Tuesday, July 01, 2014

A KING IN TAORMINA



Elvis Presley has had, since his death, a habit of turning up in the most unlikely places and I was always disappointed not to find him packing my supermarket bags in Britain. But now here he is in Taormina and it's just possible that the town will be "all shook up"!

From now until 21st September visitors to Taormina will be able to see, at the Palacongressi in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, a travelling exhibition, approved by the Presley family, of objects from Graceland. Taormina is the only European venue for the exhibition this summer.

Among the items on display are:  some of Elvis's guitars, stage and personal clothing, letters, gold discs and other awards, autographs and - the star of the show - his last Fleetwood Brougham Cadillac with its 1 - Elvis numberplate. A special Elvis a Taormina postmark has been created for the occasion and on 16th August and 20th September there will be concerts by the Elvis impersonator Joe Bavota.

I cannot possibly close this post without a song from the "king". As far as I know, apart from Santa Lucia, Elvis did not record any songs in Italian but we do have this, which was and is successful precisely because it is not an attempt at a direct translation

Elvis Presley - Now or Never



In case you missed it, I wrote some years ago about what Elvis meant to me in my youth.

4 comments:

Betty said...

I guess it was about ten years ago that we went to Graceland. It was quite an experience. I think we probably saw that car. As I recall there was a room with quite a few vehicles. Graceland itself was like stepping back in time...shag carpet and all. I still have many of my old records. Someday I might buy something to play them on. I saw a news story recently and they said record sales have gone up. I didn't even know they still sold them.

Lee said...

Elvis is living up here on the hill where I live...just down around the corner a bit. ;)

Whispering Walls said...

Brilliant - hope you're going!

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, Betty. How interesting to have been there. Also interesting to hear about the record sales. Hi, Lee. That's very reassuring to know! I hope so too, WW.

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