The Elvis Papers

DECEMBER 2023

 

ELVIS PAPERS FOUND IN MISSISSIPPI!

It has been more than 46 years since the printing of the Final/Special Editions of All-Elvis Commercial Appeal and Memphis Press-Scimitar newspapers.  In Memphis it isn't unusual come across copies that have been stored in hot Memphis attics for the past almost 50 years.  Many of these are brittle, folded, yellowing and falling apart.  

In early September of 2023 there was a sale in Mississippi, south of Memphis, of items that had belonged to a man who had been a radio personality in the mid 1970's.  He was a widower who had no heirs.  In an upstairs game room, under a pool table, there were stacks of dusty shipping boxes that had obviously been there for a very long time.  They had their original shipping labels from The Memphis Publishing Company.  The Memphis Publishing Company housed the newsrooms of the two local newspapers: The Memphis Commercial Appeal and The Memphis Press Scimitar.  The labels were addressed to the deceased.  Inside these (many unopened) boxes were the Elvis Special/Final Edition newspapers in phenomenal condition.  With the Memphis Press-Scimitar having ceased publication in 1983 and the Memphis Publishing Company no longer in business, to have found original shipping boxes with original shipping labels from 1977 meant that these were a rare find!  

 

THE RESEARCH

To know more about these newspapers I spoke with dozens of people: Elvis memorabilia collectors, writers, reporters, filmmakers, archivists and people who were young staff members at the newspapers at the time.  I even spoke with (now) middle-aged men who were paperboys who sold papers in front of Graceland that week!   Countless hours were spent in library archives and on-line.  It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without any edges!  Much of my research can be found if you go to the "EXTRA! EXTRA!" tab...and I'm not hardly through!