Happy Birthday Elvis! The King turns 74!

January 6, 2:10 PMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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Next year will be a huge celebration, but turning 74 on January 8 is nothing to wiggle a lip or giggle a hip at ... even if the legend in question has been dead for almost 32 years. 

And before we go any further, a raised fist of defiance and a tear for the death of Ron Asheton of the seminal Stooges. Asheton's guitar playing with Iggy Popand his brother  in the Detroit band, who broke up in the Seventies and reunited in 2003, may have not been as well known as Elvis' singing and swinging, but it influenced several generations as deeply. R.I.P.

Go here to the Music Examiner for the full Ron Asheton story

Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, but in many ways, he's just as much with us today as if he had lived. In fact, with the natural deprecation of celebrity taken into account, I'd say that Elvis is bigger today than if he was still alive. 

Check out Dominic Patten’s Top 5 Pop Culture Icons of all time here.

Sure, Elvis had gone to fat and to seed by the time he expired, to put it politely. Show biz is like politics like that, it is a career that rarely ends well. What has ended well is the way the Presley Estate, run for years by his ex-wife Priscilla, has crafted and resurrected Elvis' image and importance. It has been nothing short of a blue suede miracle. According to Forbes magazine, Elvis was the top earning celebrity again this past year. The King brought in more than $52 million in 2008, that's, as Forbes points out "That's more than some of the music industry's biggest living acts command - Justin Timberlake pulled in $44 million last year; Madonna $40 million

Click here to read the Forbes' Top-Earning Dead Celebrities of 2008 story

This year will see, as well as the usual gathering at the gates by the Elvis Fan Club, the birthday boy feted in Memphis by a cake cutting ceremony at Graceland hosted by Priscilla Presley as well as the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies celebrating the King's life with an Elvis themed home game against the Minnesota Timberwolves - I'm not making that up. 

Check out Elvis' official site here for more details.

There are Elvis events planned all over the country. In NYC, the too rarely seen rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon and guitarist supreme Chris Spedding are going to go to town for Mr. Presley at BB King's Blues Club on W. 42nd Street on January 7. In Tupelo, Mississippi, Elvis's actual birthplace, (and the actual house pictured below) the King will be honored with a marker on the state's historic Blues Trail in the afternoon and a concert in the evening.

In LA, the Avalon will house a rollicking concert starring honky tonker Mike Stinson, Johnny Angel and folkie Michelle Shocked as well as others and some very special guests. 

With all that and many more birthday celebrations across the world, the Elvis Tribute Artist Spectacular Birthday Edition might just be the best place to be this year to wish the man a Happy Birthday.  The shows star some of the world's best impersonators of the King paying homage on this most almost Holy of days for them. The show will be traveling all over Illinois, Indiana and Ohio this week. Click here for more details on the Elvis Tribute Artist Spectacular Birthday Edition 

In TVLand, or rather on the station TVLand, it's gonna be all Elvis all the hip shaking prime time. From 9PM to midnight, the throwback broadcaster is showing one Elvis documentary after another and then showing one of them again. Check the TVLand schedule here

And you could stay up late and slide your Elvis celebration right over to a celebration of what would have been Richard Nixon's birthday on January 9th. Now that's a party waiting to happen. Don't laugh, pictures never lie.