I can’t believe it was 42 years ago today, we lost the King. Elvis Presley died. I remember where I was when I heard the news.

I was a kid in junior high school. I played in a YMCA sponsored football league. We had already started practicing three times a week, with games on Saturday. My coach, Coach Taylor, who drove a blue Mercury, would come and pick me and my neighbor Jeff up. His son Paul was always already in the car. We must have looked like something else driving down the road in a blue Mercury. This older dude with big side burns driving a car full of helmets and shoulder pads.

Coach had just picked me up when the announcer on the radio came on and announced that “Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll has died at his Graceland home in Memphis.” The Coach was so shaken he had to pull the car over to the side of the road. He looked at his son in the passenger seat and then back to Jeff and I in the back seat as if searching to see if this was real. It was clear he thought he was in a bad dream. He stammered, barely verbal…”Elvis… gone… he was my age?”

It was a weird football practice. I remember running a lot. I don’t think Coach came out of the fog until long after that practice was over…

I remember the next few days watching all the mourners on television. There were so many crazy Elvis fans. I remember watching the funeral procession on TV. My parents, who were always more a product of the 50s than their younger siblings (who were clearly more influenced by the 60s), were very shaken. My father didn’t own many albums, but he had Elvis: Live From Hawaii and I remember that album being played quite a bit around that time.

I was just starting to get into music. The Stones and the Beatles and Zeppelin were more my thing. It took years for me to return back to the man who had influenced so many, Elvis Presley. He has so much brilliant music out there. Everyone should own any of the myriad greatest hits packages he’s got out there. From Elvis In Memphis should be required listening for everyone. If you can get your hands on his debut album on vinyl, Elvis Presley, do so immediately. Being older now, and realizing what a tragic, preventable loss this was really brings the tragedy home. A few years earlier, Barbara Streisand had asked Elvis to play the male lead in her version of A Star Is Born. The Colonel had Elvis turn it down. He was done in the movies…the Colonel was going to work him on a Vegas stage until he dropped like an old mule… I always wonder if taking that movie role might have turned Presley around. He’d have had to lose weight and ween off the chemicals. Sadly, we’ll never know.

As Americans we can argue about who should be President all day long… but I think we can all agree, especially on this anniversary of that sad day, there was only one King… Elvis.

It’s a long dark ride out there folks. Take care of each other. Especially someone suffering like Elvis did, hooked on opioids.