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Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st Century Odyssey)

Elvis is Dead/California Dreaming

Long Beach Marina, California — August 24th, 2029

On board the SS Ariella, Isaiah, Aeon, Penny, and Sybil were all lounging around the deck of his grandfather Hector Leonardo Jones and his wife’s Ariella’s 50 ft catamaran while the ship was moored in a slip at the marina in Long Beach.

Hector told the story, as Ariella wrapped her arms around him. She was still a lean, elegant woman with a long, handsome face, wide mouth, and full lips—not unusual in that part of the world. Her hair was rail-straight and turned silver with age and the sun. She was barefoot as usual, one of the dogs licking her manicured, clear-coated toes, as she listened carefully with the others, learning something new about her husband along with the grandchildren.

Hector wasn’t drunk, but it was after sunset, and while he wasn’t three sheets to the wind yet, he was far from sober as he spoke. The old Black man leaned back into the thick ivory cushions of the bench where he lounged, dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a teal and ivory striped bowling shirt, his white hair in immaculate cornrows, his skin as Black as Isaiah’s—an older version of him with brown eyes filling with sorrows as Hector spoke. Elvis has Left the Building.  

My mother died on June 13, 1977, by suicide—a .22 bullet in the brain through the roof of her mouth. He said matter of factly, as he sat staring into the distance. My little brother and I were both upstairs asleep and never heard a thing. It wasn’t until her job at Southwestern Bell called that morning that my brother woke up, went downstairs, and found her corpse in her bed.  

We moved in with my dad, and that summer Elvis came to Dallas. The funeral was only last month. I was excited as the interview began, at the convention center as Elvis stopped for a photo op in front of the venue. A reporter from one of the two local soul and R&B stations asked the King of Rock and Roll if the rumors were true, did a black man write his greatest hits. To this, a very fat, very old, very drugged-out, rhinestone jump suited, caped King replied, “The only thing a nigger can do for me is shine my shoes and drive my Cadillac.”  

The tapes were gathered up by his handlers and destroyed, and the white newspapers pretended it never happened, while it was reported by black papers and radio DJs.  

Elvis died that winter. Too fat to shoot-up, unable to find a vein, he was forced to stuff the dope up his ass. He over dosed with his hand stuck up his ass on his golden toilet in Graceland.  

 At the beginning of the next year at the Grammys, I watched a black man named Otis Blackwell walk out onto the stage to receive his award for writing the lions share of the King’s greatest hits. The only people that still talk about what really happened, as Hollywood continues to whitewash his-story, are us old-timers who were there and we remember.  

  In this world, Hector said with a sardonic grin, you are either an Elvis fan or a Beatles fan, and the one you love the most says something about who you are, according to QT when he wrote the script for True Romance, and I agree. Me, I’ve always been an Elvis fan, but I also remember what really happened. I guess that’s why I don’t have any Elvis on my playlist, even after all these years.

When you’re a 14-year-old kid music is your goddamned religion! Hector declared his eyes filling with tears. He took a drink Ariella lay her arm on his shoulder. I was/am an Elvis fan, but when you hear with your own ears your hero says something like that, you look at the world differently afterward. Hector held his head up. A few years ago they made another movie about the life of Elvis but I wouldn’t watch it. Hell, I couldn’t even stomach just sitting through the trailer. These days when I wanna hear ‘Hound Dog’, I put on Big Mamma Thornton.   He raised his glass Salute. he sneered.

“Long live the Kang.” 

[Note 1.] [This is a true story the names have not been changed to protect the guilty.] [June 17th-26th, 1977— Get the Elvis Presley Setlist of the concert at Dallas Memorial Auditorium, Dallas, TX, USA another Elvis Presley … June 17th – 26th Elvis Performed in Dallas at what was then called the Dallas Convention Center in downtown Dallas Texas, one of his brief mini tours of 5 cities during his stop in Dallas.  Every black radio station in Dallas was owned by the same man. KNOK / K104 along with their AM sister stations were all owned by the same white guy.] 

 [Note 2.] [Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984),[1] was an American singer and songwriter of blues and R&B. 

The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul described Thornton saying “Her booming voice, sometimes 200-pound frame, and exuberant stage manner had audiences stomping their feet and shouting encouragement in R&B theaters from coast to coast from the early 1950s on”.[2] 

Thornton was the first to record Leiber and Stoller’s “Hound Dog”, in 1952,[3] which was written for her. It became Thornton’s biggest hit, selling over 500,000 copies and staying seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B chart in 1953.[4] According to New York University music professor Maureen Mahon, “the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument”.[5] 

Thornton’s other recordings include her song “Ball and Chain”, made famous in the late 1960s by Janis Joplin. Though later recordings of her songs by other artists sold millions of copies, she was denied royalties by not holding the publishing copyrights to her creativity. Thornton died of a heart attack and liver disorders, penniless in a boarding-house in Los Angeles, California and was buried in a shared pauper’s grave. In 2024, Thornton was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the musical influence category.]

-About the author 

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Tx.