Elvis Presley’s first music agency contract sold for £37,000
LONDON: American singer Elvis Presley’s first music agency contract, signed by ‘the King of Rock and Roll’ in 1956, has been sold for £37,000 at an auction in the UK.
A pair of mint-green pyjamas, that Presley wore during his stay at the Baptist Memorial Hospital in the US in 1977, was also auctioned and fetched £8,000.
“He spent a week there recovering from exhaustion and they were left at his father’s home,” said Andrew Aldridge from the Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes, an auction house in the UK.
After Elvis died in August 1977, aged 42, the pyjamas went on display at the world famous Elvis-a-rama museum for many years.
His first music agency contract, signed in January 31 in 1956, was also auctioned and sold for £37,000, ‘BBC News’ reported. “There was significant interest in the auction from buyers all over the world especially from the US and UK both online and bidders on the phone,” Aldridge said.
“The prices achieved reflect the continuing interest in the King of Rock and Roll,” he said.
A softback copy of the novel “The Omen” signed by Elvis for a fan was also up for auction on Saturday.
“Elvis read, inscribed and signed this book just before his upcoming August 1977 tour, which did not take place due to his untimely death,” explained Aldridge, in an email to Fox News. “He wrote ‘TO MY BEST FAN your friend Elvis Presley’.”
The book is accompanied by a copy of a letter dated Jan. 21 1978 from Elvis’ father Vernon Presley. “Were sorry about the delay in sending you the autograph you requested. Yours on the Omen book was amongst the last to be signed,” he wrote, in the letter.
Meanwhile, the elementary school stage where Elvis Presley performed is being renovated to look like it did in the 1940s when the singer graced its stage. Workers at Lawhon Elementary School in Tupelo, Mississippi, found original hardwood floors under the tile they were pulling up in the school’s auditorium and decided to refinish it rather than lay down something new.
“We knew it would look so good that we decided to keep them and refinish them,” Tupelo Public School District director of maintenance Kirk Kitchens said of the heart pine floors, the Daily Journal reported. COUFLENS: More than 200 sheep have plunged to their deaths in the Pyrenees while apparently trying to escape a brown bear. The bears have been reintroduced to the mountain region over the past three decades after being wiped out by hunters.
The sheep, which belonged to a farmer in Couflens, southwest France, are thought to have taken fright when the bear appeared in the area last Sunday. After the predator attacked one of the sheep, 209 others in the flock panicked and hurled themselves off a 200 metre-high cliff on the border between France and Spain. The bodies of 169 sheep were found the next day at the foot of the cliff in the Spanish village of Lladorre. The other dead animals were found in France.
The Spanish news agency Europa Press said bear fur had been found on one of the dead sheep and would be analysed to try to establish exactly what had happened. Although the French government will compensate the farmer for his loss, the incident has provoked an angry response from the local branch of the French farmers’ federation. “Pastoralism— which protects biodiversity and keeps the mountains alive — is not compatible with the reintroduction of large predators,” said the Confédération Paysanne de l’ariège.