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part 2:
SNOWBIRD

For his own entertainment, Elvis watched and rewatched Peter Sellers’ “Pink Panther” movies and Monty Python comedies. He knew the jokes by heart and recited them for laughs.

He listened to Jackie Wilson, The Temptations, Tom Jones, Liberace, Don Ho, Bill Medley, Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray.

“He had eight tracks of Anne Murray everywhere,” Sam says.

But as legend knows it, Elvis’ real love was gospel.

“If Elvis could have done anything he wanted to do, he would have been in the Statesmen Quartet or J.D. Sumner & the Stamps. That’s why he had a gospel group up there.

“He was doing that way before anybody else was — infusing gospel in rock and roll.

“He told me if he couldn’t have been in music, the only other thing he ever would have liked to have been was a cop. He loved cops.

“He always carried a big flashlight with him. He always had a gun.”

President Nixon famously gave Elvis a federal agent’s badge. Sam got him a badge from the Sheriff’s Department. Sam also gave him blue cop lights.

Elvis loved guns so much, he always had a .22 packed in his pants. One night, it fell out on a stage, and Sam had to sneak up and fetch it.

A CAT IN A CAPTIVE EXISTENCE

Elvis’ karate name was Tiger Man. He even sang a song called “Tiger Man.” This was fitting. He was a prowler, Sam says.

“Elvis was a cat. He really was athletic. I know he put on weight later in life. But believe me, Elvis could move pretty quickly. He could get around.

“Back in those days, people forget, these suits he wore were almost made of canvas. They didn’t breath. They didn’t stretch like what these (Elvis impersonator) guys are wearing. These things were heavy. They were sequined. They weighed 12, 15 pounds,” Sam says. “Elvis sang every one of these songs, two shows a night.”

Elvis loved his audiences.

Memphis was home.

But he also loved Hawaii and Vegas.

“I think it got tough on him the last year or two, because we’d come here and stay so long, and he was on the road so much,” Sam says.

In Vegas, Sam got out of the Hilton and took in the city.

“Elvis didn’t.”

“Don’t you want to go down and play blackjack or something?” he’d ask Elvis.

A couple times, Elvis did. But mostly he stayed upstairs.

Sam became Elvis’ advance man, setting up rooms, venues and security at arenas.

“Everybody wanted tickets or a scarf. I got it for them.

“It was a captive existence for Elvis, trapped by his own fame.”

It wasn’t as bad as Howard Hughes’ self-confinement. Elvis went to see Tom Jones and some other shows.

“But it was sort of a concocted aura for Elvis. The Colonel (Parker) had a lot to do with that in the early days. And then Elvis just sort of bought into it — the mystique. The separation. You’re not that readily available to people.”

In Memphis and Palm Springs, Elvis would slip out the back door and call Sam and they’d go riding motorcycles in the middle of the night.

“He bought Harley Sportsters for everyone to go riding in the desert” in California.

Elvis became, meanwhile, a voracious reader. He had gone to high school, but he taught himself philosophy and wisdom between pages.

“He could carry on a conversation with everybody. He had a good vocabulary. He was bright. He was intuitive. He was inquisitive. He challenged me.”

One night, Elvis asked Sam, “You don’t want to do this for the rest of your life, do you?”

“Well, no,” Sam said. “I’m thinking about law school.”

“You should go,” Elvis said.

JUDGE THOMPSON

Sam was the first of Elvis’ final inner circle to leave after dealing with the funeral and charging the detail of relocating his grave to Graceland.

Sam went to law school, became a lawyer, then a judge handling complex commercial litigation and contract disputes in the record business.

His sister Linda had gone on to marry Bruce Jenner, raising sons Brandon and Brody, who would become famous on “The Hills” and “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

After Linda’s divorce from Jenner, she was married to music producer and writer David Foster, from 1991 to 2005.

In 1998, Sam moved to L.A. to work with Foster at 143 Records, which signed Josh Groban and Michael Buble.

In 2003, 143 Records was sold. Sam had a piece of the company, and was stuck in a two-year non-compete contract, so he retired from music with a check, and he looked for a way out of California’s state income tax.

“I went to my accountant and said, ‘Here’s my deal. … We sold our business to Warner Music Group at a premium. Here’s my equity stake. What’s my tax bite in California?’”

His accountant wrote down a number representing what California’s state taxes would amount to.

“I came to Vegas and bought a house for that” amount.

Sam ended up with a new career with the state of Nevada, retiring recently after working as a commissioner on the Nevada Transportation Authority, then chairman of the Nevada Public Utilities Commission.

REARVIEW MIRROR

“I’ve had other careers,” Sam says. “I don’t get asked about being a judge, or a prison warden, or a cop. But I get asked about being Elvis’ bodyguard. I worked at McDonald’s. I don’t get asked about that either.”

So Sam is asked: Do you miss being a judge?

“Oh yeah! I was a good judge. I liked the challenge of neutrality and impartiality and giving everyone a level playing field.”

But he’s OK with people asking about Elvis.

“I’m not one of these guys going around saying I was Elvis’ best friend. He was MY best friend. How he felt about me? Who knows, right?

“But I thought a lot about the man. I respected him.

“He was really a good guy … a regular guy.

“A Horatio Alger sort of guy — rags to riches.

“Intellectually, he became an old soul.

“I would have stepped in front of a bullet for Elvis. … I was trained by the Secret Service to do just that.”

Among Sam’s souvenirs: A bunch of Sun records Sam Phillips game him, by Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and others.

“I have low-end nerve damage in this left ear right here,” he says. “I worked the right side of the stage, and we had tower speakers, and we didn’t know what earplugs were back in those days.”

Sam and Louise have been married 39 years and have two grown daughters. The eldest was born in ‘74. Elvis went to the delivery room for her birth.

Sam, all charm at ease, as you can tell, doesn’t look quite old enough to be telling these stories.

“I’m 62, man. I’m an old (expletive),” he says, laughs and jokes, “You drink enough Jamesons, you look this good.”

Last weekend, Sam served as one of three judges in the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Contest on Fremont Street.

“I haven’t been involved in any of this kind of stuff for many years,” he says.

For the most part, his Elvis past has remained in his rearview mirror.

“It’s kind of fun to come back and reconnect a little bit.”

HIS PLACE IN HISTORY

A lot of times, Sam is asked what he thinks Elvis would be up to, if he were alive.

“I really don’t see Elvis like Tom Jones in a white tux and crooning,” he thinks.

“I see Elvis producing movies, music, doing some stage work, recording, and still in the music business.”

Sam has since witnessed world class producers in action, firsthand and up close. In retrospect, he realizes Elvis was just such a producer of his own songs.

“Elvis would get up on that stage and stop the band and say, ‘That note’s wrong.’ He would direct from the stage. In the recordings, he took over. The guy had somewhere between relative and perfect pitch. Elvis never sang out of tune. Elvis sang in pitch. That’s hard to do.”

But even all this wealth of information isn’t enough to describe Elvis suitably, Sam says.

“If somebody came and asked you to talk about someone that you had known very well (34) years ago, and you had to encapsulate that in a few words, how hard would that be?

“You just can’t capture a person’s life and essence and who they are.

“But if I had to sum it up, he was a person always trying to live up to the image and the responsibility he felt he had because of his place in history: Why me and not somebody else?

“He never came to grips with that, till the day he died.

“He used to say things to people like: The image is one thing and the man is another, and it’s hard to live up to an image.

“If there were failings in Elvis’ life, it was the gap between the man and the image. And I dare say we all have that.”