This week’s episode of Deeper Roots turns its attention to the man they called “The King.” We’ve got two hours with songs about Elvis Presley — musical tributes, name-drops, eulogies, and love letters from artists across the past century. Some are playful, some reverent, and some wrestle with the contradictions that made Elvis both larger than life and painfully human. Together, they form a kind of American scrapbook around a figure who never really left the cultural conversation. From the wide-eyed devotion of artists like George Jones, Janis Martin, and Bobby Bare, to later songs reflecting on the strange and tragic arc that carried Elvis from hip-shaking revolutionary to Vegas spectacle, from the Nixon White House photo-op to a lonely and frightening decline, these recordings trace the many ways America mythologized him. The songs on this morning’s show reveal just how deeply Elvis worked his way into the DNA of rock ’n’ roll mythology.
