Still the King

He's young and old.

He's lean and bloated.

He's black and white.

He's country and soul.

He's rich and poor.

He's sober and addicted.

He's spiritual and sinful.

He's Tupelo and Graceland.

He's Elvis.

Thirty years after his death at 42, Elvis Presley remains everything to everyone. He's the American dream and nightmare all rolled into one.

What a life.

A dirt poor kid who became a rock star, generational icon and movie hero who revolutionized American music and culture.

What a death.

A sad, lonely man, found dead in the bathroom of his home, his body overloaded with junk food and prescription drugs.

Put it all together and you have Elvis: someone we all know, love and fantasize about.

Take it all apart and you have Elvis, someone with a fate we all dread: sick, depressed and dying alone.

Regardless of the myth, the ultimate truth of Elvis cannot be denied - he changed the world with his music, and at the dawn of the civil rights movement, he helped bridge America's cultural racial divide.

Now, on Aug. 16, fans will gather at Graceland in Memphis and around the world, to contemplate the 30th anniversary of his death and remember his life.

"Elvis still matters because of the continuing impact and emotional connection to his music," said Peter Guralnick, author of the definitive biographical works, "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley."

Presley's music spans six decades and was a revolutionary force at its birth, with a combination of rhythm and blues and country, during the early 1950s. Back then this was a country simmering with racial segregation - not to mention a burgeoning post World War II population of adolescents about to hit their teenage years.

"One reason we remember Elvis is the extent to which his music broke down barriers and categories in a way that continues to have general relevance to today," Guralnick said.

"Elvis left a great body of work and that's why we remember him today," said Jerry Schilling, who was 12 when he first met Presley in Memphis in 1954. "His image will always be alive because he touches so many people. Elvis was a star and an icon, but he had a human side that everyone can relate to."

"Even if he had only recorded for Sun Studios in the '50s, we'd still be talking about him today," said William Lee Ellis, a blues recording artist as well as music critic and scholar in Memphis. "Elvis took rhythm and blues, country music, gospel and pop, and turned it into something new. He was the consummate interpreter of songs."

Race is at the core of Elvis' rise. Elvis personified the mystical quest by Sam Phillips, the founder of Sun Records in Memphis, who was, in his words, searching for a white man who could sing like a black man.

"Who's to say Elvis wasn't really black," said Deanie Parker with a laugh. She is the president of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis. "He sounded black, he grew up in a black neighborhood, attended a black church and his musical influences were black.

"I'm black and I think the acceptance of Elvis went beyond race," Parker said. "Some in the African-American community resented Elvis, but I have to say the vast majority of blacks embraced him because he had such respect for black music and African-American culture. You can only be what you are; Elvis was a part of Memphis and its unique culture and music."

Memphis was a crossroads of the South; a place where blacks and whites came to work and play, and music became part of the cityscape. Elvis represented the crossroads of American music at a time when racial change was in the air.

"It's no accident that Elvis' first recordings coincided with Brown vs. Board of Education," Guralnick said. That was the 1954 Supreme Court case that declared a Kansas state law of separate public schools for black and white students inherently unequal and a violation of the Constitution.

While Elvis, 19, was singing a cover of black blues singer Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "That's Alright Mama," in Sam Phillips' Sun Studio in 1954, another young man was making noise in the South. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then 25, was named minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.

The Supreme Court wasn't the only entity trying to bring down racial barriers.

"Elvis' music was no less forward looking in its intent," Guralnick said. "It wasn't an accident. Both Elvis and Sam Phillips wanted to knock down walls. It went further than race and made a social statement. This music spoke not just for African-Americans, but a sub-culture that was not simply scorned, but ignored."

That sub-culture included poor whites and country music fans who listened to Bill Monroe, Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb. It also included teenagers coming of age in a new world with music called rock 'n' roll.

Elvis wasn't the only rocker Sam Phillips unleashed at Sun Records.

Others at the label included Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison. Teen fans were color blind when it came to music and black artists would also break through, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Ray Charles and Fats Domino.

In this brave new world, black and white could meld into something special, and Elvis was the leader of the pack.

"Elvis prized democratic values," Guralnick said. "It wasn't just black music, but also country, pop, rock and opera. Elvis wasn't trying to be all things to all people. He was paying homage to his love for music in a way that didn't differentiate among the genres. "

Schilling recalled that opera singer Mario Lanza was a favorite of Elvis. "He had so many influences and he put them together in his own way," said Schilling, author of "Me and a Guy Named Elvis."

Somehow, though, as the years wore on, Elvis lost his revolutionary zeal. Col. Tom Parker, his manager, seemed to milk Elvis as a commodity, and the performer's standards dropped for movies and recordings.

Another blow was his 1973 divorce from wife Priscilla, when Elvis lost custody of his only child, daughter Lisa-Marie. It took a toll on an aging, sickly man.

"I believe what you see in the end is a person in clinical depression," Guralnick said. "I think that depression virtually paralyzed him the last four or five years of his life."

And so, in the end, the defining images of Elvis are of an overweight, sweating singer in a white jumpsuit suffering his way through appearances.

"It's a shame we didn't get to see Elvis age gracefully," said Ellis, whose new blues CD is called "God's Tattoos."

Like Elvis, Memphis, the birthplace of so much of Presley's music, never quite lived up to expectations, Ellis believes.

"Memphis is still a poor city, and we're still dealing with issues of race, just as we did 50 years ago," he said.

The Rev. King was assassinated in Memphis, not far from where Elvis made his first recordings.

This week, crowds will gather in Memphis to remember Elvis' death and, as always, there are mixed feelings.

"It still bothers me when I think of the way Elvis died," Schilling said in voice choked with emotion. He worked for and knew Elvis nearly a quarter of a century and believes Presley yearned for more meaning in his work.

"I think we lost Elvis early because of creative disappointment," Schilling said, adding that Presley wanted to start his own movie production company and work on various projects. But, Schilling said, Elvis wasn't allowed to pursue his creative instincts.

"You take away those kinds of things and you kill a genius," Schilling said. "The bottom line is that he's not here and it's a shame. It's been 30 years, but I still miss the guy."

Despite all his accomplishments, Elvis had simple goals.

"His whole purpose was to be accepted and loved," Schilling said. "That's all he was seeking."

He may be gone, but Elvis survives and prospers and, despite his fall, may not be a tragic figure.

"There certainly are elements of tragedy to his life and his inability to find the kind of satisfaction he should have had at the end of his life," Guralnick said. "But I don't know if he's a tragic figure, Elvis always rejected labels.

"He rejected the label of king. All Elvis was looking for was to take his place in the landscape of great music. He wanted to be acknowledged as an artist like the others he admired: Enrico Caruso, Howlin' Wolf, Hank Williams, Roy Hamilton, Jake Hess and Ray Charles.

"Elvis had serious artistic intent from the very beginning. That was what he sought most of all, to take his place among the musicians and music he felt were so great."

Elvis reached that goal and maybe that explains why new generations of fans keep discovering him.

"He's cool, I love Elvis," said Gulyana Castillo, 17, of Ocala. "He's got that bluesy style and that pelvic thrust - you know the way he moves.

He's got an attitude. I like that."

They found a man dead at Graceland 30 years ago.

But Elvis still lives.

Anthony Violanti writes for the Star-Banner in Ocala, Fla.