A pair of blue suede shoes worn by Elvis Presley himself has sold for a huge amount at auction.
The shoes sold for £120,000 by auctioneers Henry Aldrige & Son in Devizes on June 28 – at the top end of the £100,000-£120,000 they were expected to go for.
Presley first acquired the shoes after he performed the Carl Perkins hit ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, and wore the shoes for various interviews and public appearances throughout the 1950s, most notably on The Steve Allen Show in the US, on which he performed ‘Hound Dog’.
When he was drafted into the US Army in the late 1950s, Presley gave the shoes to a friend.
As auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said, the shoes are what “you think of immediately when you talk about Elvis Presley” and they “transcend popular culture.”
He added: “When Elvis joined up for the American army, he had a get-together at Graceland. Elvis called some of these people upstairs and was giving away some of the clothes he didn’t think he’d need or want when he came back from the army. The gentleman concerned was Alan Fortas, Elvis’s branch manager and a friend of his.”
Over the years, the shoes had spent time on display at various museums. Aldrige said that their authenticity had been verified by singer Jimmy Velvet, who was a close friend of Presley and himself used to run a museum of Elvis memorabilia.
In May, Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough took legal action to prevent the auction of Graceland, the singer’s iconic home, and a judge stopped the sale. Later, a self-described scammer based in Nigeria took credit for the plot, saying that he was part of an identity theft ring.
Meanwhile, Glastonbury co-founder Michael Eavis opened this year’s festival last Thursday (June 27) with a few songs, and finished with Presley’s 1969 hit Suspicious Minds.
NEWS
K-pop girl group NewJeans have dropped the second part of their ‘Supernatural’ music video.
Last month, NewJeans made their official Japanese debut with their single album ‘Supernatural’. The group have now dropped a second music video for the title track, this time featuring a Korean-language version of the single.
The new visual continues the TV series concept of original music video, this time with the members investigating the strange weather phenomena from the first clip. The story culminates with the girl group discovering a colony of rabbit-like aliens on a neighbouring planet.
“I don’t know what we’ve done / I don’t want to go back / I already know / Don’t know what we’ve been sold / I’ll find out, so it’s sure,” they sing on the chorus.
Last weekend, NewJeans held their two-night ‘Bunnies Camp’ fan concert in Tokyo Dome, becoming the fastest K-pop group to perform at the iconic venue after debuting. The concert was held less than a week after they dropped ‘Supernatural’.
The show featured special performances with Japanese pop duo YOASOBI and Japanese-English singer Rina Sawayama. The latter also teamed up with NewJeans member Hyein to perform her 2020 song ‘Bad Friend’ at the concert.
NewJeans’ Japanese debut came just a month after they made a domestic comeback with their single album ‘How Sweet’. The project included the lead single ‘How Sweet’ and ‘Bubblegum’ as well as their instrumental versions.
In a three-star review of ‘How Sweet’, NME’s Tássia Assis wrote that the two-song release would be “adequate additions to any of their previous releases”, but “lacks the effervescent impact” of their past singles.
In other K-pop news, (G)I-DLE have ropped a music video teaser for ’Klaxon’, the lead single of their upcoming mini-album ‘I Sway’. It will be their second release of 2024, arriving six months after their second studio album ‘[2]’ in January.
