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An iconic photo of Johnny Cash. Black heavy-weight cotton T-Shirt, photo does not do this tee justice! It’s a Stunner! Available in sizes Small through X Large, additional sizes available upon request. Prices including shipping!
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Police ID Body as Missing Elvis Fan Gerrie Lawrie: MyFoxMEMPHIS.com
Memphis, Tn – The body of a woman found dead in a condo in the 600-block of Denmark has been positively identified as Scotland native and Elvis fan Gerrie Lawrie.
Police found the body on Monday and pronounced Lawrie dead at the scene. A preliminary investigation has suggested that her death was self-inflicted.
A Facebook page titled “In Loving Memory of Gerrie Lawrie” has been drawing the sympathetic comments of Elvis fans around the world.
Lawrie went missing during Elvis Week 2011.
Her disappearance in Memphis made headlines on the front page of the Press Journal, the local paper in her hometown of Aberdeen, Scotland.
According to the paper, Lawrie’s boyfriend, Roger Williams, is on his way to Memphis to provide any help with the investigation into her death.
Other Elvis fans are shocked.
“This is one of those places, destination places where you come to have fun. It’s always in the back of your mind, but that is one of the last things you want to have happen, so it is sad,” said John Merrick.
BIM: I was contacted by the Commercial Appeal about this case, and directed them to Andrew Hearn of Essential Elvis who first broke the news. I never knew Gerrie and felt it was not my place to speak on behalf of Ms. Lawrie. Gerrie was a subscriber of Essential Elvis therefore the paper should speak with Hearn. Our hearts go out to all of Ms. Lawrie’s friends and family.
A tourist visiting from Scotland for Elvis Week may have killed herself, Memphis police said Tuesday.
The body of Grazyna “Gerrie” Lawrie, 41, was found Monday morning in a Downtown condo she was renting at 612 Denmark, near the South Bluffs.
Police confirmed her identity Tuesday afternoon.
Although at least one resident of those condos has said there was screaming coming from that unit, police said evidence is pointing toward suicide.
Lawrie was visiting Memphis for the annual commemoration of Elvis Presley’s death on Aug. 16, 1977. This was at least her sixth visit here.
Lawrie was last seen at about 11:50 p.m. Thursday at Second and Monroe. After she was reported missing Saturday, police went to the Downtown condo, but a cursory search turned up no signs of trouble.
Police were called back to the condo Monday after a cleaning service arrived there. They found Lawrie’s rented SUV in the garage. They then found Lawrie in her bed, unresponsive. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
Police said they are awaiting the results of an autopsy from the medical examiner before confirming a ruling of suicide. MPD spokeswoman Sgt. Karen Rudolph would not elaborate on why police think Lawrie took her own life.
© 2011 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved
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Copyright Law Could Put Music in the Hands of the Artists: MyFoxMEMPHIS.com
Memphis, Tn – The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and The Eagles are among the legendary artists who decades ago managed to beat the musical adage, “it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock n’ roll.” But, even though their longevity is well established in millions of records sold, a revised copyright law could give them and thousands of lesser musical acts a new bonanza. A legal right to reclaim personal ownership of their recordings, a provision, initially applying to master recordings dating back 1978, which could spell disaster for terrified major record labels.
“1978 particularly was an important year because the Top 20, either Billboard or Cashbox, was so full of multi, multi million, one would say, platinum selling L.P’s,” recalled Memphis Business Attorney and CPA Bruce Newman.
The provision, revised in the mid-70s, grants musicians termination rights to allow to them regain control of their work 35 years after their release. But, their applications have to be filed at least two years in advance.
Newman said some artists are already catching on, “Don Henley of the Eagles has been writing about this and blogging about it and a lot of people have caught onto it. He’s always been very big for artists’ rights.”
Just beginning to reel off the names of some of the 1978 record-setting albums is mind-boggling: The BeeGees’ Saturday Night Fever, Steely Dan’s seminal classic “AJA,” and the monstrous selling “Rumors” by Fleetwood Mac. Those records were all products which made record companies massive dollars, only to see over the last decade plummeting sales, the erosion of Internet downloading, all leading to record labels now desperately trying to keep their death grips on the masters for distribution on older music catalogues.
“Right now in downloads, which everybody’s excited about, there are just pennies to be made per son. So, there’s more opportunity to hear music. But, coming back to the artists or record labels is a lot less money,” said Newman.
Record label representatives and their attorneys, none of whom would talk at all about the termination rights, have over the years regarded masters recordings as their property. However, with the batch of 1979 songs eligible under the provision for next year some music observers believe a date in the US Supreme Court is inevitable.
Meanwhile, Newman notes, smaller labels might opt for agreeable terms with artists, “Possibly some of those record deals could be negotiated so maybe the artist will receive more money. So, that the record companies retain the masters. Perhaps artists will be able to buy their masters out, which I try and negotiate in contracts.”
At about 11 a.m. Monday, Memphis police found a woman’s body at 612 Denmark, the condo Lawrie was renting. Police said there were no obvious signs of foul play, but that the investigation is ongoing.
However, a neighbor who talked to several residents who live near the condo questioned that determination.
“(Neighbors) said Saturday night and Sunday night, it was such screaming,” Darlene Barclay said. “There were three or four neighbors that heard screaming come out of that place. They heard that and no one did anything about it.”
Source: Commercial Appeal
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FEARS are growing for a Scottish mother who has been missing for a week after travelling to the United States to attend an Elvis Presley convention.
Friends said last night that Gerrie Lawrie has not been seen since Monday, 15 August, when she vanished from the centre of Memphis, Tennessee.
Ms Lawrie, who is in her late 30s and lives in Aberdeenshire, travelled to the convention alone. She was last seen by Gene Barksdale – a retired sheriff who had been a friend of Elvis – with whom she had dinner.
Mr Barksdale, 89, who became friends with Ms Lawrie after meeting her at another Elvis event, is said to have walked her to her car before she left for a candlelit vigil at the late singer’s Graceland home.
But she never appeared at the vigil and the alarm was raised after she missed her flight home to Scotland.
Ms Lawrie did not return her hired car to the dealer and did not turn up in Nashville, where she had been due to spend more time with fellow Elvis fans. She has also failed to answer anxious texts and phone calls from friends and family.
Ms Lawrie’s partner, Roger Williams, who had been with her son earlier, was understood to be on his way to Memphis last night. It is not known whether her son went with him.
A missing persons report has been lodged with the Memphis police and an appeal has been launched by Ms Lawrie’s friends on Facebook.
Andrew Hearn, a friend who runs the Essential Elvis UK fan group to which Ms Lawrie belongs, said: “She met Gene Barksdale at one of our events last August and they stayed in touch.
“After they had dinner on Monday he walked her to her car safely. It was mid-evening and she had arranged to meet friends at the vigil, but she never made it. Thousands of people come for the vigil. The fact that she didn’t attend it really does raise a red flag.
“She’s a good-looking young lady and she was by herself in Memphis, which is a pretty rough town.”
Writing on his Facebook page yesterday, he added: “Things are looking bleak for Gerrie.
http://wreg.vid.trb.com/player/PaperVideoTest.swf
FEARS are growing for a Scottish mother who has been missing for a week after travelling to the United States to attend an Elvis Presley convention.
Friends said last night that Gerrie Lawrie has not been seen since Monday, 15 August, when she vanished from the centre of Memphis, Tennessee.
Ms Lawrie, who is in her late 30s and lives in Aberdeenshire, travelled to the convention alone. She was last seen by Gene Barksdale – a retired sheriff who had been a friend of Elvis – with whom she had dinner.
Mr Barksdale, 89, who became friends with Ms Lawrie after meeting her at another Elvis event, is said to have walked her to her car before she left for a candlelit vigil at the late singer’s Graceland home.
But she never appeared at the vigil and the alarm was raised after she missed her flight home to Scotland.
Ms Lawrie did not return her hired car to the dealer and did not turn up in Nashville, where she had been due to spend more time with fellow Elvis fans. She has also failed to answer anxious texts and phone calls from friends and family.
Ms Lawrie’s partner, Roger Williams, who had been with her son earlier, was understood to be on his way to Memphis last night. It is not known whether her son went with him.
A missing persons report has been lodged with the Memphis police and an appeal has been launched by Ms Lawrie’s friends on Facebook.
Andrew Hearn, a friend who runs the Essential Elvis UK fan group to which Ms Lawrie belongs, said: “She met Gene Barksdale at one of our events last August and they stayed in touch.
“After they had dinner on Monday he walked her to her car safely. It was mid-evening and she had arranged to meet friends at the vigil, but she never made it. Thousands of people come for the vigil. The fact that she didn’t attend it really does raise a red flag.
“She’s a good-looking young lady and she was by herself in Memphis, which is a pretty rough town.”
Writing on his Facebook page yesterday, he added: “Things are looking bleak for Gerrie.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
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‘Hound Dog’ lyricist Jerry Leiber dies at 78
Song writer also penned ‘Jail House Rock’ and other hits with partner Mike Stoller
LOS ANGELES — Jerry Leiber, who with longtime partner Mike Stoller wrote “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Yakity Yak” and other hit songs that came to define early rock ‘n’ roll, has died. He was 78.
His death was confirmed Monday by his longtime publicist, Bobbi Marcus.
With Leiber as lyricist and Stoller as composer, the team channeled their blues and jazz backgrounds into pop songs performed by such artists as Elvis Presley, Dion and the Belmonts, the Coasters, the Drifters and Ben E. King in a way that would help create a joyous new musical style.
From their breakout hit, blues great Big Mama Thornton’s 1953 rendition of “Hound Dog,” until their songwriting took a more serious turn in 1969 with Peggy Lee’s recording of “Is That All There Is?” the pair remained one of the most successful teams in pop music history.
Their writing prowess and influence over the recording industry as pioneering independent producers earned them induction into the non-performer category of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
“The music world lost today one of its greatest poet laureates,” said Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. “Jerry not only wrote the words that everyone was singing, he led the way in how we verbalized our feelings about the societal changes we were living with in post-World War II life. Appropriately, his vehicles of choice were the emerging populist musical genres of rhythm and blues and then rock and roll.”
Leiber, who like Stoller was white, said his musical inspiration came from the close identification he had with black American culture during his boyhood and teen years in Baltimore and Los Angeles.
Thus he was the perfect lyricist for bluesy, jazz-inflected compositions like “Kansas City,” “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” “Charlie Brown,” “Drip Drop,” “Stand By Me” and “On Broadway.”
The lyrics could be poignant, as in “On Broadway,” or full of humor, as in the antics of high school goofball Charlie Brown, who “calls the English teacher Daddy-O” and laments, “Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?”
The result was a serious departure from the classically inflected music that had been produced by a previous generation of pop songwriters that included George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.
“Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time,” Leiber told The Los Angeles Times’ “West” magazine in 2006. “I was in awe of him. But his music wasn’t my music. My music was the blues.”
Over their career, they had 15 No. 1 hits in a variety of genres by 10 different artists. They were instrumental in helping launch Presley’s career with such songs as “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock.”
The two far preferred Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog” to Presley’s, in part because the latter version changed some of the lyrics.
“Lick for lick, there’s no comparison between the Presley version and the Big Mama original,” Leiber said in the pair’s dual autobiography, “Hound Dog,” published in 2009. Stoller said he also was annoyed by the Presley version, but still praised the “edge of danger and mystery” that Presley brought to his covers of R&B records.
In the 1990s their songs became the centerpiece of a long-running Broadway revue, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” which won a Grammy for best musical show album in 1996.
“Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller have written some of the most spirited and enduring rock ‘n’ roll songs,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said in a statement released at the time of their induction. “As pop auteurs … Leiber and Stoller advanced rock and roll to new heights of wit and musical sophistication.”
Their last song to reach wide acclaim was the 1969 ballad, “Is That All There Is?” Lee’s moody rendition of the song, whose lyrics are based on an 1896 short story by German author Thomas Mann, reached the top 20.
Leiber and Stoller continued to collaborate on earnest, eclectic projects, including 1975’s “Mirrors.”
Leiber was born in Baltimore in 1933; his parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. He met Stoller after moving to Los Angeles with his mother in 1950. The two immediately began collaborating and formed their own record label, Spark, in 1953.
The pair had grown tired of writing pop hits by the late 1960s, Leiber once said, and decided to concentrate on more serious music. Those later efforts never found the wide audience that their earlier work did, but Leiber said that was fine with him and his partner.
“The earlier market of swing and Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee and Duke Ellington was pretty much gone, but we liked that kind of sound and wanted to imitate it,” he told The New York Times in 1995. “In a way we had helped kill it with what we had done. We had helped bring down the cathedral, and now we didn’t know where to pray.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Memphis Police have found the body of a woman at the address where a missing Elvis fan from Scotland was last staying.
Officers found the body of a 40-year old woman at an apartment on the 600-block of Denmark in the South Bluffs area of Downtown Memphis. According to MPD Sgt. Karen Rudolph, there were no obvious signs of foul play and the cause of death has not been determined.
Police have not identified the victim, but former Shelby County Sheriff Gene Barksdale filed a missing persons report for his friend Gerrie Lawrie on August 20th after she did not return on her flight home to Aberdeen, Scotland. She had been in Memphis for Elvis Week, and was last known to be staying at the same address where the victim was found.
While the cause of death is still under investigation, some say the odd dissapearance of a tourist, a fellow Elvis fan, is devastating.
“Another fan, goin missin’ after comin’, I mean you don’t know what to think,” said Kyle Daigle.
“Tragedy, that you just have to worry, be so protective,” said Raymond Karpovich.
“That’s one of the last things you want to happen, so it’s a sad situation,” said John Merrick.
According to the police report, Lawire met some friends at the Elvis festival and planned to travel to Nashville on Friday, before returning to Memphis that night.
Police say Lawire has not returned her rental vehicle.
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