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Headsets guide visitors through the King’s domain

As thousands of Elvis Presley fans flocked to Graceland this week during the 20th anniversary of his death, the switch from personal tours of the house to recorded commentary is inspiring both praise and concern that the famous attraction has lost some charm.

After more than a decade of tours led by guides steeped in everything you ever wanted to know about the swivel-hipped entertainer, Graceland began handing out headsets and cassette tape recorders about two years ago.

A cheerful greeter still swings open the front door and recites a few facts about the home’s construction and Presley’s purchase of it in 1957. Other guides stand sentinel around the house and the grounds, as always, but they are now comparable to gallery functionaries. They watch what’s going on, answer questions and tinker with tape recorders that jam, as mine did during an impromptu visit Monday.

Certain fans and former tour guides say the tapes have cost Graceland some of the Southern hospitality initiated by Presley himself, called in the tape “the original tour guide.” Others suspect that the tour guide roster was cut to save money, although Graceland officials disagree.

Other visitors love the tapes, which are free with regular admission and available in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. And theoretically, you can move through the house at your own pace by rewinding the tape and lingering here or there.

As my shuttle chugged up the drive to 3764 Elvis Presley Blvd., Dixie played over the headset as onetime Elvis movie stand-in Lance LeGault said, “It all started with the dream of a poor young boy in Tupelo, Mississippi. He dreamed of a better life, of music and wealth and a fine home for himself and his family.” As visitors lined up to go into Graceland, Presley sang a cut from Welcome to My World.

The recorded script covers a lot of the material that tour guides once delivered. Visitors still learn that Elvis dug home-cooked Southern meals in his dining room, shot pool with his buddies in the billiard room and watched three news programs at once in the TV room.

Tourists also now hear someone who couldn’t appear very often in person: Priscilla Presley. On the tape she discusses Elvis’s contagious laughter and his obsessive food kicks. Who could blame her for getting sick of meatloaf every night for six months?

But individual touches from tour guides - the little jokes with the audience, poignant asides and robotic recitations - are all gone.

During my tour, most tourists stuck to their tapes and didn’t ask a thing. When I did, one guide couldn’t recall the names of Presley’s favorite television programs, another knew the kinds of cars that used to be parked under the carport and still another in the Jungle Room instantly remembered that Elvis may have recorded there because of its large size and carpeted ceiling.

Graceland spokesman Todd Morgan said a maximum of 100 guides were once employed in peak summer season but that the guide staff now tops out at about 50. He said there were no layoffs: Full-timers were kept on, but not as many seasonal workers were hired after the tapes arrived.

“We wrestled a lot about whether the change was the right thing for us,” Morgan said. Ultimately, the recorded guides were chosen to achieve “consistent quality and accuracy.”

Apparently, guides occasionally strayed from the beaten path. “It’s a tremendous amount of information to know,” Morgan said. “Sometimes guides would put their own spin on things totally innocently, and it becomes fact.”

That can happen after a story is repeated “100 times,” said Stacy Sternberg of Medina, Ohio, who was one of Graceland’s first tour guides and considers her time there in the 1980s “the best job I ever had. I remember us being asked how much his costumes weighed. They went from 20 pounds to 50 pounds over the course of one summer.”

Sternberg hasn’t toured Graceland since the acoustic guides arrived but thinks they will help ensure accuracy and let tourists proceed at their own pace.

Pacing was one reason French tourist Mousou Angou preferred the tape to an individual tour. “It’s better for me,” said the Parisian, who is taking a four-week group trek across the United States. He and a friend preferred using a recording in their native French and liked being able to start and stop the tape “au bon moment” - when the time was right.

Kathrine Nero, weekend sports anchor for WPTY-TV Channel 24 and a former Graceland guide, has toured the home with a headset and prefers live, human commentary: “I personally liked it a lot better with the individual tour guide. I know Elvis didn’t choose to have his house open to the public, but he seemed like the kind of guy who would have gone for a personal touch.”

Nero said the tapes may cut down on the possibility for strange questions. “People used to ask me if the pictures in the trophy building were taken before or after Elvis died or where the suit was he was buried in.”

She also pointed out that for repeat visitors recorded tours will be the same every time. “When we had tour guides and people went through four or five times, each guide could put a little spin on their spiel that maybe someone else didn’t.”

Mavis Kilpatrick of Hammond, La., a longtime fan who has explored Graceland several times since 1985, sides with Nero. When she took another tour on Monday, she didn’t hook up her cassette. “I know more than the tape does anyway,” she said. She had gone through the mansion a month ago using the acoustic guide and favored the individual approach. “Now, you’re still looking at the living room, and they start talking about the dining room. I think the tour lost a little class.”

Kilpatrick figured that eliminating the guides was a cost-cutting move. But Morgan said that in the end, Graceland may not save much money. The budget now has to cover the cost of tapes and recorders, staff to maintain the equipment and any changes made in the tour.