Late 70s Elvis. The fat one in the white rhinestone suits. I know artistically he was no longer terribly relevant except as a nostalgia act. But did he just appear to be dressed for “showbiz” at the time or did he appear a bit ridiculous even by 1977 fashion standards?
I watched bits of the '68 comeback special on Youtube. He still looked like Elvis at the time and put on a good show. It’s crazy how he went from that to a bloated mess in just 8 years.
Yes, I think he was by many people. He also still had his fans, though.
Yes. In 1970, I had a neighbor in Nashville whose Memphis aunt was a neighbor of Elvis’s. This gal, a cute teenager and frequent guest at Graceland’s swimming pool, eventually took down her Elvis poster and replaced it with David Cassidy. If that didn’t make him a bloated joke in a Nudie jumpsuit, what could?
The unironically-worn rhinestone suits didn’t help things but the fact he got fat and “old” (compared with other rock stars at the time) is what really pushed him into tacky joke status in the years before he died.
He had a large, passionate fanbase who loved everything he did, not matter how ridiculous. But it was aging and younger music fans considered him washed up.
Most pathetic of were people who insisted he was the “King of Rock and Roll.” Which he actually was, in the early years, but he became a pathetic Vegas lounge singer.
I don’t know but I think he had something like 12 top 40 hits from '74 to '77. That isn’t too bad and probably was selling to more than just his loyal fans.
Lots of people who were tacky jokes to real music fans had hits in that era (or any era, come to that). Having hits is no evidence of not being tacky. What was different about Elvis was that he had a real talent, and was actually very good and right on the cutting edge once upon a time.
“Aging and younger”? Isn’t that all of us?
I could always listen to him (still do), but when he started wearing the jumpsuits and capes and doing the karate moves, I couldn’t watch him. Those awful sideburns. And the big sunglasses.
I don’t think he toured that much after he became popular. You could be lucky and see him (mostly in the South?) when he was a rising star, but after '56 and '57, it was all movies, then those two TV specials, then Vegas. Am I remembering right?
The white rhinestone jumpsuits were over the top, but rhinestones were in in the 70’s. Remember the Bedazzzler?
I looked it up and it was 8. But none of them went to the top 10. And I didn’t recognize any from just the titles.
So yeah, sounds like just his loyal fans were still buying everything he touched and not many others were paying any attention.
To a certain extant, yes. But in fairness, who from his era of mid 50s rockers was still considered vital and fresh? Buddy Holly was dead, Chuck Berry was on the oldies circuit, Jerry Lee Lewis was on the country charts. And if Elvis was tacky, then what were David Bowie, Alice Cooper and the Rolling Stones with the giant inflatable penis on the 1975 tour?
The Miley Cyruses of their era.
Also, he was in the Army from '58 to '60.
True. I looked around, and he did tour mostly in the South in the late 50’s. Then the Army, and then movies. But from 1969 to 1976, one site says he did 52 tours, over 1100 shows. Many of those were in Vegas, but a lot of them were elsewhere. So fans were still flocking, even when he wasn’t svelte.
FWIW, Happy Days aired an episode in 1976 where Fonzie had to impersonate Elvis.
Anachronistically, he was wearing a dumb white jumpsuit with a GIGANTIC collar. That was not intended to be intrinsically funny. Just Fonzie getting it right being cool again.
I present this as evidence that the big dumb jumpsuits were considered cool, and that Americans didn’t complain that it wasn’t what the 50’s Elvis looked like at all.
I was 12 when Elvis died. I didn’t yet get ironic, self-caricatures (although I did sense KISS wasn’t cool to older kids). As far as I knew, he was not yet a joke.
You’re the same age I am. I was growing up in Green Bay, WI, and Elvis came through on tour twice in the last year or two of his life. ISTR that the reviews of his concerts in the local paper were kind, but acknowledged that it was about the spectacle more than the music.
With a bit of Googling, I found a couple of reviews of his last concert in Green Bay, a couple of months before his death.
The Press-Gazette review is more about the crowd than the concert (though it notes that the concert was only 70 minutes long)…and it indicates that it was the biggest-grossing concert in city history (up until that point).
On the other hand, the review from the other paper, the News-Chronicle, was not quite as kind – “the tease element is just about all that’s left at the kernel of both Presley’s mystique and actual performance.” It goes on to note that he looked pale and tired (but, interestingly, not fat), slurred and stumbled over lyrics, and generally had a rough time of it (though the crowd still seemed to love him).
Johnny Cash, maybe.
Bowie’s tackiness, certainly, and probably that of Alice Cooper and The Stones (and of most Glam Rock, except perhaps the dumber trend followers), was deliberate and very much calculatedly ironic. Elvis, not so much (nor, so far as I am aware, Miley Cyrus).
No, the Lady GaGas.
From the same web site that had my Green Bay reviews,a review of a 1977 concert in Chicago, from the Tribune:
"LIKE MICK JAGGER, Presley long ago turned into a sort of self-parody, though instead of exaggerating the movements that made him famous, Presley uses them infrequently. Perhaps he knows how silly they look, at least the way they are presented. "
(I’m amused by the thought that Mick Jagger was already self-parody 36 years ago, and is still going with it. 
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