With Mariah Carey's recent eclipse of Elvis's record for most number one hits as a solo artist (she now has 18), Blender salutes the King's immortal music, his tabloid appetites and his "Fat Elvis" free fall.
21. He once played the International in Las Vegas with a pistol in each boot.In 1970, he received a death threat before a show. "If some son of a bitch tries to kill me," he said to bodyguards Red and Sonny West, "I want you guys to get him. I want you to rip his goddamned eyes out. I don't want him sitting around afterward like Charlie Manson with a grin on his face saying, 'I killed Elvis Presley.'"
22. Nobody planning to go to bed early ever invited the King to come by."When he came to the house," Phillips says, "he didn't want to impose, but he'd stay all night."
23. Pinball wizard? Nope."He loved pinball," Phillips says, "but he liked to cheat a little bit. That's the only thing I ever saw him cheat on."
24. Elvis was an officer of the Memphis Police Force.Shelby County sheriff Roy Nixon made the King a chief deputy in 1970. He had legal authority, and could have made arrests.
25. "Fat Elvis" wasn't as fat as commonly believed."He was a lot less overweight than people think," Jorgensen says. "In the Fat Elvis period, the last three years of his career, he was bloated. He had a lot of water in his body."