It was Wednesday, January 16, 1985. But not just another day at work.

A few weeks back, I’d taken on an assignment on the Vogel show; look into the tape that “Major Bill Smith” of Fort Worth had sent usthat purported to show Elvis Presley was alive and well in 1981. The tape – a noisy cassette with lots of background noise – features a dead-ringer voice:

[singing]I will spend my whole life through
loving you, loving you.
Winter, summer, spring-time, too,
loving you, loving you…[singing stops] 

I’m sorry…

I…

Uh…

I can’t go on.

I just heard that President Reagan…

…has been SHOT…

We booked “Major Bill” on January 8, Elvis’ birthday, to present his thesis. Predictably, he snuck in a plug for a new protege, “Kelli”, a rough-looking but well-endowed woman singing a version of “Last Kiss” that would have been at home at any karaoke night in Wyoming.

But I had another plan afoot. It involved justifying my English degree.

One of my favorite classes in college had been Linguistics – the study of language. One of the things I’d learned about had been voice spectroanalysis – then being researched for criminal prosecution (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). I remembered that one of the foremost practitioners was at the U of Minnesota.

Armed with a $50 talent fee and some gift certificates to a local restaurant, the Major Bill cassette and another with snippets of the real (?) Elvis saying similar words from one of his live albums, I went to the “U”. I met the professor involved (a charming woman who got the gag and jumped at the chance to publicize her program – especially for the $50 and the gift certificate). It’d take her about a week.

I the meantime, I re-booked Major Bill for January 16.

The day came; I got the Major on the line. Don got in the plug for the “Lovely Kelli”, and then played the Major’s tape.

Then, he introduced the professor. She explained her methodology; then, we played the tapes, one after the other.

“So, professor”, asked Don, as producer Dave Elvin cued “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (the dramatic theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) in the background, “when all is said and done, is this tape the real Elvis?”

“There is an 85% chance that the voice on the tape is not that of the real Elvis Presley”

And, I swear, the big final “DA DUMMMMM” of the them dropped right as the sentence finished. Dave Elvin always had the best timing of anyone in radio.

Major Bill sputtered. Don, Dave and I laughed so hard we almost wet ourselves. And for the first time, I got the feeling I might just belong in this racket.

I’d been at KSTP a little over two weeks. The job was settling into a bit of a routine. I got up at 8:30 or 9AM, got to work around 10:30, ran the board for two hours during the syndicated Owen Span show (a classic “Fairness Doctrine”-era talk show, simultaneously about everything and nothing, mushy-left but unwilling to say it), then into the “production meeting” with Don Vogel and Dave Elvin.

The meeting usually involved listening to Don bitch about his latest travails (the unreliability of his Metro Mobility driver was constant theme) and gush about his latest joys (food was a big, constant one) for about an hour, and then a frantic hour of getting stuff together for the show.

Thursday, January 3, 1985 was no exception.

“I got this tape in the mail”, said producer Dave Elvin. “It’s from a guy who claims Elvis is alive”.

The letter was from a “Colonel Bill Smith”, a Dallas man who claimed to have evidence that Elvis faked his death; the tape was from 1981, and purported to prove that Elvis was alive and well, and in hiding.

He popped the cassette into a player. There was some crowd noise, and then the sound of Elvis Presley over a strummed guitar:

I will spend my whole life through
loving you, loving you.
Winter, summer, spring-time, too,
loving you, loving you…

The guitar stopped. There were a few seconds of silence, broken only by a few mutterings from the crowd and what sounded like glasses tinkling.

Then, the voice of Elvis (?), speaking this time…:

I’m sorry… 

I…

Uh…

I can’t go on.

I just heard that President Reagan…

…has been SHOT…

The tape ended.

Don erupted in his deep-in-the-belly chuckle. “We gotta book this guy!”

“I’ll do it”, I said. It sounded interesting.

I walked out to my little desk – it was a little larger than a cutting board, its right wall was a rack of satellite demodulators, and I shared it with the morning show’s producer – and called the number on the “Colonel Bill Smith” letterhead.

Answering machine. I left a message.

The rest of the day? Do the show, get home around 7PM.

My biggest challenge, of course, was figuring out how to stretch my $3.35 an hour to cover my bills; $212.50 a month rent, probably $100 for gas (I put “move to Saint Paul”, a much shorter commute, high on my list of to-dos – once I could afford it), and that left about $100 of my $420 monthly take-home for food, clothing, and everything else.

I started scouting around for ways to supplement my income.