Searching for Elvis Presley’s humanity with Statler Brother Jimmy Fortune

Seen in the Nail Swirl aka “I Got Lucky” jumpsuit with red macrame belt and wielding the iconic 1956 Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar, a shaggy-haired, 35-year-old Elvis Presley grasps a microphone and cuts loose in front of an 18,700-capacity crowd at the Inglewood Forum on November 14, 1970. The Saturday afternoon was Elvis’s first Los Angeles concert in 13 years, and the $313,000 gross from this and the later evening show shattered the one-day box office record of $238,000 earned by the Rolling Stones over two shows the previous year according to Robert Hilburn’s glowing LA Times review. Elvis is most likely delivering opening number “That’s All Right” or Ray Charles’s “I Got a Woman.” Image Credit: Colorization by Matt Ashton / For Elvis CD Collectors message board

Youngest Statler Brother Jimmy Fortune replaced ailing original tenor Lew “Flowers on the Wall” DeWitt in 1982 and remained with the country-gospel quartet until their retirement 20 years later. Besides supporting Johnny Cash at the notorious Folsom Prison and being christened “America’s Poets” by counterculture ink slinger Kurt Vonnegut, the Statler Brothers accumulated 46 Top 20 C&W singles between 1965 and 1989. “Elizabeth” [an ode to Cleopatra heroine Liz Taylor] “My Only Love,” “Too Much on My Heart,” “Forever,” and the patriotic “More Than a Name on a Wall” were all written by Fortune and solidified the group’s continued success in the Reagan era [the former three were number ones]. In the first installment of an exclusive conversation, Fortune sheds light on a heretofore unexplored facet of his artistic development — Elvis Presley.

The Jimmy Fortune Interview, Part One

By chance are you an Elvis fan?

Elvis influenced me a lot, even though his voice was in a lower register than mine. I’m a tenor, and Elvis was a high baritone. He always put his heart, soul, and full voice into a song, and that’s the same approach I employ.

His roots were in gospel music, and that’s really what he loved in his soul. Obviously he…