Having rocketed to worldwide fame, in a career so special that many people prefer to fantasise that he’s still alive, Elvis Presley shook his hips for the final time on this day in 1977.
He may not have performed in Dundee but his connections to the city are as outlandish as some of the reactions he provoked from fans across the globe in his heyday.
The first is the curious tale of his false tooth, which ended up making an impromptu appearance in the City of Discovery after going missing during a British tour.
Then there’s a distant relative who made his mark as a footballer on Tayside before going on to represent his country – more on this later.
Curiously, Scotland was the only piece of UK soil Elvis ever stepped on.
The only time the singer visited these shores was that famous occasion on March 3 1960 when, while finishing his US Army national service, his military flight touched down for refuelling at Prestwick and he took the opportunity to mix with a few dozen fans.
What happens in Vegas…
The false tooth in question was created by Elvis’s dentist Henry Weiss as a back-up crown kept at the ready in case he damaged the one in his mouth while on tour.
The back-up strategy was known to have been used at least once, when, during a Las Vegas performance in 1971, Elvis cracked his front-tooth crown on a microphone.
The gigs in the desert saw him churn out 57 concerts in four weeks.
Weiss’s son immediately flew to Las Vegas with the replacement.
A detailed description of that incident was included in the documentation of authenticity when Weiss put the crown up for auction in 2012.
Also included was the cast of Elvis’s teeth and a glass display case.
Elvis’s crown was bought at auction for $11,000 by Michael Zuk, a Canadian author and dentist and obsessive collector of celebrity teeth.
In photos, the auctioned crown appeared to have a crack, leading Zuk to believe it may have actually been the damaged one that was replaced by the spare.
Adding to that possibility was the fact that Weiss’s final year as Presley’s dentist was 1971, the same year the confirmed back-up strategy was deployed.
“It’s interesting to note,” Zuk said, “that Elvis originally had his upper left central crowned because he was embarrassed by a small diastema.
“These days, dentists may have considered composite bonding or orthodontics; but many porcelain restorations are still done for this same reason.”
Elvis’s concern with crowns may have had roots in an incident early in his career when he accidently inhaled a different crown during a dance sequence in the filming of the 1957 movie Jailhouse Rock.
He had to have that crown non-surgically removed from his right lung.
Interestingly, an X-ray showing the lodged crown was one of a number of dental-related items of Elvis’s to have been sold in the years since his death in 1977.
‘No such number, no such zone…’
So how did it his crown end up in Dundee?
Zuk decided to send it on a UK tour of 11 dental practices to raise awareness of mouth cancer, with the first date in Malvern on April 30 2014.
Further dates followed in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cheltenham before the tooth went missing after being due to arrive at Bracknell’s Appledore Dental Clinic on May 28.
It soon emerged it had been sent to an address in Dundee by FedEx.
Instead, the delivery company mistakenly provided the clinic with a box of boring old dental equipment which was meant for a clinic on the Isle of Wight.
Talk about teething problems…
Dr Teresa Day, from the clinic, said: “It was supposed to arrive before 10am with a load of memorabilia, including costumes and a lock of Elvis’ hair, but instead we got a small package containing dentistry equipment meant for a clinic on the Isle of Wight.
“It put a dampener on the days’ events and left us ‘all shook up’ because we weren’t all able to dress up as we’d hoped, and patients coming to the clinic to have their free mouth cancer checks were left disappointed when the crown wasn’t there.”
The package eventually arrived five hours late following its Tayside trip.
Unsurprisingly, the blunder made headlines across the UK amid a plethora of Return to Sender jokes.
A FedEx spokesman said: “Once we were informed of this situation we quickly located the correct package in accordance with our normal procedures and made the necessary arrangements to ensure it arrived at the correct destination promptly.
“We are in touch with the customer to ensure that the Elvis Presley dental crown delivery arrives safely and on time at its next destination.”
‘So if an old friend I know…’
Eight years earlier, an even more bizarre Elvis connection to Scotland emerged.
That’s when the granddad of former Dundee United, Hearts and Rangers defender Steven Pressley – nicknamed Elvis by team-mates – revealed they were related to Elvis Aaron Presley.
And it’s fair to say they were All Shook Up by the revelation.
Jack first became aware of the American side of the family when a fellow Pressley – or Presley – genealogist tracked him down to his home in Fraserburgh and brought his family tree over.
They discovered that their family trees overlapped and that Steven and Elvis, who died in 1977, would have been cousins.
That’s because Elvis’s roots will always be in Scotland.
The King’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather shook his hips in Aberdeenshire 300 years ago.
Apparently, parish records show that eight generations before Elvis was born in 1935, his ancestor Andrew Presley wed Elspeth Leg in Lonmay on August 27 1713.
The Presley’s would have been married at the village’s old parish church, built in 1607 but now a ruin.
Their son, also called Andrew, became a blacksmith and was the first Presley to leave Scotland for America, in 1745, and settled in North Carolina.
Speaking in 2006, Jack said: “I retired in the 1980s and got into genealogy when I had some more time on my hands.
“But I never bothered with Elvis. Because his name was spelled differently, I assumed it was another branch of the family.
“It was just recently I realised that, by working back, I could see where Elvis’s family tree came back and ended up in Scotland – and at our family.”
By the end of the 1960s, rock and roll had undergone dramatic changes, and Elvis was no longer seen as relevant by American youth.
A 1968 television special won back many of his fans, but hits were harder to come by and Burning Love in 1972 was his final single to break into the Top 10.
The King’s last concert was held at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis on June 26 1977, which was his 55th show of the year.
He told the audience: “We’ll meet you again, God bless, adios,” as he left the stage.
Once ferociously anti-drugs, he had now become hopelessly addicted to painkillers, was stuffing himself with fast food, and seriously depressed about his love life and disastrous recording sessions.
On August 16 1977, on a diet of pills, sleeping during the day and awake at night, his extraordinary life came to an abrupt end.
When Elvis was found unconscious on the floor of his private bathroom, medical staff battled to bring him round, but to no avail.
Thankfully, he left a very large legacy of brilliant music, which will never be equalled.
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