LONG BEFORE lending his deep, smooth tones to South Park's Chef and creating the Oscar-nominated soundtrack for the Blaxploitation classic film Shaft (1971), Isaac Hayes was keyboard player and staff musician at the legendary Stax studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

GREG RUSEDSKI celebrated his 26th birthday having dinner in Manhattan last night with his fiance, Lucy Connor, and his coach, Sven Goeneveld, knowing that the Americans are expecting Todd Martin to have him for breakfast in the fourth round of the United States Open.

Elvis Presley

Chandeliers and shag-pile abound, but for all its gaudy excess, there are good reasons why Graceland, Elvis Presley's home for 22 years, has become a rock'n'roll shrine, writes Harold Evans. Photographs by Sheva Fruitman

So the major record labels have got things all sewn up? Not quite. As the business reels under the impact of downsizing, the cottage industry that is Domino Records is proving that small can be beautiful.

NINETY-EIGHT-year-old Bobbe Brox was the last surviving member of the singing trio of the Twenties the Brox Sisters, and the widow of the songwriter James Van Heusen.

THE MIGHTY Elvis Presley Enterprises yesterday lost the latest round of a David and Goliath legal wrangle to stop a London trader from using the singer's name on his souvenirs.

Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley

The arts world is waking up after the long Christmas lay-off - so it's a good time to round up the pick of what the new season has to offer, from Robbie Williams to Terrence Malick, and Cate Blanchett to Claude Monet. And if it turns out to be half as exciting as it sounds, 1999 may be a vintage year ...

"WHO'S THE black private dick, who's a sex machine to all the chicks?" The answer, surprisingly, is Richard Roundtree, star of the 1971 film Shaft. But who remembers Roundtree? What we recall from that fairly dismal film is Isaac Hayes's brilliant score, which not only included the deathless line quoted above, but is also credited with changing film sound-tracks.

America's Deep South - home of the Blues, juke joints and Scarlett O'Hara - has embraced British-style bed and breakfasts. Matthew Brace spends a quiet night where once Civil War raged

The first supermarket ever, in all the world, was in Memphis - that's Tennessee, not Egypt, silly. They haven't been going that long. It was called The Piggly-Wiggly Stores and it was designed like a maze so that you couldn't get out until you'd seen everything. It started trading just after the end of the First World War and it's still there, though it's a museum now (and probably haunted by Elvis).

MUCH HAS been made of the professional jealousy Salieri felt for his contemporary Mozart. A 20th-century equivalent is the way Charlie Feathers regarded Elvis Presley.

TWO JUVENILE gunmen, believed to be 11 and 13 years old, opened fire yesterday on schoolchildren as they streamed out of an Arkansas middle school in response to a fake fire alarm. Four were reported dead last night.