Recalling memories of the King

Letter from the editor

Elvis Presley has hundreds of songs to his name, and there are likely few people who don't know at least one of them.

There's always been one close to my heart – "Can't Help Falling in Love," a song from his 1961 movie "Blue Hawaii."

My connection to that particular Elvis song reaches back to the womb, when my mother would sing it while she was pregnant with me.

And then there was the summer in high school when a pop group did a not-so-good remake of it that my best friend and I got stuck in our heads. It was also then that I discovered Elvis and his version. That I attribute to my grandma.

I remember when I was a girl riding with her to Snyder Drug in Great Falls for a root beer float at its old-fashioned soda fountain. She would always have music from the 1950s and 1960s playing in her car and would encourage us to find something on the jukebox.

She adored Elvis to the extent that she owned a replica doll that danced. It wasn't until I stumbled on a copy of a greatest hits album that I began feeling the same way. My grandma, who has been in the hospital for the past three weeks, would have loved the tribute concerts in Bigfork on Sunday.

"Can't help falling in love" was and still is my favorite Elvis song. I once claimed that the man who played me that song would sweep me off my feet. And he did. My fiance and I danced to it shortly after he proposed.

This weekend, I went to see tribute artist Ryan Pelton's performance in Bigfork with the hope that he might sing it, along with many other Elvis hits.

With the faster tempo Pelton used in performing Elvis' songs, it took me a minute to recognize it, but I was thrilled when he began belting the lyrics right before intermission at Sunday's 8 p.m. show at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts.

Others who went to that concert have said that the highlight for them was Pelton's leather pants, dance moves or the moments he tossed teddy bears or Hawaiian leis into the crowd. For me, it was those three minutes of my favorite song that stole the show.

-Jasmine Linabary