ON EBAY ~ FROM MY INTERESTING ARCHIVES

You are bidding on producer-director Ron Jacobs' personal archival copy of the complete and final thirteen-hour original Elvis Presley Story radio documentary. It has been transferred from unused copies of the original vinyl records using the highest quality 2011 professional audio technology.

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The Elvis Presley Story
Remembering the 1970s Radio Bio

I first heard the radio documentary The Elvis Presley Story in the fall of 1971. As a college graduation present my father had given me my first “boombox” (although that term hadn’t been coined yet). Besides having an AM/FM radio it played and remotely recorded on newfangled tapes called cassettes.

One day my roommate pointed out that my mini-stereo could actually record radio broadcasts onto cassette tape. Amazing! So when I heard a radio station announcing its coming broadcast of a twelve-hour documentary called The Elvis Presley Story, I ran out to K-Mart and bought a cheap package of blank cassette tapes. When the broadcast began early on a Sunday morning, I was ready to record The Elvis Presley Story all day long.

The documentary was the work of noted rock author Jerry Hopkins and legendary producer Ron Jacobs, at the time VP of Watermark, Inc. Although many of Elvis’s songs were included, the dozens of interview segments in it were the heart of the program. First, Hopkins culled these excerpts from his two years of recorded research for his Presley biography to be published in 1972. Then he and Jacobs hit the road to Tupelo, Memphis and Nashville to conduct first-hand field-recorded testimony about Elvis by his friends, relatives and colleagues dating back to the day he was born

Listening to The Elvis Presley Story for the first time was a revelation to me. Although I had been an Elvis fan for eight years at that point, I knew very little about his life and work. The up coming Hopkins’ biography would be the first serious attempt to document Presley’s life. Assorted biographical sketches on segments of Elvis’s life comprised all that I had previously known about him.

Suddenly, heretofore shadowy figures in Presley’s career came to life as I heard their voices on the radio that Sunday in October—Colonel Tom Parker, Bob Neal, Sam Phillips, Scotty Moore, Marion Keisker, George Klein, D.J. Fontana, Gordon Stoker, Ray Walker, Alan Fortas, Otis Blackwell, Bones Howe, Marty Lacker, and many, many others. Wink Martindale, a famous Memphis DJ and TV host with ties to Elvis in the fifties, enthusiastically narrated the The Elvis Presley Story originally and on all following updates.

Watermark promoted The Elvis Presley Story in a full-page Variety ad on August 21, 1971. “A twelve-hour radio documentary on the most spectacular figure in the history of rock and roll,” the headline read. The text added, “Until now The Elvis Presley Story has gone untold, cloaked in legend and mystery. But now Elvis’s life, his music and his impact have been documented in twelve hour-long taped chapters for exclusive radio broadcast rights. In this radio biography you’ll hear over 70 voices—the people who know Elvis best from his childhood to the present. You’ll hear dozens of rare tapes. You’ll hear the music that made him, and nearly 150 of the songs he made. You’ll hear the legend and how it was created and sustained. You’ll know Elvis Presley, The King, and the man.”

The Elvis Presley Story was been offered in July to stations that carried Watermark’s weekly “American Top 40 with Casey Kasem” program. Ninety-nine radio stations around the U.S. had booked the exciting new Elvis program for their markets. Billboardannounced that The Elvis Presley Story had been licensed to the British Broadcasting Corporation, which planned to air it exclusively in the U.K. beginning in January 1972.

So fascinating to me was The Elvis Presley Story, when it first aired on September 4, 1971, I listened to it several more times in the following months. During the summer of 1972, I drove from Biloxi to Washington D.C. for a reunion with some of my fraternity brothers. I brought my boombox along and listened to my recorded tapes of the Elvis documentary in the car until the batteries ran out.

Another time in Biloxi, a radio DJ friend of mine showed me the box set of Watermark vinyl LPs his station used to broadcast The Elvis Presley Story. Decades later, these radio masters have virtually disappeared or are of poor audio quaiity. A thirteenth chapter was added in 1975 to update the Elvis documentary

In January 1975, Watermark marketed an expanded version of The Elvis Presley Story. Hopkins, Jacobs, and Martindale gathered in Los Angeles to record a thirteenth chapter to cover the three years that had passed in Presley’s career since the original version aired. The show now comprised thirteen chapters of 51-minutes each, with 60-second commercial slots available. Radio stations could order the program in stereo or monaural. Included now were more than 80 interviews and 18 new songs, bringing the total number of tunes in The Elvis Presley Story to nearly 180.

Watermark announced that The Elvis Presley Story had been revamped in honor of Elvis’s 20th year in show business and his 40th birthday. Billboard reported that radio stations in over 300 markets had already ordered the program and that orders were still pouring in.

The third and final version of The Elvis Presley Story was rushed out soon after Presley’s death in August 1977. Among those who offered tributes to Elvis in the revamped final chapter were D.J. Fontana, J.D. Sumner, Carl Perkins, Alan Fortas, George Klein, and Sammy Davis Jr. It’s been more than 40 years now since the original The Elvis Presley Story was first heard on radio airwaves. Over the decades there have been attempts to recreate, duplicate or achieve the depth and quality of the original. Many people who offered revealing interviews have since passed on. But, just listening occasionally to sections of those tapes that I’ve kept for all these years can still bring back that special feeling I knew as a young Elvis Presley fan.

In the final analysis, Jerry Hopkins and Ron Jacobs monumental production of The Elvis Presley Story accentuated the Presley myth, the fairytale that all was bright and beautiful in his life at a time when his seduction by the dark side was well underway. I don’t know if The Elvis Presley Story is commercially available these days. Until it is I’ll keep my old tapes and listen to them occasionally through the years when the mood strikes me. After all, fairytales have their place in life. It’s nice to recall the days when Elvis’s life appeared to be one and when being an Elvis fan felt like being an extra in a movie with a happy ending. Alan Hanson, 2008

OFFERED FOR PERSONAL HOME USE ONLY. NOT TO BE RE SOLD, DUPLICATED OR OTHERWISE USED FOR ANY AND ALL COMMERCIAL AND/OR PUBLIC PURPOSES.

Ron Jacobs' ORIGINAL LEATHER-BOUND SCRIPT for The Elvis Presley Story complete with production notes, full text, discography with detailed song information, publicity photos, radio broadcast operations manual, ad layouts and a press kit is now for the first time being made available from Jacobs' personal collection of one-of-a-kind pop cultural memorabilia.

If you are seriously interested in acquiring this unique Elvis Presley collector's item for personal or institutional use please contact:makuahe@gmail.com for full details. THERE IS ONLY ONE COPY AVAILABLE--SINCE IT IS THE ONLY ONE IN EXISTENCE.