When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum opened in 1995, it held a gala nine-hour concert at the Cleveland Lakefront Stadium.
Inductees like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry performing their own material alternated with more contemporary acts like Heart and Soul Asylum performing sets of songs by inductees who were deceased.
The concert covered a vast range of influential music. But one of the most important inductees was absent from the program: nobody performed any Elvis Presley.
Since then, the Rock Hall has formed an ongoing relationship with Presley’s former home and now museum in Memphis, Graceland. It has maintained an ongoing small display on his life and career with rotating items lent by Graceland’s Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Starting Friday, the Rock Hall is devoting a large corner of its basement Ahmet Ertegun Exhibition Hall to the career of this towering figure.
While it covers his whole career, it especially keys in on the period between his induction into the army in 1958 and his 1968 comeback TV special, a period when the nature of his legacy was an open question that was resoundingly answered by that spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed special. It launched his return to touring after a decade away from stages, making him the most popular live concert attraction in the world.
The exhibit is dominated by a new short film created just for the exhibit by EPE that tracks Presley’s career from his early days as a country kid fresh out of Tupelo to his final years as a hard-touring Vegas-style singer in a white jumpsuit. The red “Elvis” sign that appeared in the 1968 TV special dominates one corner.
The film includes copious musical clips, from an early rendition of “That’s All Right” to his “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” part of his schlocky late-career showstopper “An American Trilogy.” It also features comments from other musicians, including Keith Richards, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Bobby Womack, and Kid Rock.
Also on display are one of Presley’s three-wheeled motorcycles, a double-neck guitar he played, jewelry, concert T-shirts, the white suit he wore in the 1968 special while singing “If I Can Dream,” and memos pertaining to the promotion and success of the special.
Provocatively, the Elvis exhibit is located adjacent to a long-running installation on attacks on rock and roll and attempts to censor it. It’s a reminder that Elvis’ rise to stardom was greeted with widespread outrage and cries that he would be the downfall of Americans youth. The complainers surely never envisioned that those youths would one day be taking their grandchildren to a museum to view a tribute to his career.
The exhibit is free with museum admission: $22 for adults, $18 for Cuyahoga County residents, $17 for seniors and military, $13 children 9-12. Free children 8 and under and members. Hours are 10am-5pm seven days a week, until 9pm Wednesdays.
https://rockhall.com/new-elvis-presley-exhibition-at-rock-hall/
