The legendary music maker Elvis Presley served consumers of his original best-selling hits, including “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock,” with a mixture of country, rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and both his sound and charisma rewarded him with hysterical fans.
Presley was a pioneer of youth music at the same time as Patsy Cline produced a crossover between country and pop and Ray Charles bridged the gap for ground-breaking soul. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was a cultural icon in the 1950s in both the music and television industries.
In the months leading up to his sudden death on Aug. 16, 1977, Presley was reportedly in a lot of pain.
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“He was really heavy,” Ted Pryor, author and former bodyguard for Presley, told Fox News Digital.
“Elvis was at a point where he was so heavy he didn’t like to be touched, because he was constantly perspiring and hot,” he said.
Pryor, a super middleweight kick boxing champion, was hired to Presley’s team because of his world champion status.
“Elvis, when he was younger in the service, he learned a little bit of martial arts, and he was infatuated with it,” Pryor said. “Getting to bodyguard for ‘the King’ was pretty exciting for me.”
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Pryor and his friend Joe were training Florida law enforcement, FBI and DEA personnel on self-defense techniques to deploy in the field when they received a call from Presley’s team offering work as bodyguards while he toured the U.S.
“Unfortunately, no one knew it then, but he was broke,” Pryor told Fox News Digital.
“He had to start touring, because his manager gambled his money away,” he added of Presley’s then manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
The kickboxing duo traveled across the country from Tennessee and Florida to New York to California with “the King” but never internationally.
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“Elvis never traveled outside of the United States,” Pryor said. “Elvis’ manager, there was a reason why he kept him in the U.S., because he had a gambling problem.”
Despite Presley’s weight gain, which has been widely analyzed in the decades following his death, women flocked to the “It’s Now or Never” singer and maneuvered trickily through crowds to get to the stage.
“The women used to rush the stage,” Pryor told Fox News Digital. “It was interesting, because you’d have a chokehold around their waist. We would take them to the floor slowly, and our junior bodyguards would take them away.”
Pryor said the men would fend off three to four women at a time with takedown techniques and that one woman, who had been given a scarf by Presley himself, used the accessory to choke Pryor with it.
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“She was trying to get to Elvis,” he said. “She put it around my neck and started choking me.”
Pryor and Joe remained by his side for what would unknowingly be the final tour of his life until they received the sudden news that would go on to shock and devastate the world. Presley’s death was so shocking that former President Jimmy Carter issued a public statement regarding his passing in Memphis.
“It wasn’t a good call,” Pryor said. “I think the whole world was shocked when that happened.”
Looking back on his time with Presley fondly, Pryor said that the vocalist treated his bodyguards “really well” and that despite being generally “sour,” he was “nice” to them.
“He lost his mom, he lost his wife, and he was sour toward women,” Pryor said.
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