Presley lives again as Memphis fetes rock-n-roll king

Up to 30,000 tourists flock each year to Presley's former home for Elvis Week, the official name, celebrating the singer who swept the US like a storm in the mid-1950s with hits like Hound Dog and Love Me Tender.

Decades after he died at 42 in Memphis from heart failure in 1977, he remains a huge star, with fans joining Elvis impersonator contests and holding a candlelight vigil -- televised live as the "Vigilcast" -- at the famous gates of his Graceland mansion.

For this year's Elvis Week, some six-dozen wanna-be Presleys from the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, England, Spain and Japan will square off in the most prominent of the city's Elvis impersonator competitions, the week-long "Images of the King".

Launched by former Presley family veterinarian Edward 'Doc' Franklin and his wife Jackie, the contest is one of the hallmark events of the annual festival.

If visitors only see Elvis when they come to Memphis, local Memphians are less than elated by the annual party for their most famous resident, which they renamed "Death Week".

Some Memphians are chafed by the fact that Presley has largely defined the Memphis image for those outside it, despite the majority-black city's other stars like Al Green, Aretha Franklin, Isaac Hayes, Ike and Tina Turner, and another "king", blues legend B. B. King.

But the locals are in denial, for Elvis is still the city's biggest tourist draw, especially during Elvis Week. And last year the king topped Forbes' list for dead celebrity earners, while Presley re-releases and remixes have in the past three years topped American and British music charts.

Source: Afp