Despite being beloved around the world, Elvis Presley never performed outside of the United States and Canada. The prevailing (though never officially confirmed) belief is that the King of Rock ’n’ Roll had to turn down every offer he received to play abroad because his controversial manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was an undocumented immigrant from the Netherlands who didn’t have a passport and feared he would be denied re-entry to the U.S. if he left. (If Elvis ever had a fear of flying, he evidently got over it, purchasing and customizing several planes over the years, including the especially tricked-out Lisa Marie, a Convair 800 jet.) Other than three 1957 shows in Canada (in Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver, B.C.), Elvis only ever performed stateside.
And perform he did. In addition to his legendary Las Vegas residency, which consisted of 636 sold-out concerts between 1969 and 1976, Elvis toured extensively throughout the country and starred in two concert documentaries, 1970’s Elvis: That’s the Way It Is and 1972’s Elvis on Tour (not to mention also starring in 31 feature films). Following his untimely death in Memphis at the age of 42 in August 1977, CBS aired the posthumous television special Elvis in Concert on October 3 of that year. Filmed during two performances on his final tour, it features several of his most beloved songs — “Jailhouse Rock,” “Hound Dog,” and “Can't Help Falling in Love” among them — and was watched by more than 24 million viewers. Today, more than 40 years after his death, Elvis continues to earn new fans — and of course, some believe he’s still with us.
To say that music critics were unkind to the burgeoning hip-swiveling superstar — whose telegenic sexuality sometimes shocked the nation — would be an understatement. A columnist from Miami wrote in 1956 that Elvis' fans deserved a “solid slap across the mouth.” The vitriol extended to the Los Angeles Mirror News, whose Paul Coates had this to say about the King on October 31, 1957: “If he was my kid (and I was a helluva lot better shape than I am), I’d smack that sneer off his face and send him out for a haircut. In all, I consider him a very distasteful individual.” Dorothy Ricker of the Tampa Bay Times was kind enough to avoid ad hominem attacks and simply focus on her belief that Elvis “cannot sing and his whole performance is crude and disgusting” before predicting that “in a comparatively short time he will be forgotten.” Well, not quite.