Earlier this year, when I wrote on social media about Elvis Presley’s first national TV appearance, I realized that I didn’t really have a firm grasp on the rise of this enormous cultural icon: Like many folks my age, I though his big breakthrough was on the Ed Sullivan Show. But that didn’t happen until September. Say what you want about him when he was older and chubbier and a parody of himself — in 1956, this hungry you man worked his ass off: 94 concerts, 10 national TV appearances, four No. 1 singles, two hit albums… oh, yeah, and he filmed his first movie appearance. A mighty impressive work ethic for this 21-year-old kid. I built this for my usual Flashback spot in the Sunday e-edition but somehow — and I’m still not sure how — it got left out of the paper. Our features editor rescued it and ran it in her tabloid section the following Thursday. It ran across two facing pages and only the right-side page was in color, but hey, I’ll take it. This was the second Flashback this month that got promoted from the e-edition into print.
Feb. 25, 2016
Comments