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Legacy’s stewards forge ahead

More gold. More platinum. More Elvis.

When the RCA label and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announce the latest batch of gold and platinum records racked up by Elvis Presley today at Graceland, holders of the singer’s legacy won’t be looking back so much as plotting ahead.

One could almost change the name to E-L-V-I-$. Though he will have died 25 years ago this Friday, the late performer finds himself with a global No. 1 single, a popular Disney film and soundtrack centered on his music, and a coming greatest-hits collection, “Elvis: 30 #1 Hits” (in stores Sept. 24), all targeted to a potentially new legion of Elvis fans. Even rapper Eminem can’t help but take comparative swings at the King on his megahit Without Me.

The timing would be right, it seems, to expose Elvis to a whole new audience, those too young to remember the classics, let alone the kitsch. That’s the thought behind a new marketing strategy - coordinated between RCA and Elvis Presley Enterprises - which intends to keep the perpetual moneymaker as appealing as possible, both by tying the icon to new projects and products, and by making his music available through remastered, state-of-the-art sound.

“It’s a gold mine that continues to reap great rewards,” says Richard Sanders, executive vice president and general manager of RCA Records. “And now what we’re trying to do, with the cooperation of the estate, is to help introduce Elvis in a contemporary way to as large an audience as we can. . . . To me, that audience is unlimited. We’ve reached 4- and 5-year-olds. We’ve reached their parents, who are also a generation removed from Elvis, and we’re going to touch the Elvis core.”

Sanders will be in town for today’s 10 a.m. award presentation on Graceland’s front lawn (free to the public). So, too, will Presley chronicler, compiler and author Ernst Jorgensen, who seconds RCA’s effort to “pursue a very commercial avenue of bridging the gap between however many millions ever bought Hound Dog and Heartbreak Hotel and the 6 billion people in this world today.”

Jorgensen - a Danish consultant for RCA and parent company BMG - has overseen many Presley historical reissues and boxed sets, including the recent “Today, Tomorrow & Forever” collection of unreleased studio and live rarities. He finds a bigger appreciation for Elvis’s music now than 15 years ago. You don’t have to look hard.

Among Presley’s latest accomplishments: a remix by Dutch deejay Junkie XL of the song A Little Less Conversation that has topped the charts in more than a dozen countries throughout Asia and Europe, including England, where Elvis supplanted the Beatles for the most No. 1 songs; and a gold record for the soundtrack to Disney’s animated flick Lilo & Stitch, which itself dotes all over the rock legend.

Elvis has also distanced himself further from the pop pack for most gold albums.

According to the RIAA (the trade group that certifies record sales status in the United States), Elvis now has 84 gold records - not counting singles - which is well ahead of second-place artist Barbra Streisand with 47. Furthermore, his total album sales stand at 93 million, a respectable fourth place behind Garth Brooks (104 million), Led Zeppelin (105) and considerable front-runner the Beatles (163.5 million).

At today’s ceremony, upgrades since RCA’s last presentation in 1999 will give Presley a new tally of 84 gold records, 45 platinum records and 21 multiplatinum records (gold is given for sales of 500,000 units, platinum for 1 million and multiplatinum for 2 million and more). The same record can achieve platinum and multiplatinum status after it has gone gold, hence the upgrades. Presley’s biggest sellers according to the RIAA, for example, are “Elvis’ Christmas Album” and volume one of “Elvis’ Golden Records,” both released first in the ’50s and both certified at 6 million units sold in 1999.

John Henkel, the RIAA’s director of gold and platinum certification, puts those figures in context, however.

“I find it amazing that an artist continues to sell well beyond their death (and) even well into the next century,” he says.

“But a lot of these Elvis sales are simply previously uncounted album sales. Because of the way records were kept and stored and that sort of thing, the search for Elvis sales information is ongoing. . . . In some cases, it’s just older data that they were recently able to find and combine with existing sales (to) upgrade existing titles. Not to say that he’s not still selling well, but, putting things in its proper context, a lot of these aren’t new records.”

(The international equivalent of the RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, doesn’t monitor specific artists and wasn’t able to provide hard numbers on Elvis sales overseas, though Graceland spokesman Todd Morgan estimates it’s 40 percent of total product sold.)

New, however, is the attitude about Elvis among those who control his image and catalog. Perceived as conservative and even stodgy when it comes to protecting the Elvis name, RCA and Graceland have now broadened their horizons a bit and have given permission for the first time to let an Elvis tune be remixed.

The result was the smash single A Little Less Conversation, created for use in a World Cup ad campaign by Nike.

The remixer, Junkie XL, did shorten his name to JXL for the song’s commercial release, something he didn’t mind doing (his father was an Elvis fan, after all).

“It’s basically respect to the family of Elvis and a lot of Elvis fans,” says the Amsterdam-based deejay, whose real name is Tom Holkenborg and who says the “junkie” moniker has nothing to do with drugs but is a nickname given by his friends for being a work junkie.

“I think it’s pretty much a pity that people remember Elvis for the three or four last years of his life. As a respect to that, if people ask me would you mind replacing Junkie by just a J for the single, fair enough.”

Name aside, the song’s catchy appeal - European breakbeat mixed with the funky Elvis-ness of the original - was too good to resist once RCA and Graceland heard it.

“I’m proud to say this was more spontaneous than strategic,” says Elvis Presley Enterprises CEO Jack Soden. “We were prepared to be mad at them (JXL and Nike) for messing with a master. And honestly we had the same reaction that everybody else in the world seems to be having: We (think) it’s great.”

Don’t look for a flood of techno Elvis tunes in coming months, however. Everyone agrees that A Little Less Conversation was a fluke in the best sense of the word. RCA and Graceland admit they’ll allow more experimentation, but on their own terms and at their own pace.

“We’ve had so many requests and we’ve denied so many requests,” says Sanders. “Everyone wants to mix everything.”

None of this means the obligatory Elvis reissues will abate. While the company plans to better consolidate overseas product - where in the past Japan and Sweden for example, might have had different versions of a particular album - RCA’s archives are, in fact, being replenished with new material.

Take the “Today Tomorrow & Forever” box. About one-third of its 100 tracks were acquired in the past three or four years, according to Jorgensen.

“We keep looking for people who for whatever reason, not always very honorable (ones), may have certain tapes that should have been in the RCA vault or tapes that we never had in the first place,” he says. “For argument’s sake, if somebody had ever taped Elvis being on the radio in Memphis, that would be something we would try to find and release. And we keep finding stuff all the time. . . . In the past 10 years, I’ve acquired over 400 Elvis tapes. Why should it stop now?”