A pair of blue suede shoes worn by Elvis Presley himself has sold for a huge amount at auction.
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The shoes sold for £120,000 by auctioneers Henry Aldrige & Son in Devizes on June 28 – at the top end of the £100,000-£120,000 they were expected to go for.
Presley first acquired the shoes after he performed the Carl Perkins hit ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, and wore the shoes for various interviews and public appearances throughout the 1950s, most notably on The Steve Allen Show in the US, on which he performed ‘Hound Dog’.
When he was drafted into the US Army in the late 1950s, Presley gave the shoes to a friend.
As auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said, the shoes are what “you think of immediately when you talk about Elvis Presley” and they “transcend popular culture.”
He added: “When Elvis joined up for the American army, he had a get-together at Graceland. Elvis called some of these people upstairs and was giving away some of the clothes he didn’t think he’d need or want when he came back from the army. The gentleman concerned was Alan Fortas, Elvis’s branch manager and a friend of his.”
Over the years, the shoes had spent time on display at various museums. Aldrige said that their authenticity had been verified by singer Jimmy Velvet, who was a close friend of Presley and himself used to run a museum of Elvis memorabilia.
In May, Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough took legal action to prevent the auction of Graceland, the singer’s iconic home, and a judge stopped the sale. Later, a self-described scammer based in Nigeria took credit for the plot, saying that he was part of an identity theft ring.
Meanwhile, Glastonbury co-founder Michael Eavis opened this year’s festival last Thursday (June 27) with a few songs, and finished with Presley’s 1969 hit Suspicious Minds.
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