So much for trying to stir things up over here.  I would say the topic's become almost as dead as Elvis himself :)  I personally take full responsibility for not creating something stimulating enough to promote dialogue.  I now, officially declare this a dead thread. 

Elvis was definately NOT the king.  He was merely copying what black R&B singers were doing at the time.  He just made it palatable for a WASP audience.   The REAL blues singers of that era should rightfully hold the crown.

I don't see it as copying.  I see it according to my something-old-something-new-something-borrowed-an d-something-blue theory of the evolution of modern music.  No musicians is born in a vacuum.  Those other great artists that you've mentioned borrowed too.  They were not entirely new or original.

We are all influenced by those who have gone before us.  So nobody is completely original.  We take something old, perhaps even something borrowed and blue, and ad something new to it.  Elvis may have included something old and something borrowed in his music.  But he brought something new as well, and its the "something new," that made him the king his was then, and the king his still is today.