The wonder of Elvis

Sometimes it just hits me how much I love Elvis music and what a great feeling I get from listening to it. Today I had such a moment driving to work.

On the highway I put the fourth CD from the Today, Tomorrow & Forever box set in the car stereo and there was "See See Rider" from February 1970 blasting through the speakers. It's hard to explain what I felt, but I remember thinking "Man, I'm gonna listen to Elvis and his music until the very day I die."

I think I played the song three times, and then there was "Polk Salad Annie" followed by "Walk A Mile In My Shoes." It was a very pleasant car ride.

It also reminded me of when I first listened to the On Stage album and heard these songs. I can't have been more than a couple of years into Elvis when someone told me you could borrow LP records in the basement of our local library.

With an image in my head of a lot of Elvis records I hurried off to the library together with my brother, but lost all hope when I realised there was only a single crate with some LP records in it. But faith was kind that day; one of the records was a scratched copy of On Stage.

Back home again, we played the record over and over. What did we care that it was scratchy, it sounded great! And although I can't remember after all these years, I'm pretty sure I was feeling something similar to what I did this morning on the highway.