30 Years After Elvis’s Death, Graceland Set For $250 Million Makeover

Or, as the groan-inducing headline in the Los Angeles Times reads, Graceland About to Get All Shook Up. According to the AP, CKX Inc., the company that controls Elvis Presley’s name and image as well as Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, plans a new visitors center, a convention hotel and a museum with high-tech displays. “As great as it is,” CKX Chairman Robert F.X. Sillerman said of Graceland, “it can be so much better.” The project will take approximately three years.

The news comes in advance of the 30th anniversary of Elvis’s death on Aug. 16, 1977, which is being recognized at Graceland with “Elvis Week.” Among the events accessible outside Memphis: Tomorrow night, CNN’s Larry King will broadcast his show from within Graceland. His guest: Priscilla Presley.

King’s broadcast will likely be cheesy, as so much involving Elvis unfortunately is these days. (And, after watching King’s show with surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr last month, I wouldn’t count on him to raise the bar.) Despite being caricatured as a bloated, jump-suited, TV-shooting has been, Elvis still remains an important part of American culture. Just check out these three terrific stories from recent days:

* From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: At Graceland, a Father and Son Get in Touch With Their Inner Elvis

* From the New York Times: How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist?

* From the Washington Post: King Blelvis

The last story focuses on Blelvis, aka the Black Elvis, aka Rondy Andrew Wooten. ‘I don’t want to sound braggadocious or anything,” he tells the Post’s Monica Hesse, “but I’m sort of a D.C. institution.”

He is. I met him last summer on U Street when he walked up to me and my wife and asked us to pick any Elvis song and he’d serenade us with it. He’s been wowing locals and tourists alike with pipes and his knowledge of all 1,112 songs Presley ever recorded. Here’s a little taste via YouTube:

 

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