Elvis: 30 weird and wonderful facts

1. Elvis was a black belt in karate. He took up martial arts
under
the shotokan sensei Jürgen Seydal, while fulfilling his military
duties in
Germany in 1958. He was awarded his black belt before he returned to
the
United States, in 1960, by the chito-ryu instructor Hank Slemansky.
Elvis’s
love of martial arts continued throughout his life. His favourite form
of
fighting became.





2. On 21 December 1970, Presley met President Nixon at the
White
House. Presley had initiated the meeting with a six-page letter to the

President, in which he had spelt out his desire to be made a “Federal
Agent-at-Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. During
his
meeting with Nixon, Presley denounced The Beatles as being
‘un-American’ for
their open drug-taking and anti-Vietnam politics. For his part, Nixon
reminded Presley of his need to “retain credibility”. Nevertheless, he
is
said to have given Presley a ‘Special Agent’ badge.





3. Elvis’s first radio play was on Memphis station WHBQ, on
the Red,
Hot and Blue Right”, Show, in 1954. DJ Dewey Phillips played “That’s
All
and, a week later Sun Records had received 6,000 advance orders for
the
single “That’s All Right”/ “Blue Moon of Kentucky”.




4. The King’s entourage were known collectively as the Memphis

Mafia. All members of the Memphis Mafia sported diamond and gold
rings,
given to them by Elvis, on which a thunderbolt and the letters TCB had
been
imprinted. TCB stood for “Take Care of Business”.





5. In 1960, when Elvis was at his post-military trimmest, he
weighed
a little over 12 stone. When he died, in 1977, he weighed a just under
19
stone.





6. None of Elvis’s feature films or music documentaries were
ever
nominated for an Oscar in any category. He made 31 movies and two
music
documentaries.





7. Elvis’s first public performance was at the
Mississippi-Alabama
competition Fair and Dairy Show. The young Elvis entered the singing
dressed
as a cowboy, and had to stand on a chair to reach the microphone. His
performance of “Old Shep” by Red Foley earned him second prize.





8. Elvis recorded more than 600 songs in his music career, but

didn’t write a single one of them.




9. Until his late teens, Elvis was blond.





10. Elvis ate nothing but meatloaf, tomatoes, and mashed
potato for
two years.





11. Some of Elvis’s bejewelled jumpsuits weighed more than two
stone.




12. When Elvis discovered that his wife, Priscilla, had been
having
an affair with Mike Stone – a karate instructor and mutual friend of
the
couple – he flew into a rage. The biographer Peter Guralnick claims
that
Elvis was so angry, he said: “there’s too much pain in me ¿ Mike Stone

[must] die.” But when his body-guard, Red West, came back to his boss
with a
price for Stone’s contract killing, the King’s mood had softened. “Aw
hell,”
he said. “Let’s just leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy.”




13. Elvis won three Grammy Awards – for his gospel recordings.




14. He only performed five concerts outside the United States –
all
in Canada in 1957. At the time of his death, he was planning a
European
tour. He only set foot on British soil once, when the plane taking him
back
to the United States from Germany stopped to refuel at Glasgow
Prestwick
airport. The singer enjoyed a two-hour stop over before re-boarding
the
military plane.





15. The last film Elvis saw at the cinema was The Spy Who
Loved Me.
The day before he died, though, he had tried to obtain a print of Star
Wars:
Episode IV – A New Hope, to show his daughter, Lisa Marie.




16. Sometime in the early 1960s, Elvis adopted a chimpanzee
called
Scatter. Scatter had previously belonged to a Memphis children’s
entertainer, and was trained to perform. He also had a penchant for
looking
up women’s skirts. Elvis found this trait amusing. A well-known wheeze
was
to gather his female friends together, and then let Scatter wreak
havoc
among them.





17. Even before the obese later years, Presley was a
prodigious
eater. In his 20s, he told Country Song Roundup Magazine that he could

demolish eight deluxe cheese burgers, two bacon-lettuce-and-tomato
sandwiches and three milkshakes in a single sitting.





18. Elvis first nourished his taste for outlandish clothes
while a
student at LC Humes High School in Memphis. He admired clothes at
Lansky
Brothers on Beale Street, but only had enough money to buy the
occasional
shirt. When he became famous, he began shopping there more regularly,
and
continued to use Lansky Brothers his whole life. Indeed, Bernard
Lansky, the
proprietor, is responsible for some of the more egregious fashion
crimes
perpetrated by the King. It was Lansky, for instance, who made Elvis’s
gold
lamé jacket.





19. In 1954, when Elvis was cutting some early records at Sun
Studios, he auditioned for an amateur gospel quartet called the
Songfellows.
They turned him down.





20. On 30 July 1954, Elvis played one of his first shows, at
the
Overton Park Shell in Memphis. He was, apparently, so nervous, that
his legs
started to shake. The outlandish flares the singer had chosen to wear
that
evening only exacerbated the shaky movement. The girls in the audience
went
wild, and Elvis decided to incorporate his shaky-legs routine into
future
shows.





21. Elvis had a brief affair with the Swedish-American actress
and
singer, Ann-Margret, as they filmed the kitsch 1964 hit Viva Las
Vegas.
Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, demanded that the relationship
end, but
his charge continued to hold a special place in his heart for
Ann-Margret.
Every time Ann-Margret opened a show in Las Vegas, he would send her
flowers
arranged in the shape of a guitar.





22. Elvis was christened Elvis Aron Presley, but his
gravestone
reads Elvis Aaron Presley. Elvis was christened with only one ‘a’ in
his
middle name, so that he would share a characteristic with his still
born
twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley. Towards the end of his life, Elvis
sought
to add an ‘a’ to his middle name to make it a biblical name.




23. Not only was Elvis a direct descendant of Abraham
Lincoln’s
great-great grandfather, Isaiah Harrison, he was a distant cousin of
Jimmy
Carter.





24. Led Zeppelin were big fans of Elvis and were desperate to
meet
him when they toured the US. In 1973, the longed-for meeting came to
pass,
when Robert Plant and John Paul Jones met the King in Los Angeles. The

Zeppelins were rendered speechless by the meeting, but Elvis broke the
ice
by swapping his $5,000 gold and diamond watch for Jones’s watch –
which
featured a picture of Mickey Mouse. From that moment on, any member of
Led
Zeppelin was welcome in the front row of an Elvis concert.





25. Elvis collected marble statues of the Venus de Milo and
Joan of
Arc.





26. In 1973, Elvis gave Muhammad Ali a $10,000 white robe,
with the
words “People’s Champion” emblazoned across the back. Ali was touched,
and
wore the robe on 31 March, when he fought Ken Norton for the first
time.
Norton broke Ali’s jaw in the second round, before winning a 12-round
decision. Ali vowed never to wear the robe again, although he
maintained his
friendship with Elvis.





27. Elvis’s favourite toothpaste was Colgate. His favourite
aftershave was Brut. And his favourite soft drink was Pepsi.





28. This year, the American firearms company America Remembers

released a special edition “Elvis Presley TCB Tribute Revolver”. The
weapon,
a .357 Smith & Wesson Magnum Revolver, is decorated with a
picture
of Elvis, as well as a lightning bolt, in 24-carat-gold. The weapon is

designed, say its makers, to “honour the legend of Elvis Presley, and
we are
proud to offer it on one of the most powerful firearms ever used in
American
law-enforcement”. Elvis was himself a keen collector of guns. He had
40
weapons in his arsenal, including M-16s and a Thomson sub-machinegun.





29. The book Elvis was reading at the time of his death was
Frank O
Adams’s The Scientific Search for the face of Jesus.





30. Elvis wore a cross, the Hebrew letter chai, and a star of
David
around his neck. “I don’t want to miss out on heaven due to a
technicality,”
he said.