The Elvis Presley Story is on radio around the country, in a twelve-hour special, and it sounds like the whole, exhaustive, and sometimes corn-fed story is there:

Mrs. Harris describing the birth scene, radio-verite-like, of Elvis Aaron Presley January 8th, 1935, in East Tupelo, Mississippi...the fearful voice of the pastor of "the First Assembly of Gawd Church," where Elvis heard and sang his first music...school friends, teachers, and employers confirming all the stories about Elvis and church; Elvis and his mother; Elvis and his ducktail hair...Marion Keisker of Sun Records describing her initial reaction to Elvis' "Negro" voice...Carl Perkins, Sam Phillips, Scotty Moore, Bob Neal (one of Presley's first managers) describing Elvis' climb; girl friends and members of the "Memphis Mafia" recalling gatherings at Elvis' mansion, and directors and actors tying together Colonel Tom Parker and Presley's dark age --his five years in twenty-nine quickie flicks:

Don Seigel, who directed Flaming Star, said the movies were "the Colonel's fault," the fault of his "Machiavellian influence. He's handled him extremely well...but he has not handled him well as far as being an acting star. Elvis is kind of a joke in the industry as an actor."

Jack Good, who acted in one of the Presley movies, said he confronted Parker and was told that "If anybody wanted to pay Elvis a million dollars, he was entitled to decide what he wanted to do." Good added: "I thought it was a strange, inhuman policy. It was successful commercially, but artistically it was a criminal waste of talent."

As needle-sharp cases in point, the program's writer, Jerry Hopkins (author of the upcoming book Elvis, which led to the idea for the radio version) pulls out and airs some of the stenchiest songs from the movies, like "No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car," or "Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce" ("The girls on the beach commit a sin/If they don't show yards and yards of skin") and, from Speedway, the song, "He's Your Uncle, Not Your Dad," its music lifted from "Until It's Time for You to Go," its words from the Internal Revenue: "He's your uncle, not your dad/He's the best friend you ever had/ So dig in 'til it hurts — Just remember Pearl Harbor!...Just be thankful you don't live in Leningrad/He's your uncle, not your dad!"

John Lennon, Phil Spector, drummer Hal Blaine, and Sammy Davis Jr. are among the numerous others heard in The Elvis Presley Story, as admirers and associates. Its narrator, even, has a tie-in. Wink Martindale, now a Los Angeles DJ, conducted one of the first interviews with Elvis, when Martindale was hosting a TV music show on WHBQ in Memphis. In fact, about the only persons not participating in the program voluntarily are Elvis Presley and Col. Parker. They're heard in interviews, (one with "Herman" of the Hermits) and soundtracks of Presley's appearances on TV in 1968 and in Las Vegas in '69 and '70.

But from what the writer and producers of the program gathered, the image is clear: Elvis Presley is a good and sincere man, an undisputed influence in the post-war culture, a devoted musician deeply rooted in Memphis and its country, blues, and church music, a family man, and a charitable man (One voice in the program in that of a staff member of the Los Angeles Free Clinic, telling about Elvis dropping by with a $5,000 check to help keep the struggling drug clinic alive). And yet, he's often a choreographed man.