Elvis

Since I visited Elvis Presley's house about a month ago, a large property called Graceland, in Memphis, Tenn., now a museum dedicated to his own memory, I was much impressed with the fate of this man who was an icon for his generation and who died at the untimely age of fourty-two, in August 1977. He was found dead at four o'clock in the morning in his bathroom in a bath of his own vomiting. He was addicted to drugs, some legal some illegal. The authopsy found ten different substances in his body at the time of his death.

How he was decaying both as a man and as a singer can be seen in the following comparison of his performances of "How great thou art", the song that won him his first Grammy Award. Here you can see him performing this song in 1972 when he was still at the top of his career. Here you can see him performing the same song in 1977, six weeks before his death. Compare for yourself, in particular, the moment at mid-song when he hits the note "Oh my God..." in both performances.