Mike Dougherty's Blog

The second day the music died

It may not be as important, culturally, as the question, “Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?” but it’s close:

Where were you 33 years ago when you heard that Elvis Presley died?

It was Aug. 16, 1977. I was working for the Courier-Index, a weekly newspaper in Marianna, Ark., under the tutelage of Editor-Publisher Marvin Caldwell. My high school friend, John Brummett, before making a two-day swing through the Arkansas Delta for a series he was writing for the grand, old Arkansas Gazette, called to see if I wanted to go raise some hell in Memphis.

So when Billy Wilkes, the young man who ran the office for his father’s vending-machine business next door, came walking in to tell us, “Elvis just died,” Brummett was waiting for me to finish writing a caption for a photo I just took from a family reunion. Then we were scheduled to head for Memphis. I think most of the watering holes for visitors were located in the Overton Square area in 1977.

Almost to a person, we in the Courier newsroom said something like, “You’re kidding!?!” Then Wilkes explained that they found Presley in his bathroom at Graceland and rushed him to Baptist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of a heart attack. He was 42.

Brummett and I went on to Memphis as planned. We crossed Elvis Presley Boulevard well west of Graceland, but we could see the huge crowd gathering down the road in front of the rock ‘n’ roll king’s mansion. We decided that we would go to Overton Square as planned, but spent most of the night drinking a little and talking a lot, like most of Memphis, about Elvis and his influence.

John was not the big Presley fan that I was, but he still had his share of memories of various events and songs. I think we made it back to my house in Moro, Ark., about 4:30 the next morning.

The next few days were strange, as a local television station in Memphis — it seems like it was Channel 5, but I can’t remember now — broadcast almost everything that happened related to Presley’s death.

First there were the huge crowds that gathered en masse in front of the house, writing on the stone fence that surrounded the front part of Presley’s property. Then the guy plowed into the crowd the next day, killing two people. Next came the bedlam that ensued when the Presley family announced that they would allow mourners to line up outside in preparation for filing through the house to view Presley’s body. I don’t remember any more how many people passed by to pay their respects, but it was easily in the thousands.

Finally, it came time for the funeral procession to take the body from Graceland to a nearby cemetery where Elvis’ mother, Gladys Presley, was buried. Traffic was stopped for miles around as thousands gathered to see the procession of hearse, family and celebrity friends such as former co-star/girlfriend Ann-Margret.

It should have been over, but it wasn’t. A small group of idiots — what else do you call celebrity grave robbers — tried to steal Presley’s body from the cemetery. That act led to the eventual decision for the family to move the remains of the singer and his mother back to Graceland, where they rest to this day. Going past those graves and others in the family is the final part of the Graceland tour.

I was a fan of the music and the man in the early days. From reading about him in the past three decades, I’m not sure how likeable he was in his later years. But then, if we had lived his life, we might have taken a strange path, too.