OBIT: Al Dvorin has left the building.

Al Dvorin, announcer who said ‘Elvis has left the building,’ dies
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) — Al Dvorin, the Elvis Presley concert announcer who made famous the phrase “Elvis has left the building,” has died of injuries from an auto accident, a spokesman for the Elvis Presley estate said Monday. He was 81.
Todd Morgan, a spokesman at the Presley home in Graceland, said he had no information about the accident except that Dvorin was in a car with longtime Elvis photographer, Ed Bonja.
Dvorin had performed Saturday night at Trump 29 Casino in Coachella, Calif., with American Trilogy, a concert by Elvis impersonator Paul Casey that included conversations with Dvorin and other Presley friends.
The phrase that Dvorin made his signature was first uttered by other announcers early in Presley’s career. It was intended to disperse audiences who lingered at performance venues hoping for an Elvis encore.
“Al made it his own with his particular style,” Morgan said. “He’s the man when it comes to that saying.”
Dvorin’s version is captured on many official recordings of live performances, he said.
In an interview with The Desert Sun newspaper of Palm Springs, Calif., in advance of Saturday’s show, Dvorin said he hadn’t heard others use the phrase before he began saying it.
“Everybody and his brother has claimed the line and I’m sure Elvis’s mother, when somebody called him, said, ‘Elvis is not home. Elvis has left the building,”’ Dvorin said. “As far as I know, I created it.”
A former band leader and talent agent in Chicago, Dvorin worked with Presley in the earliest days of his career booking him as an opening act for country singer Hank Snow, a client of Colonel Tom Parker.
“I started working with Elvis before Parker signed him,” Dvorin said.
Once Parker became Presley’s manager, he hired Dvorin to book
opening acts for the 1950s shows, according to the reference book Elvis Day by Day. Parker preferred Vaudeville-style openers, like jugglers and dancers, who wouldn’t compete with Presley’s star power and would help counter rock ’n’ roll’s juvenile delinquent image.
Dvorin said he began announcing Presley’s shows after criticizing an announcer Parker had hired. Parker fired the man and ordered Dvorin to take on those duties.
“I had done every job except dye his (Elvis’) hair and announce,” he said.
Dvorin was with Presley on his last tour in 1977. The singer died of heart problems and drug abuse that August.
“To his dying day, he was modest. He was just a nice person,” Dvorin said of Presley.
The announcer continued to appear at Presley commemorations in Memphis and elsewhere, Morgan said.
“He’s a fixture in Elvis world. He’ll be greatly missed,”“ Morgan said.