-to-riches rise resonates today because it touches on the familiar themes of the American dream -- and the limits of material wealth.

"Elvis, the consumer supreme, was consumed, both before and after his death," novelist Bobbie Ann Mason wrote in her 2003 biography "Elvis Presley."

Tens of thousands of Elvis fans braved sweltering heat on Wednesday and Thursday to mark the anniversary of his death in a candlelight vigil -- an event that has grown bigger over the three decades since he died.

Karal Ann Marling, wrote in her 1994 take on the Elvis myth, "Graceland: Going Home with Elvis" that the vigil was a way for fans to mediate on their own losses and disappointments.

"About how we believed things would turn out right, and how they seldom did," she wrote. "About the pleasure of getting things you'd always wanted and how the feeling fizzled out in emptiness ... The trip up the driveway is all about a little hard-won wisdom."

Many Elvis fans at Graceland for the week-long tribute organized by his estate offered a simpler view of why they keep coming back year after year: each other.

"I think it's the aura," said Cheryl Shannon, 50, of Cincinnati. "It's like a family reunion."

Standing nearby Matt Sutherland, 42, finished the thought: "It's like a family reunion where you don't know anyone."