Sometimes the thought of Elvis Presley gives me cold sweats. I remember my early youth in the fifties as a time of being caught between two great energy forces. The first was the Atomic Bomb, which ironically I first learned about from the Ed Sullivan show. One Sunday Eisenhower Eve the Toast of the Town presented a cartoon which depicted nuclear holocaust. In the beginning, the helpless people in suburban homes look to the lone plane which carries THE BOMB through ever-darkening skies. They’ve been expecting it. “In the end,” the godly-voiced announcer proclaims, “there is only a flame. And then the flame goes out.” Cut back to Ed, fielding applause. Adults were around to fill kids in on those particulars which the cartoon neglected. There are Madmen, see, and these Madmen, all of whom (it was assumed) were living in Russia at the time, have a button, see, and all they have to do is press the button and that’s the ballgame. People have little to do except build Fallout Shelters in the whole drama which reduces the planet to a flame. Nice thoughts to fall off to dreamland with for a decade. Can’t fall asleep while that plane’s overhead.

The second great energy force was introduced to most of the world over the Sullivan show, too: Elvis. He was the life force in an age that promised doom.. Adults figured kids would tire of Elvis the way they had tired of Superman and Davy Crockett. But they were wrong. There was a difference. Superman was a fictional character played by a very vulnerable human named George Reeves. Davey Crockett lived and died at the Alamo. Fess Parker pretended to die at the Alamo as the real Davey Crockett and came back to race riverboats as the legend of Davey Crockett, but it really didn’t make it. Elvis, on the other hand, was the king of Rock and Roll. King of the Teenagers. Chosen son of the God of Rock. And all of this was very real. RCA had a slogan for Elvis that proved it: “50 Million Fans Can’t Be Wrong.”