Empower U - November 21st - ELVIS!!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Asked.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Channel nine says the weather will be well high sixty
eight today, cloudy skies all day, and the rainbow taper
off sometime this afternoon. If you've got it partly cloudy
over night, it'd be dry and low forty seven isolated
midday shower tomorrow. Otherwise mostly cloudy and high a fifty
five with a drop of thirty four overnight, mostly clotty Thursday,
rain and snow possible via forty right now fifty eight

(00:26):
type of traffic.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
From the UCL Traffic Center. Are you one of the
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Help Learn more at u sehelp dot com. Southbound seventy
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heading into downtown. They cleared the accident below the Western

(00:52):
Hills Viaduct. That's getting better. Northbound seventy five over an
hour delay no because of an accident in the cut.
Chuck it a month fifty five KROC Deep Talk station.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
This seven thirty here fifty five KRC DE Talk station.
A very happy Tuesday, to you Inside Scoop coming up
after Top of the Hour News and one Hour from
Now and Daniel Davis Deep Dive and the latest on Ukraine, Israel,
and of course Russia in the meantime. Welcome to the
fifty five KRC Morning Show. Elvis Fan extraordinary Michael Mercer.
He's going to be doing an empower Youth seminar and
it's actually more than just a seminar. It is a
whole evening of fun and games. Show up live so

(01:27):
you can enjoy beer, wine, appetizers and enjoy a live concert.
After Michael's speech on Elvis, Welcome to the program, Michael.
It's a great have you on today.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Hey, thank you Brian very much.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
You've been an Elvis fan your entire life. Apparently I
understand you. You actually made a trip to Graceland with
your dad back in the day a few years ago.
That was I suppose.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, yeah, I've made two trips. One my dad and
I took a road trip from Boston to Graceland in
nineteen ninety and then in two thousand and nine, my
own son and I took a trip from Cincinnati to Graceland.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Oh that's cool, sir. You know I've always seen pictures
of Graceland, and you know, most recently, I guess the
movie Zombie Land had Graceland in and after the zombie
apocalypse and was all dilapidated and everything. The one thing
that I've been told and I've heard other people say,
and I wanted to get your impression on that, is that,
you know, given how big homes have gotten over the years,

(02:24):
and you look at these twenty thirty forty fifty thousand
square foot ridiculous houses out west and out east, it's
a lot smaller than you would think it would be
given how historic Graceland is. Is that your impression?

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, I would say yes, yes. You know, you walk
in and there's a dining room in the left and
a living room in the right, and then you go
through a hallway and then you have a kitchen and
like a bedroom in the back, and then that that
famous jungle room. But I'd agree with you, don't It
doesn't seem like a huge, you know, Hollywood mansion really Now?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Was he kind of a humble guy in his in
his real life, you know and outwithstanding the amazing stage
person he put on. What kind of guy was he?
You know, sort of day to day.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, if you that's the great thing about the Internet.
It's given you know, all these Elvis obsessed fans with
all of this information, you can you can hear interviews
with all of his friends and the people that performed
with him and acted with him, and you know what
you hear is he was this enormously generous person. I
think like everyone who everyone in the Memphis mafia that

(03:30):
and people that work for me. You bought them a
home and cars, and he was always giving anonymously. There
was a story that was revealed recently that sometime in
the seventies there were like consecutive Christmases where on Christmas
Eve he could go to the the Memphis prison, the
jail and talk to every inmate and see what he
could do for them to help them, you know, whether

(03:51):
it was money for their family or whatever. But he
was this really you know, down to earth. Everyone says
he was really down to earth, kind and generous. But
at the same time, what's and I covered the in
the talk. So many people say that he had this
this aura that you could feel electricity, Like you could
be in a room and he'd enter the building and
you didn't know he was there. You could physically feel
that he was there, and you knew he was there.

(04:12):
He gave off like an energy and electricity that many
people talked about. So he was he was very humble,
but I think there was something going on there.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, no, I understand that. And I guess one of
the things I learned and I get your reaction on
the movie that was made about him that Tom Hanks
was in, But when I read Bill O'Reilly's Killing the Legends,
I came away with this absolute and I wouldn't say hatred,
that's a tough word, but disdain for Colonel Tom Parker.

(04:44):
He worked Elvis Presley to death. I mean you can
almost say that literally.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Right, And that's you know, that's something that I think Elvis,
from what I've heard from you know, and everythings his
bodyguard said and the Mephosmalfia that in the seventies he
became aware of that Colonel Parker had a serious gambling problem,
and that, you know, Elvis was I think he was
doing like performing one hundred and eighty nights a year
in the seventies, and sometimes he'd be two shows, like
in Vegas, he took two shows a night for thirty

(05:12):
days straight. So he felt like he was being worked
to death, and it was partly to pay off Colonel
Parker's gambling deaths because he'd lose you know, a million bucks.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
You know, in a moment, how is a guy like Elvis,
with all the money he was made, how popular he was,
all the access to the multitudes and the masses of people,
was he able to be kept in such a confined
space and domineered by so much by Tom Parker that
he didn't get some sort of independent financial advice or
get someone to sort of grab him by the neck

(05:44):
and say, dude, do you realize you are being ripped
off and work to death? For that man's issues.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
That I really don't understand, because I know he knew
he was being worked to death. But on another level,
I think that Elvis implicitly trusted Colonel Parker because he really,
you know, in the fifties made him so successful. He
really attributed his mega success to a great extent to

(06:13):
Colonel Parker's promotional abilities. You know, and I know I've
seen in interviews with Elvis's father he said the same thing, like,
you know, you can trust a guy like Colonel Parker's
I think there was a real naivete. I think they
implicitly trusted Colonel Parker on we well financially in terms
of like the deals, right, but I think they're very naive,
you know, in terms of like business and finances, and

(06:37):
really weren't fully aware of how much she, you know, COURL.
Parker was taking from him, you know, financially.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Well, speaking of taking obviously muchly. A dramatically different racial
environment existed back in the fifties when you know, he
made his bones in music and became popular, and I
think of a guy like Pat Boone who sing black
music for a white audience. You know, that was for
the purposely designed so it was acceptable. I know Elvis

(07:08):
has been accused of that, of stealing the music of
that belonged to the black culture. Was he aware of
those criticisms during his lifetime or did these come up
later in life he.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Was, And well, I don't know for sure, but I
get the sense that he was, because there were multiple
times where you know, he didn't appropriate that music. He
really transformed black rhythm and blues into his own thing,
and that's why it was so popular. You know, it
was something new, and of course you've probably heard when
when they first started playing his records in the South,

(07:42):
white listeners thought thought he was black. So people thought
he was black initially, but he was doing something different
with the music. He was transforming it and making it
his own. But there are multiple interviews in press conferences
that he did where he would say, my music was
really a combination of gospel or them and blues and
country combined. So he he always knew that he was

(08:04):
borrowing and taking as the basis of his music black
gospel and rhythm and blues, you know, and transforming it
into his own thing. But he always acknowledged that it
wasn't you know, this appropriation where he tried to sound
like a black performer and claimed the music as being
just his own. He always credited black performers.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Well, get that he started out with gospel. Was Was
he a profoundly religious man himself?

Speaker 1 (08:31):
He was? He was and his his girlfriend Lynda Thompson
in the seventies, he used to talk about how he
would wear across and a star of David and I
forget the Islamic symbol because he said he didn't want
to be kept out of heaven on the captality. But

(08:52):
he had a He had a trunk of two hundred
books that he would take with him on his tours
in the seventies. He was very really an intellectual, became
an intellectual, and a lot of them were I always
had the biblenexser's bed, and a lot of them were
spiritual books. He would read about different faiths, you know,
from all different cultures. He was extremely spiritual.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
And one of the things I have to comment on
before we part coming today Michael Mercier. We're just scratching
the surface of his topic, which obviously Elvis Presley. The
event Thursday, six point thirty pm. We got an early
star time. If you're showing up a two twenty five
Northern Boulevard, that's when the appetizers and the beer and
wine start flowing. Michael's going to start speaking at seven,
and then at eight o'clock you're going to hear from

(09:33):
the Sincerely Elvis Tribute band. He's going to be playing
for an hour with all the Elvis music and of
course the Elvis experience and the moves and the as
is described here in my notes Electric Vibes. So it's
going to be a fun full evening. But back over
to the question I wanted to end on this morning,
Michael with you his film career. Now, some obviously better
than others, and I have seen quite a few Elvis movies.

(09:56):
I wouldn't exactly call any of them Academy Award winning material,
but there are some of them that I have a
feeling that Elvis had to be really really embarrassed to make.
And of course not Viva Las Vegas, because Anne Margaret
was smoke and hot in that movie. But clam Bake,
I mean, come on, man, seriously, Michael, you're the biggest

(10:19):
Elvis fan on the planet. You can't defend clam Bake.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
No, No, Honestly, I think I found Elvis personally to
be a mediocre actor. I think he had potential, yeah,
but he wasn't like a Rod Steiger, right, He wasn't
a native actor in my opinion. And yes, he was
giving all given all those terrible films, and it frustrated him.
You might have heard this story where Barbara streisand approached

(10:43):
him about taking the lead and a Star is Born,
and he wanted to do it. He thought this could
be my big break to get into dramatic films, and
the Colonel Parker demanded too much money, and she declined.
Oh so he gave up the Yeah, he gave up
the film career and said, dad a, Hollywood doesn't want
me anyone back to music, which which was great in
the seventies.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Of course.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
You know, well that's great, Michael. It's been a real
pleasure having you on today, and it's gonna be a
really interesting conversation. You'll do Q and A at this tonight,
will you? Yeah, we're on Thursday, Yes, Thursday, not tonight.
I don't want to Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. The information
of my blog page fifty five cars, bring an appetizer.
If you're showing up in person for the six thirty social,
you're encouraged to bringing appetizer or dessert. Again, they'd be

(11:27):
beer and wine flowing. You get an hour's worth of
conversation with Michael, and then you get an hour's worth
of music with the band. Michael has been a real
good have fun on Thursday. I know it's going to
be a great event. A lot of people are going
to check it out, So have fun and uh I
will probably talk with you again down the road.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
All right, Thanks so much, Brian.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
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