Elvis Revisited by Mae Boren Axton (1965 article)

[drjohncarpenter]

Re-reading the article posted by the The fool back in 2013, I'm amending the date of Mae interviewing Elvis to mid-May 1965. The "Shindig!" program she mentions as "his most recent accolade" aired on May 5, 1965. So her visit to his home must have been within a week or two of that broadcast.





James Burton playing "That's All Right - ABC-TV's "Shindig!" - Wednesday, May 5, 1965
Program was a "Salute to Elvis' 10th Year in Show Business."

There must be somebody on this planet who knows which were the names of Bob Neal's children. This is what I would like to know. Not an earth-shattering matter, but now that we're at it, it would be nice to learn about it.

And that somebody is ... me.

The names of Bob Neal's seven children are mentioned in his 1983 obituary:

Sonny
Kevin
Tobi
Anthony
Clay
Robert
Sean

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Nashville Tennessean - Wednesday, May 11, 1983



It should be noted that even in the Music Reporter magazine article from twenty years earlier, which an "ex-member" sent for Jove to revive this topic, Bob called his first born son Sonny, not Charles, Charley or Charlie.

In Mae's piece, the friends Elvis was referring to in May 1965 were clearly Billy Smith, Bobby "Red" West and Charlie Hodge, as I posted back in 2013.


Below is a copy of the full page from the magazine, plus an ad Neal placed which promoted his two biggest acts that summer.

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Music Reporter - June 29, 1963