Yep, love the King - but for me he will always be the fore-quake which triggered the all conquering global tsunami that was the fab four....
The young, raw 1950s Elvis was pure dynamite - an awesome package of sex and talent. But I also love 1970s Elvis - the rhinestone jumpsuits, capes and hamburgers are part of the Presley legend and he was a consummate showman who gave us some of his greatest material at the turn of the 70s (Suspicious Minds, In The Ghetto, I Just Can't Help Believin', Always On My Mind etc etc ).
It's the period in between - the crappy Hollywood 60s movie star Parker's-puppet-Presley that shatters the myth for me. Dire.
But it's sometimes easy to be dazzled by the awesome charisma and iconic stage presence and forget, for a moment, what a wonderful voice the man had. He was a tremendous singer.
The most imitated human being on the planet and one of the very few figures from the 20th Century who truly deserve that overused epithet "Legend".