In “All Shook Up,” the new musical based on Elvis songs that’s now playing at ASU Gammage, Susan Anton plays Miss Sondra, a self‑consciously “cultured” woman who comes to a small and inhumanly quiet little town to direct its museum. The year is 1955, and everyone  in town is staying–figuratively speaking–in “Heartbreak Hotel.”

“They’ve all had their dreams shattered and they’ve given up on life,” Anton explains of these morose citizens.

“Then this guy comes in and shakes things up and people begin to wake up and have fun and start falling in love with each other–but not with the people they thought they'd fall in love with.”

The “guy” is, of course, an Elvis‑type figure, and the shaking up he does is by virtue of the songs he sings and teaches the dreary town to sing: “All Shook Up,” “Burning Love,” “Jailhouse Rock” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”

Even Miss Sondra–who no longer believes in love–finds love anew, and gets to sing “Hound Dog.”

For most of us Boomers, “All Shook Up” should be a nostalgia trip. For those who can’t remember Elvis alive, it may well be an education in American cultural history as it relates to rock ‘n’ roll.

For Anton, the story also reminds her of the time she met the real deal–Elvis himself–alive and well and living in Las Vegas.

Anton’s career has spanned Broadway, where she starred in such shows as “Hurley Burley” and “The Will Rogers Follies;” to TV, where she had a recurring role on “Baywatch;” to concert tours and special appearances. In the 1970s, Anton opened for Frank Sinatra; in the 1980s, she toured with Kenny Rogers; and in the 1990s, she appeared on stage for five and a half years in Las Vegas as a special guest star in the Great Radio City Music Hall Spectacular.

But long before all of that, Anton was just another young woman out to shape a career. The year 1972 found the California native singing in a Las Vegas production and hanging out with a friend who sang warm‑up for lounge dynamo Tom Jones. On the night Anton attended Tom Jones’ show, Elvis made a surprise appearance, performing Jones’ finale with him. Later, backstage, she met the Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Anton was the same tall, lithe beauty with long silken hair she is today–but 35 years younger. So when Elvis asked her up to his penthouse, you can understand why Anton immediately thought that, well, Elvis’ intentions were the obvious ones.

“It seemed like such a cliché,” is how Anton puts it. One might come up with other words. After all, when a male sex symbol asks a young gorgeous female to his place, the obvious ensues, right?

“Elvis asked me into his bedroom and that’s when I thought, ‘This is really starting to feel like a bad B‑movie,’” Anton recalls.

But the expected did not occur. Instead, Anton remembers:

“He had this big stack of books in the bedroom and he went over to the stack and pulled a book out, and started to read to me from it. It was Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.””

“The Prophet” is the collection of essays by the Lebanese‑born poet Gibran that became hugely popular in the 1960s, even cited in the Beatles song, “Julia.”

So, what happened next?

That was it. Says Anton:

“Here was this icon of the world who had to bring things in because he could never go out. He just wanted to read to me. He was a very spiritual man.”

Many years later, when she went to Graceland, Anton saw a copy of “The Prophet” on Elvis’ desk.

“It was a full‑circle moment.”

“All Shook Up” plays through this weekend at ASU Gammage. Go to asugammage.com for ticket information.