Elvis is still alive!

I was only two when the king died. His music was never played at home and I didn’t have much use for it either. In my eyes it was old-fashioned music, and the films you saw of him were mostly in black and white. Not my thing. But Elvis is still alive!

Taste changes

Your taste changes over the years. I still can’t listen to the Beatles, which were played at our house, because with a little imagination it sounds stale and dusty. That is part of those images you sometimes see on TV, with such a polygon-like voice as Philip Bloemendal.

I actually started to appreciate the king a little more. Not everything, but who likes all the music of a certain artist? I know few. My childhood was mainly characterized by the Doors, or Bob Marley, but I didn’t like all of those either.

Colleague with loose hips

I had a colleague at TU Delft. leo. Leo “The King”. This man is a true Elvis fan. And not one who sometimes puts on a t-shirt with an image of his idol, but someone who has also just been to Graceland. And sometimes he was in the middle of the kitchen making those hip movements. Something that Elvis himself was often condemned for, because in the 70s such sexy moves were absolutely not done!

Last week I spoke to Leo, I tagged him in a message that he simply had to see, or rather, listen. The real reason why I am writing this column. I am a real music person. Not that I make music myself, because I can’t get a note out of a recorder yet, but I do love listening to music, and silence around me, that sometimes makes me restless.

Bouke Presley or Elvis Scholten?

When I came home from work last week, my wife asked me to listen to a sound clip. I listened and heard Elvis’ voice sing the song “In the Ghetto.” A song that does something to me anyway; it revolves around the big differences between rich and poor, but this turned out not to be just Elvis. I was amazed, especially when she told me that this singer was from the Netherlands. Elvis is still alive!

With all due respect, Elvis has inspired a lot of people, think of Shakin ‘Stevens and the Dutch René Shuman, but Bouke Scholten’s voice really resembles that of the King. With his voice and his way of singing, I don’t think it’s strange that he was allowed to sing at Graceland with the remaining Elvis band members.

In the meantime, with more than seven thousand followers on Instagram and about seven million on TikTok at the time of writing, we can rightly say that Elvis is still alive. Now not only in mind, but also in Bouke’s voice, and he is not from Memphis Tennessee, but simply from the Netherlands!