Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Elvis Presley's Sex Life

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Elvis Presley embraced sexuality from the start. Rock n roll was not tame music, and neither were his early performances.So much so that he was nicknamed Elvis 'the pelvis' after early TV performances.But were his personal relationships and relationship with sexuality like? How did his relationship with his mother influence him? And how was his relationship with a 14 year old Priscilla seen at the time?Joining Kate today is Alanna Nash, author of Baby Let's Play House: Elvis Presley And The Women Who Loved Him, to help us find out more.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Oh, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Bertwikster Sheets. But before we can listen to any more of this fabulous podcast, I think you know what's coming. That's right, it is the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults

about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. Feel safer? I feel safer. Everyone feels safer. On with the show. Hello, Bert Twixters, you're just in time grab a seat. The year is 1956 and Elvis is about to make his hotly anticipated appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, the biggest TV show in America.

However, Mr Sullivan has had reservations about getting Elvis on because of how obscene his hip thrusts had been on earlier TV appearances. Shocking. Truly, truly shocking. But the show went ahead. Sullivan might have been a bit prudish, but he certainly knew what Elvis would do for his audiences and he wasn't wrong. But he didn't let it happen without a caveat. He censors Elvis. The cameras only show him from the chest up to preserve the modesty of post-war America and to make sure that no fainting damsel will be exposed to those thrusting never regions.

It wasn't long before Elvis got the nickname Elvis the Pelvis. And from that moment on, his entire performance and persona was infused with a sexual energy. But what remains of this energy when the cameras were turned off? What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, for beautiful time. Oh, and welcome back to Patwigs the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kay Lister. Elvis Presley was the king of rock and roll. We might think of him as a slightly cartoonish figure from a bygone era, but in the 1950s, he wasn't cartoonish at all. That man was pure sex on a stick. But what do we know about Elvis's private life? Was he as wild as his fame and his persona might suggest?

And how was his relationship with a 14-year-old Priscilla seen at the time? He was 24. Joining me today is Alana Nash, author of Baby Let's Playhouse Elvis Presley and the women who loved him, to shed light on the private life of one of the world's most famous men. Guitars, I'm swinging hips at the ready, betwixters. Let's do this. Hello, and welcome to Betwixter Sheets. It's only Alanna Nash. How are you doing? Well, I'm very pleased to be with you.

Thank you for inviting me. I can't believe we haven't had Elvis as a subject on this podcast already. And you are the perfect person to talk to about Mr. Presley and what he was getting up to when he wasn't rocking and rolling. Well, he's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. Isn't he? And I was looking at some of his music videos and interviews and things just last night knowing that I was going to come and talk to you. And whatever we go on to say in this podcast,

He was a very beautiful man. He really was. Yes. So he's breathtakingly beautiful. He really is. And became more so as time went on from when he first debuted. You know, he did have a little plastic surgery on his nose in 1950s. To slim it, yes. But by the time he hit 1968 in that comeback special in that black leather suit, it's just hard to imagine a mere mortal being more beautiful than he was at that stage. outrageously good-looking. He really was. So my first question, before we get on to plastic surgery and also how beautiful he was, what first made you interested in Elvis? What made you want to write books about him? Well, I'm an old lady because I was born in 1950. So I was at the absolute perfect age to see him when he first came on the scene in 1956. So ironically, my birthday is August 16th, which happens to me the day he died in 17th.

But I had just turned six the month before he popped up on the Ed Sullivan show. And I can still remember sitting in the floor with my older sister watching him and just being mesmerized. My whole life story was written on that evening. I just couldn't get enough of him. And so I was a huge fan in childhood. It leveled off by the time the Beatles came and his music and movies had gotten pretty disappointed. but then, of course, raged back. And he really has been a huge part of my life's work.

What can you remember about the conversations that were happening around Elvis? Because I think that's something we've kind of lost today is because beautiful people singing songs and dancing on TV, a ten a penny. It's easy to forget how radical he actually was when he was first launched on the world. What do you remember about the discussions around him? Oh, people were losing their minds. He was said to be too vulgar for national television, that he was a threat to the youth of America and, of course, the world. When he played in my town, which is Louisville, Kentucky in 1956, the police filmed his performance in case the FBI wanted to see it.

You know, that same year, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, went to see him, you know, with threats of locking him up if he did anything obscene. So he really upset the apple cart in this two-stayed society of ours over here. That's funny to me now. When this book came out, there were a lot of people who were kind of appalled that I would dare look at him from a sexual point of view, his art and him personally. And I'm like, hey, guys, have you forgotten what he was all about? And it's rock and roll. I mean, you know, this is not tame music. But yeah, that's the way he came in.

Of course, he always protested that he wasn't doing anything lewd and vulgar and how his mother would be appalled if he did. But he knew what he was doing. He knew the response that he was getting by those shakes and that footwork and his pelvic thrust. He knew exactly what he was the reaction that he would provoke with young female listeners. Elvis the pelvis. Yeah. What surprises me is to hear that you would have got a reaction to your book of people. going, you can't talk about him being sexual.

His whole thing was sexual. That's his whole shtick. Well, you know, it's interesting what we do with people that we put up on a pedestal, or I dare say idolize with a lot of people who see him as somebody they would like to be or see him as this kind of vessel for all of their hopes and dreams and at some point their identity. And so to suggest that he may have done something or said something or represent something that doesn't quite fit their dream pattern, it upsets them. But when you're able to just stand back and look at him objectively and what he did and how he came in and

how his career and his art progressed, certainly that's what it was about. And that's, you know, half of why we love him. We can't get enough of him. Even today, I mean, the guy died in 1977 and we still cannot get enough of Elvis Presby. I don't know a lot about Elvis's background, actually. Where was he from? What was his family like? Well, his family was poor. They lived in Mississippi.

His father was not a hard worker. He really didn't like to have to get up and go to work in the mornings. He unfortunately went to prison when Elvis was a very small child, leaving him alone with his mother. He had a twin who died at birth or was still. born. And so it was just glad as his mother and Elvis. And they became very, very close as my friend Roy Turner, who's the historian in Tupelo, Mississippi, where Elvis was from, says they were one soul and two bodies. Oh, wow. Wow. And so they were extremely close and bonded in a way that may

have been unhealthy while Vernon was in prison. They became lethally enmesh. And they could not, he could not separate himself from her. And when Vernon came back from prison, there really wasn't much room for him psychologically in the family because Elvis now saw himself as the head of the household. He was his mother's protector. Although he referred to both of his parents as his babies when he was just coming to fame, he saw himself as responsible for them. It's so interesting to me, Kate, in photographs of the three of them,

almost always Elvis and Gladys are touching. He's kissing her or he has his arm around her or he's holding her hand. And Vernon is off to the side. He's almost excluded in a way. It tells you a lot. Yes, it does, doesn't it? What kind of relationship did he have with his mum? Because there's being very close and there's really loving your parents.

But this sounds like we're moving in Freudian territory here. Is that kind of what we're doing? Well, we are. I think he felt awfully sorry for her. He felt as if she had endured this awful tragedy of having her other son die. She apparently could not have other children. So Elvis was good and she poured everything into it. Only child then.

Only child. Wow. Again, her husband was not a good provider. And so it was on her and essentially. And Elvis was the center of her world. And she was overly protective, and he was of her, that she had this awful thing had happened, this loss of the twin. And she told him that he was living for two, that there was a reason that his brother had died, and he was to carry on for both of them. And so even as a very small boy, he was kind of spoiled. He had his own, even though the family couldn't afford much, he had his own tableware, his own cup and plate and spoon, and he had his own bicycle.

and he had a guitar as a small boy. So even though they couldn't afford a lot of special things, she managed to work and get them for him because he was special. It been saved, and he was going to go out into the world and do something important. That's a lot of psychological pressure to put on a child, isn't it, to suddenly almost assume the role of care of for your parents. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the way he felt from tiny child on. So how did Mama Presley feel about her young boy going out on the road?

because I don't know many stories about, you know, when Elvis was just starting out in his career, but I've certainly seen the video footage of young girls dissolving in hysteria. So I'm going to guess that sex was very much on offer. How did she feel about her son going off into the world if she was very protective of him? Well, she was terrified that those fans were going to rip them to pieces. You know, they didn't tear his clothes off. And she was a nervous person to begin with and had her own psychological pressures. She wanted all the trees cut down around their house when they were still living in Mississippi

before they moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13 because she thought something terrible, something sinister was lurking in the trees. So she was always very nervous. And then when he was being ushered into fame so quickly, she was very, very worried that the thing would destroy him. And it separated her from him because he was on the road, even though he called her every night. And of course, when he went into the army,

that was just anathema because he was going overseas. So she was worried about that, but she was very earthy when it came to sex and girls on the road. And she fully understood that he would have encounters with women on the road. So there were traveling girls or road girls, and then there were local girls or good girls that he was not having sex with, who were possible marriage candidates. And one of the stories I love most in Baby Let's Play House, this book we're discussing today,

there was a young girl named Jackie Rowland who was enamored of him, and she was also just a young teen. And her mother brought her to Memphis to meet Elvis and his parents. And they did. They were invited into the house. And Mrs. Presley and Jackie's mother had an understanding that as Jackie matured and grew up, perhaps she would be Mrs. Presley. So Elvis knew she was off limits sexually, but he kind of helped groom her and prepare her for adulthood and the kind of woman he might want to marry. So Gladys was very on top of all this, and again, very open and progressive about, you know, he was out to sew his wild oats on the road, but there were these special girls who were saved for marriage.

Was Priscilla a special girl? Well, it depends on who you ask, you know. Yes, that they did not consummate that relationship until marriage. Some who seem to have real reason to doubt that, you know, I always say if you're not in the room, you don't know for sure. That's true. They met when she was 14, and this is kind of getting to the heart of a lot of controversy around Elvis. But talk me through it. What was that meeting? Well, he was in Germany. He was in the service. And she was over there because her stepfather was also in the service. And she wrote in one of her books that she,

was absolutely determined she was going to meet him over there and did. So her story is that she was approached by one of his friends who was on the lookout for girls to invite to his parties that he had at his house quite frequently, and that he knew the type that Elvis liked. He liked petite girls. He liked dark-haired girls like his mother. He always was looking for girls who resembled his mother as a young woman. Priscilla seemed to fit the bill. He liked young women who were kind of a stand-in for himself as a young person because he always thought of himself as a young person. Even at the end of his life at 42, he thought of himself as a young person. Priscilla had the right coloring.

She was the right age because Elvis was kind of stuck at 16 or 18. He never really matured much beyond that. And so she was a stand-in for young Gladys. She was a stand-in for the dead twin. She fit his psychological profile. And he thought she was fascinating that she was more mature than most girls her age. Again, she's an American over there, things in common, an uncommonly beautiful young lady.

And he absolutely fell head over heels for her. He was just smitten. And how old was he? He's 10 years older. Some say it would be too old for her, right? Do you know if there's any discussion around that at the time? Because like trying to contextualize this stuff is very, very difficult. You don't want to pretend that this isn't an issue.

But at the same time, you don't want to sensationalize it. But was there discussion around this at the time? Was there anyone going, Elvis, hang on a minute? Yes. A member of his entourage, Lamar Fyke, said to me, you know, he was absolutely scared out of his mind about this. And Elvis would joke to the guys about young girls. But again, you were so right to say,

it's very hard to contextualize this because I can remember when I was six and seven living in the South, it was not terribly frowned upon for older men to date younger girls. Sometimes there might be, you know, the eyebrows would go up and somebody might say, well, son, she's a little young for you. But it wasn't this kind of 21st century view of pedophilia or taking huge advantage.

So this is something we have to look at in terms of the times. But on the other hand, it's true that he never really wanted to have a long-term relationship with a woman his age. They scared him for a couple of reasons, I think. But this blueprint, this sexual blueprint had been drawn when he was a child. just couldn't get beyond it or wanted to get beyond it. He always liked the company of young people because they could tell him how they liked his music. I mean, that was the target age for much of his music. And he liked being in the company of young people. He babysat when he was a young man. He didn't mind doing that. He was very in touch with his female side. And he just liked, you know,

the company of giggling young girls. And I don't even mean in a sexual sense in that way. He liked being around young people and young men as well. But for an ideal mate, yes, he did look to someone younger. Why do you think he was scared of women his own age? It was interesting to hear you say that. That's a really good question. I think, number one, he was not a sophisticated person. He did go to high school, but he had no schooling beyond that, except of course the world, which is quite an education in itself. But I remember when he was on a radio show called the Louisville. Louisiana Hayride before his big national fame. And a guy who was on that show with him, whose name was Jim Ed Brown, he was part of a family group called the Browns, although Jim Ed had a solo career later,

where they were touring and they'd go in these restaurants. And Elvis would always order a sandwich. And finally, Jim Ed said, you know, why aren't you having something else? And Elvis confessed to him that he wasn't certain about the silverware on the table, you know, what was the correct utensil to use for everything. So it just was easier to have a sandwich. So I think he was not secure in a lot of social niceties. His diet was always, he didn't move beyond cheeseburgers and typical teenage food very, very much. He wasn't worldly. I mean, he was out in the world, but he was not worldly.

He didn't drink. He hated his family members who drank beer a lot and left beer cans around and bottles. And he was put off by that. So he wasn't worldly in the sense of how to order. a fine meal or wine. He just was this savant on stage and in the recording studio. And beyond that, he was not a secure person.

Like a case of arrested development. Absolutely so, yes. I'll be back with Alana and Elvis after this short break. So they have both said, we met at that age, but nobody had any sex until they got married. Priscilla and Elvis have both said that. That's what she claimed.

I don't know what Elvis said about that. Again, I wasn't in the room, but it would be unusual for him to spend that much time with one woman and not be having intercourse with her. Were there other lovers? I guess at the time, it would have been not hushed up, but certainly not something that was advertised to mainstream America. But I'm trying to get a picture of what this young man's sex life was like. It seems like he's kind of categorizing women into, it's that virgin hoar dichotomy. This is a marriageable woman and this is. an on-the-road woman. Were there other lovers? Oh, yes. He was never faithful to any one woman. Oh, right. There we go. Ever, ever, ever. But he didn't try to hide it either most of the time, although he did lie to Priscilla about his relationship with Anne Margaret, which is a very hot and heavy affair. He was not truthful with Anita Wood, who was Gladys's top pick for him to marry, and he was quite a serious contender for that, I think, until he met Priscilla. He claimed he wasn't

seeing other people. But once he got beyond that, he was pretty open that, you know, there was no one woman who was going to tie him down. So he saw that in his grandfather, who was quite a philanderer. And, you know, again, in the context of the times, men could get away with that in ways that they can't today. I think he thought he had this special license. He didn't really have to be faithful to anybody. But the more interesting psychological, view of this is that he was already taken. His mother occupied the top spot even after her death. He just couldn't fully give himself to anybody else because he was pledged. And I remember he saw a young actress named Yvonne Lyme about the time he moved into Graceland. There are photographs of

touring the property before he moved in. And she said that when she was visiting in his home with his parents. If he held her hand, he had to make sure he was holding his mother's hand at the same time so she would feel slighted. And that tells you a lot. That does, doesn't it? That would be, how did Priscilla deal with that? For a wife, that would be, you know, like mother-in-law from hell, but this sounds like, wow, okay. How did they get along? Well, Gladys had died before Elvis met Priscilla, and that was part of their mind. His mother had just died when he met her, really. Her father, her real father had died and she was being reared by her stepfather. So they had both lost a parent. It was something that they understood, that deep, deep grief. But Priscilla

knew that she was dealing with the ghost of Gladys, always, I think. You know, he kept the clothes in the attic at Graceland, which she went through one time. It was beyond adoration. She was a real presence, as was the twin, a real presence in his everyday life. So there were always these kinds of ghosts that were hovering around and influenced him. Did the twin have a name? She did have interest? Jessie, yeah. It was Elvis Aaron and Jesse Garan, so rhyming middle names.

Jesse after his paternal grandfather. And when people have died as well, people absolutely put them on a pedestal after that, don't they? Even more so than they ever did when they were alive. So I imagine Elvis, how did he react to his mother dying? I'm going to guess not well. Not well. You know, Lamar, again, Lamar Fike, who's one of the entourage members, told me about how they were lowering her casket into the grave, and he's throwing himself on it. And he said, you know, I lived my whole life just for you. And later in life, he thought he saw her in Graceland and would collapse into tears. Really quite sad. I know he held a seance at least once, according to a girlfriend named Joyce Bova, to try to contact her and felt that he would be reunited with her and Jessie.

What was the marriage between Elvis and Priscilla like? Because if you are idealizing somebody and you've got this image in your head of like, not consciously, but this is my mother, this is a good girl, this is the virgin that I'm going to marry. People can never live up to those kind of expectations. Pretty soon you're left with this is a real person. What did their marriage look like? Did it manage to survive getting to know one another, I suppose? Well, if you've seen her film, Priscilla's film, it looks as if they never had a happy day. in their lives once they came over to America. That film is kind of puzzling. I certainly understand the isolation that Graceland. She was 16 when she moved in. God, that's young. It's young. She's apart from her family who are still overseas. She's there with his grandmother, his father and Vernon's new wife or nearby telling her every move she can and cannot make. And Elvis is in Hollywood making films. And so she's always the woman in waiting. And then when he does come home, He has his entourage. And Elvis was a person who could not be alone. Always had to have people around him. He was a sleepwalker. And I know early in his career, somebody like Lamar or his cousin, Billy, would have to sleep in his room to make sure that he didn't walk out a window or something. He could not be alone. And so here, Priscilla is finally, thank God he's coming home. I'm finally going to have time with him. And then all these guys are around every day and every night. So she gets very little alone time with him. And he's telling her, how?

to dress and how to speak and what to do. And so she's perplexed by this and really not very happy about it, which you can understand. And then he's going off and having affairs and working and she's left behind because she's under age. And his manager, Colonel Parker, is saying, you know, we can't have it out. But she's living at Graceland. So she's kept under wraps. And eventually, you know, she just got tired of it and grew up. And he wasn't expecting that.

he couldn't understand what she finally did leave him. I've given you everything you could ever imagine. What more could you want? I mean, he just couldn't see how she could possibly be unhappy when literally millions of people around the world would have traded places with her. How did he cope with her becoming a mother? Well, that's an interesting point.

She claims that once she had a child, of course Lisa Marie, their only child, he lost interest in her sexually. She claimed that it was any woman who had a child. But what I found in my research for Baby Let's Playhouse is that there were other women who had children, at least three other women who had children. So it wasn't any woman who'd had a child. It was any woman who'd had his child.

That was the difference. I've read that Priscilla ended up having affairs as well. Is that true? Yes, she's been open about that. And I can hardly blame her because he's left her alone. for so long. And when he is home, he doesn't really recognize her as her old person. She is an appendage of him or the ideal woman that he has created to fit this mold that is a conflation of his twin and his mother. So, you know, she's not a very warm and outgoing person, but I think I

understand her and why she did what she did. And I really can't much blame her. Did she know about Elvis's affairs? She had to, yes. And it became pretty obvious. as time went on. But, you know, she had to have known what she was getting into unless she was just so starry-eyed as a teen. And young, of course. Yes. I mean, the question does arise, you know,

what were her parents thinking? God, yes. Anybody school her about what she was really about to do and what that meant. So they get divorced, and then hopefully she goes on to be happier. Let's hope. But there were groupies living in Graceland,

weren't there? There was a big groupie culture there. Well, he invited a number of young women to move in, and they were always young. Not a lot of them did. You know, he had a very significant girlfriend in Linda Thompson who did move in and was with him for four years, but eventually she couldn't take it either. By that time, there were different pressures. He was addicted to prescription medication. And after a period of time, starting about with Linda, a girlfriend was expected to be nurse as well, because, he had a lot of close calls. And so any woman who shared his bed was expected to also be a rescuer and to stay awake and watch him in case he stopped breathing or to pull food out of his mouth if he were choking because, you know, drugs relax those muscles. So, you know, and he was choosing women who, again, were very young and who certainly were inexperienced in rescue missions. And unfortunately, the last one he chose wasn't able to stay awake all the time.

and he died. Of course, it was way too much pressure to put on anyone, no matter the age. But that's what was expected. And he had a woman named Sheila Ryan, who's died now, unfortunately, a very warm-hearted, sweet person. And she just couldn't take it. I mean, this constant life or death battle trying to keep him alive. How many women could, you know, I can't blame any of them for leaving because it was frightening. And a lot of these girls, again, who were in their early 20s or maybe just barely 20. First of all, the age difference was just too big. He was now 40. And they wanted to be with someone their own age. And he was just desperate for somebody to stay. He was a very lonely person. I think he was clinically depressed by that time. And his cousin, Billy, said, you know,

why don't you pick a woman your own age? And he said, well, what would I do with a woman my own age? It was inconceivable to him. Again, because his self-image was that of a younger person. And he just, It didn't fit his psychological profile of what he expected in a mate. It's interesting to hear you talk. I kind of get a sense from what you're saying and what I've read around Elvis is this is a man who had a lot of issues going on. And then he becomes the most famous man in the world with a huge amount of money surrounded by people that go, yeah, that's a great idea, Elvis.

Let's do that. So it feels like there's nobody here to challenge him on this stuff. And it becomes towards the end of his life, his behavior is becoming, erratic, not just the drugs, but did I read correctly that he would be up all night and slept all day and insisted that people stayed within, that they all had to stay up all night as well? Right. So all of these girls were encouraged to take pills so that they could keep on his schedule as well. And by this time, he also had a romance with firearms. Oh, this is a great combination. Yeah. I mean, you just knew that this was something awful was going to happen sooner or

later. You know, Linda Thompson was in the bathroom one time in Las Vegas when he decided to shoot up the room and a bullet entered the bathroom and hit the toilet roll while she was in there. And that was a pretty close call. And Dr. Nicopoulos also had a close call with a stray bullet. So it must have been terrifying to some degree for these very young girls who, some of them lasted only a period of weeks. It scared up to death. What was this obsession that he had with hygiene in other people? What was that? Well, you know, he always had these fellows of his entourage who knew the type that he liked and who would pay attention to the girls who came to the concerts or to Las Vegas, so they would approach them and asked them that they would like to meet Elvis. And then by this time, Elvis's cousin, Billy,

and his wife, Joe, were living with Elvis. They lived in a trailer behind Graceland. And so when they were at home in Memphis, in particular, when the girls arrived, they would have to see Joe first. And if they had any dirt under their fingernails or toenails or just weren't pristine, then they would be schooled that they had to fix that before they could go in to see Elvis. or I think were turned away because they knew that would be a huge turn off to him, even as his own hygiene was failing because he was addicted to so much medication. Why was he addicted to all the medication? I know addiction grows, everything, but they were prescription medications.

He was playing doctors off, but what was the prescription for? He had some legitimate health concerns, but he was living this unreal schedule. Colonel Parker, his manager, had booked him into Las Vegas. he was the first performer to do seven days a week in Vegas, and usually two or sometimes three shows a day or a night, I should say. And so he was tried to sleep in the day, but he was so hopped up from performing late at night, took pills to get him down, to get him to relax.

And he was always a very nervous person, as his mother was. And then it took pills to get him up. So after a while, you know, he couldn't function without this regiment of drugs. It's amazing he could have sex at all, really. All of these drugs swilling around his system. Well, he did have moments of impotency in his latter years. I don't think he was 100% of intent. But yes, there were girls who were like, well, what's with this?

And that was very distressing for him because, you know, in rock and roll, getting old was the ultimate sin. So, you know, he's a pitiful character in a lot of ways. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was unfalily kind unless he was under too much stress or, the wrong medication combination because he did have an angry streak. And he was a deep and true artist. And to me, the real miracle of this is, you know, today these stars have scores of people who prop them up, who helped them with wardrobe and helped them with the songs that they choose and their dance steps and everything that goes into their act. He had none of that. It was all organic,

very neatly divided into the 50s, 60s, and 70s. He made all of those decisions himself. He was such a and true artist, even in his last performances when he was so obviously unhealthy, that artistry is still there. It's quite amazing, the strength of character that he could summon to keep that art up to such a high level. So that's the way I like to think of him as someone who had a lot of personal demons, but my goodness, what an amazing, amazing artist he was going on to influence generations after him and to come. I mean, there will always be presence of Elvis Presley in the world, I think as a performer and as an artist. And you reported on his funeral, didn't you?

I did. I was the pop music reviewer and critic for the Louisville Career Journal when he died. And he had a step-grandmother who lived in Louisville. And my editor sent me out to find her the night he died. She was not seeing anybody. But the next day, they put me on the company plane with the star columnist at the paper. And we were down there for quite a few days to cover all of that. And then the paper sent me back for a period of weeks to write. a series. And that's how I got to know so many people in Elvis world right off the bat.

My final question to you, you have been wonderful to talk to by the way. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks. What was this favorite food that I've read about of Elvis's, this peanut butter, banana fried sandwich, and how do you make it? Because I might have to try this out tonight. Well, this peanut butter banana sandwich that he loved so much was to some degree, a southern thing already that a lot of people made. Because it was white bread. It was nothing fancy. It was white bread. Sometimes it was mayonnaise, peanut butter, and usually mashed banana. So it's not just strips of banana laid on the sandwich. And I remember we had that when I was a little girl.

But, you know, sometimes he would have it fried in butter. So it's a gastronomic bomb. Wow. There's a lot of fat there. But it's pretty tasty. I might have to give that a go. I might even go full Elvis. and do the mayonnaise thing as well, just to see what that's like. Alana, you have been wonderful to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, I do have a website which is colonelparker.net, because I've written a lot about the colonel. So that's a way. And thank you so much for having me on. I'm really honored. Thank you.

Oh, it's a pleasure. Let's give everyone the full title of the book again so they can go and read it. Thank you. It's Baby, let's Playhouse, Elvis Presley, and the women who loved him. Thank you so much for talking to me today about the king. Thank you, Kay. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Alana for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or perhaps you just wanted to drop us an email and say hello, then you can get us at betwixt at history hit.com.

We have got episodes on everything from drinking with the Victorians to the history of Gatiasias, all come in your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckworth. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. again betwixt the sheets of the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.