Music

Elvis Presley: Ultimate Gospel

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Jun 14, 2010
Category: Soul

This is about Elvis Presley’s Ultimate Gospel. [For the Amazon MP 3 download, click here. To get it frrom iTunes, click here.] How I came to think about Elvis is connected to a number of other stories, which I will spare you.

Except for this: I met a woman who had been diagnosed with multiple cancers in 2007. She was sent home — without treatment —- by a major cancer center that saw nothing for her ahead but death, and soon. And yet here she was, three years later, beaming and vibrant. Clearly, this woman was doing something that had, at least for a while, pushed death into a corner.

“Do you have a spiritual practice?” I asked.

“I sit in the sun. And I listen to Elvis Presley’s gospel music. “

“Huh?”

“Try it,” she suggested.

So I removed Krishna Das from heavy rotation and tried Elvis.

I listened to Elvis sing “Amazing Grace”.

I watched him sing “Peace in the Valley” on the Ed Sullivan Show — in 1957.

I listened to “Where Would I Go?”

I listened to him sing “Crying in the Chapel.”

I listened to “How Great Thou Art.”

And I listened to “Bosom of Abraham.”

I had not thought — I had not known — of Elvis as a spiritual force. But I read that he loathed being called “The King,” because, as he said, “There only one, and that’s Jesus.” Okay, point taken. Even more, listening to the purity of these songs from this most impure of American musical superstars, I have to think the woman at the Stanford graduation really knew something. And I find myself, to my astonishment, saying, “Try it.”