"I was into black dudes like Ray Charles, Little Richard and Wilson Pickett, so when Elvis came to see our band it wasn’t a big deal for me, he wasn’t then, in my view, the big legend he turned out to be later on. Presley came to stay in the Paradise Island hotel that we were working the lounge in, We were doing three or four shows a night and his wife, Priscilla, would come down to look at the band with her entourage, three or four women that she used to hang around with. ‘I have to get Elvis down to hear you guys’ she said. Lo and behold, one night we get the word that he’s coming in. I’m being disparaging here, but I wasn’t excited about that. Now, if they said Ray Charles is coming in, that would have been a different vibe altogether. Elvis arrived and sat about two tables away from the front. There was a guy in my band who started impersonating Elvis, and Presley was killing himself laughing. The rest of the guys in the band hung around afterwards to say hello to him, but I had something to do. I wasn’t being disrespectful, I just had something else to do and I wasn’t that much interested in him. I was coming in, the next afternoon, to set my guitar up for the evening and as I walked through the lobby he was there with the Memphis Mafia guys. He spotted me, waved and walked over and he started complimenting me on my singing. I swear to God I said to him, ‘I’m giving singing lessons up in room 4670, if you want to drop up.’ We ended up having a great laugh and a great conversation. He was a really, really nice dude, a very handsome lookin’ dude."