Interviews in the Elvis apartment

We’ve just started filming a new online series, that features Colombian artists, musicians, celebrities and artisans. The as yet untitled series features Andres Ochoa as our Spanish speaking host – and is filmed in the Elvis Apartment.

Our host, Andres Ochoa

We have a couple stills from our first episodes – including our Elvis Presley memorial special, that we plan to release as part of our Elvis Presley Grief Week activities.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Grief Week – (August 9th to 17th, this year), it memorializes Elvis Presley on the anniversary of his death. He died August 16th, 1977.

The funeral itself was a massive event, with fans lining the streets outside Graceland leading to the church, and the cemetery. In fact, Elvis’ death still holds the record for flowers sold in the United States in one day.

Flowers outside of Elvis’s original burial site (Alain Le Garsmeur/Getty Images)

Traditionally, fans would gather in Memphis, outside the gates of Graceland to express their grief over his death. Over the years, the name has been changed by the Graceland Estate and Elvis Presley Enterprises to “Elvis Week,” but longtime Memphians still think of it as grief week. In the early years, people would be prostrate with grief, crying and holding candles – in the humid Memphis summer.

Display outside Graceland during Grief Week

Now, of course, things have changed. There are paramedics and doctors on site for anyone overcome with the heat, and things are a whole lot more commercialized. Grief week was tolerated in the past – now, it’s big business. The Hard Rock Cafe along with Elvis Presley Enterprises holds the international Elvis Tribute Artist competition finals and Graceland puts on a hold host of events, and sells a lot of merchandise. This puts a lot of people off, but Elvis Presley has been a commercial product ever since he sang his first single at Sun Studios. If buying t-shirts, visiting Memphis and touring Graceland helps more people appreciate the man and his music, then that’s a fine thing to me. Otherwise, I think Elvis and his memory would have faded away by now. After all, the great man himself would have been 88 years old this year – and most of his original fans are elderly too.

In honor of Elvis, and in memory of him, forty-six years after his untimely death, we invited Marco T to be our special guest on our program.

Who is Marco T, you ask?? Why that’s Marco Tulio Sanchez, a dedicated Colombian tribute artist.

If he seems familiar to you, that’s because he came and performed at an event celebrating the Elvis Apartment. We hosted several friends, artists and everyone who helped us create the Elvis Apartment, from start to finish. He sang several of my favorite songs – and we all had a great time.

He even did a mini-interview with us back then. Brigette Valderrama interviews Marco T – starting around the 3 minute mark.

So we wanted to sit down with Marco T. once again, for a more in-depth interview to mark this important date.

While we are still editing the footage – I’ve included a photo from our most recent interview. Marco T even brought a couple of Elvis superfans to see the apartment.

Elvis (Marco T) center back, with two Elvis Superfans and our host, Andres

The first interview is done for the new series, “En la sala de Elvis” with our host, Andrew Ochoa. The series is in Spanish for our Latin American viewers..