I’m going to be a party-pooper here. Elvis Aron Presley was a fat junkie redneck gun freak who died from a drug and obesity induced stroke while taking a shit. This makes him a hero?
OK, he did change modern music. To quote Col. Parker, his long-time agent and pimp “If I could find me a white boy that could sing like a nigger, I’d make a million dollars…” I use the term pimp, advisedly, as Col. Tom Parker took 50% of all earnings. ALL earnings. Col. Tom even sold the Elvis catalogue of songs to RCA for some comparatively picayune amount and docked Elvis a management fee over and above his standard 50%.
In his early days Elvis was as close to a superstar as society could have. In his latter days, Elvis was just one of the better Elvis Impersonators. But the Media Memory Machine, helped with the control of Elvis Presley Enterprises over all Elvis images, choose not to remember the older Elvis.
I can understand that, despite its inaccuracy. It is as if history has amnesia so that others can have their dreams of when times were better.
RoadDave 
I got two words for ya: MICHAEL JACKSON. When he died, everybody mourned “the great talent”. You mean the guy who hadn’t released anything in years, who’d been in court for child molestation, and who was creepier than the earwig coming out of Chekov’s ear in Star Trek II? Farrah Fawcett died the same day – star of screen and television, whose red swimsuit launched tens of thousands of…. well, excited young boys (and maybe a few girls?), who went from “jiggle TV” to dramatic TV and film, who died a VERY public death of a tragic disease which she neither hid from nor tried to deny in some lame manner – and nobody remembers her passing. The better the PR machine, the more long-term your fame. Farrah was a lady, and distributed her talent accordingly. Elvis and MJ were whores, pimping out their waning talents for maximum benefit. Yeah, send me your hate mail, I stand by my statements. Young Elvis and young MJ were talented. Both diminished with age – don’t bother quoting that hacked together PR piece that’s currently running on pay-movie channels. Farrah was a fresh-faced talent who kept coming back with equal, if not greater, presentations of her talents. But then again, old guys are just young guys plus a few years. The public assumes that each facial wrinkle on a woman over 30 reduces her talent by 20-30%. I’ll take my talent consistent, pleasant, and under-rated. Kylie Minogue will be kicking butt decades from now – with any luck, in 20 years, it’ll be “Britney Who?”