HOW FAMOUS WAS ELVIS? That was the question on Quora. Once upon a time, that it was fairly easy to answer: According to Jerry Hopkins, whose Elvis – A Biography (1971) was the first biography of the man, a global survey showed that more people in the world recognized Elvis by his first (or given) name—and that included you-know-who!—than they recognized anyone else with their given and family names combined.
But that was almost fifty years ago, before the Age of Celebrity and the coming of the world wide web made countless pop stars ubiquitous wherever there was electricity or a good connection. So, as I haven’t seen a similar global survey about fame and familiarity in the 21st century, I opted to answer the question with a bit of humor:
“Elvis was sooooo famous that if you were to get lost in the deepest, darkest part of the Amazon, and were captured by the last remaining tribe of cannibals — all of them starving after a weekend ayahuasca bender — and as they were preparing you for their barbeque, all you would have to do is say ‘Elvis’ and somehow, like in a bad movie, there’d be a bongo sound, the insistent throb of a bass guitar, and a stinging electric guitar riff from an invisible rock band in the background.
“Then all those cannibals would gather ’round and listen to that bongo sound. They’d grab their barefoot babies by the hand. They’d turn and tease, they’d hug and squeeze. And then they’d dig right in and do the clam!
“Of course, after doing the clam they’d have worked up an appetite and be even hungrier and you’d look even tastier, so you’d never be able to return and tell this remarkable tale about Elvis’s far-reaching fame and your, ahem, fortune.”
Wafer-sized portions
So far, there has been one comment left by a person of equally good mood and even temper: Marcus Lungren (who describes himself as very well-adjusted and not depressed at all, a rare thing indeed) asked, “But would they eat Elvis?”
To which I replied by making an allusion to you-know-who: “Only if he was served in wafer-sized portions by a holy man with a dash of wine to help it go down.”
If you want to follow this thread and see if anyone else takes the time to comment, look here: How famous was Elvis?
Finally, comparing the fame of the Beatles with that of you-know-who got John Lennon in a helluva lot of trouble below the fabled Mason-Dixon line in the United States. But this isn’t 1966 and I’m not one of the Fab Four.
FEATURED IMAGE: The image at the top of this page is from the little-known horror film (unless you are a horror film aficionado, of course) Cannibal Holocaust. This scene shows what could be a holy man serving up someone in larger-than-wafer-sized portions with what could be a dash of wine to help it go down. Butcher Block (a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films) calls Cannibal Holocaust an “uncomfortable watch.” If you are squeamish, I suggest you do not rush on over to Google and type in “cannibal holocaust” and click on Images.
I have been around & around the net about this Elvis stuff. Maybe YOU can find out?
The current 2020 Billboard ‘all-time ‘ album stats (starting in August 1963) notes Presley’s No.1’s at 2-Aloha From Hawaii (1973) and Elvis 30 (2002). As Roustabout hit no.1 in January 1965, why is it omitted?
Who, in any universe, can get Billboard‘s editors to correct their error also noting more weeks on chart using these new rules?
It makes me wonder who else’s stats are overlooked?
A lot of young people look to Billboard as ‘official’.
It could be perhaps?
Please advise.
Thank you
Colin Bratkovich, author of Just Remember This
COLIN
Thanks for the comment.
First, I haven’t paid much attention to Billboard in decades. Decisions like weighting airplay above actual record sales when tabulating their pop chart back in the ’90s still baffles me.
As for their lists of the “greatest” thises and “all-time” thats, it seems like they go out of their way to set up systems where Elvis’s greatest accomplishments aren’t counted. One way they do this is to only use chart positions from their pop chart since it was renamed the Hot 100 in 1958. That means that all of Presley’s hits from 1956-1957 aren’t counted! The last list of Billboard‘s greatest artists that I saw didn’t even list Elvis in the top 10!
As for the all-time albums list that only mentioned two Presley LPs, please send me a link so that I could check it out.
Hang in there …
NEAL
PS: Here is a link to a review of Colin’s book, Just Remember This:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22241773-just-remember-this
I can’t seem to link, but I can tell you that it is very easy to find Billboard chart history & navigate to Billboard 200. It is STILL not CORRECTED, as (already noted to you) Roustabout—by its current rules—is MISSING. Maybe you can get Sony to get this fixed?
I also note that, for some years, the same listing has a picture of Willie Nelson for Presley’s Classic Christmas Album, as well as a pic for Elvis’ Gold Records Volume 4, using the wrong cover (Vol.5). How come?
It’s almost 2021 and still a lot of confusion about Elvis Presley’s legacy.
How come no one will correct this?
Thank you.
COLIN
Thanks for the second comment!
Relying on Billboard to be consistent and reliable appears to be a waste of energy. The only consistency I can read into the way they change their chart history criteria regularly is to make newer artists look more successful than older artists.
As for reliablity regarding information about Gold and Platinum Record Awards, don’t expect that from the Rolling Stone or RIAA websites either as both are consistently error-prone.
As for getting Sony to listent ot me—Hell’s Belles, I have a tough time getting collectors to listen to me!!!
Keep on keepin’ on …
NEAL
Rockahula, baby!
NEAL
The Elvis Presley Roustabout LP has FINALLY been updated (December 2021) into Billboard’s all-time stats, which started in August 1963. It is no longer officially OMITTED.
That’s good.
While Billboard’s Top 200 still did not exist in August 1963, along with credited weeks on the chart. This affects other recording artists’ legacies as well.
COLIN
Thanks for the comment.
Three things:
1. I made slight editorial changes to your statements to make them align with the “style” of this blog.
2. I gave up on Billboard decades ago. Their “historical” manipulations of their various charts over the past forty years have seemed to have two things in common:
a) Deflating the achievements of older artists while
b) inflating the achievements of more recent artists.
No artist has been more negatively affected by these shenanigans than Elvis.
3. I do not understand your final statement: “While Billboard’s Top 200 still did not exist in August 1963, along with credited weeks on the chart. This affects other recording artists’ legacies as well.”
Keep on keepin’ on!
NEAL
NEAL
1. I appreciate you getting back to me!
2. The current stats for recording artists for album releases are called the Billboard 200 and are posted weekly. When you look it up yourself, you will find that Elvis along with his 1963 contemporaries START counting albums and weeks on the album chart from August 1963. This is when Billboard dropped its separate mono and stereo LP charts and combined them into one.
3. Weeks on the chart also seem to be important to Billboard, noting that the chart could NOT count 200 placings in August 1963 as a real 200 would NOT exist for another six years! So, many albums then staying popular and lasting 20 weeks on a chart of 125 or 150 are NOT counted, although Billboard does not have an explanation for this, but this is what they NOW use, giving artists credit for weeks on the chart. The same charted weeks exist for Billboard’s other charts, as well.
4. Are you still with me, Neal?
5. You are MORE INFORMED on the state of the Billboard Hot 100, which they started as of September 1958. What bothers me the most about this earlier change of their ‘official’ stats is that it’s only a name change. Billboard HAD used 100 placings on its popular singles since 1955. So 100 placings DID exist, crediting weeks on the chart on an equal basis for singles.
6. I agree with you that Elvis Presley’s stature has been squeezed but so have his contemporaries on the singles chart (1955-1958) and on the albums chart (1956 to August 1963). Recording artists before 1955 HAD been somewhat dissed but that’s another story. So are the Billboard rhythm & blues/soul charts and the country & western charts in listed names and numbers of records.
7. Please look it up and you will get a better understanding of how this stuff has been done.
8. More so, at least Roustabout has been ‘found’ by Billboard as a #1 and added weeks on chart as well.
9. If I am still not there, please let me know.
Thank you,
COLIN
C
1. You are welcome! I appreciate your comments on this blog.
2-3. Trying to keep up with and make sense of the many and myriad decisions that the Billboard people have made through the past few decades (let’s say since the decline of rock and the ascendency of hip-hip in the ’90s) is beyond mortal ken. When rock & roll reared its unruly head in 1955, the Billboard best-selling LP chart had only 15 positions and increased it to 25 in late 1957.
Then, in mid-1959, they split into two charts, one for mono LPs (with 50 positions) and one for stereo LPs with 30 positions. In mid-1912, they increased the mono chart to 150 positions and the stereo chart to 50 positions. So, up until this point, the Billboard LP charts were sorta all over the place and a bit of a nightmare for anyone to make sense of retrospectively.
As you mentioned, in August 1963, the mono and stereo LPs were dropped and combined into a single “Top LPs” survey with 150 positions. The various “greatest ever” lists that Billboard compiles to compare artists start with the entries of August 17, 1963, not because it’s the most accurate manner in which to make the lists but because it’s the most convenient.
If the Billboard editors wanted to make the MOST accurate greatest-ever lists they would only count albums that made the Top 15 from 1955 to the present.
By the many weird greatest-ever lists they have come up with in the past 30 years (moving artists like Elvis down the All-Time Greatest leaders while moving artists like Madonna up), people like you and me should not be thought conspiracy theory-oriented if we arrive at the conclusion that these greatest-ever lists that the editors make do NOT indicate that they are interested in accuracy and history as much as they are interested in promoting the still ongoing careers of 21st-century artists.
4. I believe so but you will have to determine that by my responses above.
5-7. Agreed. Again, by using the stats from the starting point of a cosmetic name change from “top 100” to “Hot 100” they have eliminated most of Presley’s hits of the ’50s along with hits by several other artists who would figure in any greatest-ever list (notably Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson).
8. How Roustabout got to #1 in between Beach Boys Concert and Beatles ’65 is a bigger mystery to me than how the compilers at Billboard “lost” it. While reinterpreting it as part of conspiracy against Elcis’ legacy is more fun, a computer glitch and/or a team of careless or clueless proofreaders/editors makes more sense.
9. Okay: As I don’t know where “there” is, I don’t know if you arrived yet.
Thanks for the interesting comments and please please me by keeping them coming!
N