THE LONGEVITY OF ‘‘COOL’’

I wandered into a vintage market in Geneva, New York, this past summer and discovered a box of used albums sitting on a shelf.

One immediately caught my eye.

It was an album titled Elvis As Recorded At Madison Square Garden on RCA Victor (4776 stereo).

What was so important to me was that I was at that show on June 10, 1972.

I loved Elvis Presley and, because he almost never performed outside of Las Vegas after he began his long term residency there, I felt that this was going to be my only opportunity to see this legend in person. After all, wasn’t Elvis really responsible for the emergence of rock and roll as an art form? Didn’t John Lennon say that “without Elvis there would be no Beatles”?

I had to add Elvis to my list of rock