On this solemn day

Most people in this country have been born in the years since Elvis died¹. He has become, even among fans, a caricature of a performer - too-tight white suit, snarling lips, sideburns, 'n such. He continues to make money long after his passing - Jar of Elvis Presley's Hair Auctioned.
If you listened to his early stuff, you'd learn that his musical instincts were sharp and profound. He absorbed country, blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and so much more, shaping and shaped by American popular music.  He knew his stuff. He was, in that regard, matched only by his contemporary, Johnny Cash. And while Cash found a lifeline in the Carter family, Elvis drowned, came back up, and then drowned again.
I knew one Elvis impersonator, not well, but enough to follow his career. He got sober quite a few years ago, at which point his career really got going. He works regularly in Vegas and around here.
Another Elvis impersonator, named Elvis Presley, is running for governor in Arkansas. "People will find out I'm for real," he's said. (via Elvis Presley Running for Governor of Arkansas - Lowering the Bar).
My favorite Elvis tune? I like the stuff from the Million Dollar Quartet recordings, a loose session with Elvis, Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The tape machine was running in 1956 when these guys ran through a bunch of material from Southern gospel to Chuck Berry to Little Richard. Here's one, Farther Along.

An American tune

Downstairs in the Goodnow-Pearson building in Gardner, you take a 45 rpm record a listening booth and, for the two minutes and and change, be transported into the world of rock-and-roll.
The listening booth at Goodnow's wasn't the first place I'd heard Hound Dog. Maybe it was the radio in the Studebaker pickup. I didn't have a radio in my room yet. My parents kept the clock radio tuned to WBZ/WBZA, which had a regular lineup of disc jockeys and played a lot of rock and roll.
Most likely, though, I heard Hound Dog at the homes of one of the older kids in the neighborhood, the ones who had their own record players and stacks of 45s from Elvis, Little Richard, Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, and more.
Hound Dog was the first Elvis song that I knew. The longer and more complex story of how important he was or wasn't is best left for another day.
Just think about a little and very white kid in an enclave of first and second generation immigrants listening to a white kid from the south cover a song of anger and betrayal written by a couple of Jews and first heard when sung by black woman and you'll be thinking about America.