A Birthday Gift from Elvis

A gift can sometimes be a very rare thing and I was lucky enough to receive such a rare gift from Elvis. How many Elvis fans can say they got a birthday gift from Elvis? I am one of the fortunate few. My gift was a song Elvis sang on New Year’s Eve, 1976, while performing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The night Elvis sang the song, I had no idea it had anything to do with me. I wouldn’t know that until two months later in February, 1977. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Well, it all started in March of 1976.

Elvis was playing three shows in Johnson City, Tennessee. He was staying in a not-so- nice hotel in Bristol, Tennessee. We, my husband, a friend, and myself, went to look at Elvis’s plane at the airport on Kingsport. Then we went over to Bristol to check out the hotel where Elvis was staying. At the hotel coffee shop, we met Al Strada, one of Elvis’ bodyguards.

Our friend had just returned from our hometown about three hours away with contact sheets of pictures from the previous night’s show. This was in the olden days, before digital cameras. Even before one hour film processing, so it was unusual to see photos from a concert the next day. (My husband and friend used a pro-lab who could do this. It wasn’t like they took the film to the local drugstore.) While we were talking I said I wished Elvis would perform my favorite song in concert, Rags to Riches. Al wasn’t aware that Elvis had recorded a version of the song.

In December Elvis performed Rags to Riches at the piano during his Pittsburgh New Year’s Eve concert. I in no way related it to my birthday which was the same day; it would be nearly two months later, February, 1977 that the two events would be connected for me. We saw Al again in Charlotte, NC. He smiled and asked me how I liked my birthday present. I was floored. How had any of them known it was my birthday? Looking back at that night, I figured it out. About seven of us had been waiting for Elvis when he arrived in Pittsburgh from the concert in Atlanta, Georgia. The advance team had allowed us to stay in the underground parking garage to watch Elvis arrive, telling the hotel manager that we were ok. (That night is another story in itself. One for another blog.) The guys couldn’t believe we came all the way to Pittsburgh to attend a concert when Atlanta was so much closer to our home. My husband explained that New Year’s Eve was my birthday. That cleared up the mystery of how Elvis, Al, or anyone knew it was my birthday.

Every year on my birthday I always remember the year I got one of the best presents ever – the year Elvis sang my favorite song for me. It is one of my own private memories of Elvis and I treasure it.