{"id":48520,"date":"2006-01-16T09:37:29","date_gmt":"2006-01-16T15:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48520"},"modified":"2014-10-24T09:46:20","modified_gmt":"2014-10-24T14:46:20","slug":"it-was-twenty-years-ago-today-part-xxiii-11605","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48520","title":{"rendered":"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXIII"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was Wednesday, January 16, 1985. But not just another day at work.<\/p>\n

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 us<\/a>that 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:<\/p>\n

[singing]I will spend my whole life through
\nloving you, loving you.
\nWinter, summer, spring-time, too,
\nloving you, loving you…[singing stops]<\/em><\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m sorry…<\/p>\n

I…<\/p>\n

Uh…<\/p>\n

I can’t go on.<\/p>\n

I just heard that President Reagan…<\/p>\n

…has been SHOT…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But I had another plan afoot. It involved justifying my English degree.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a> – 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I the meantime, I re-booked Major Bill for January 16.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Then, he introduced the professor. She explained her methodology; then, we played the tapes, one after the other.<\/p>\n

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

“There is an 85% chance that the voice on the tape is not<\/em> that of the real Elvis Presley”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48520"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48547,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48520\/revisions\/48547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}