The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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Jesse Garon Presley Jesse Garon Presley (born and died January 8, 1935) was the identical twin brother of the American singer Elvis Presley. His parents were Vernon Elvis Presley (1916 - 1979) and Gladys Love Smith (1912 - 1958), and he was born in a two-room shack in East Tupelo, Mississippi. Jesse Garon Presley was buried in a shoebox in an unmarked grave in the Priceville Cemetery in East Tupelo. His parents could not pay the $10 doctor bill. In 2006, musician Scott Walker released the song, Jesse on his album The Drift that uses Jesse and Elvis to comment on the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Parents, Childhood and Youth

Presley's father Vernon is described as a taciturn to the point of sullenness, whereas his mother Gladys was voluble, lively, full of spunk. What is more, she was a surreptitious drinker and alcoholic. When she was angry, she cussed like a sailor. The family was active in church and community. However, in 1938, when Elvis was three years old, his father was convicted of forgery. Vernon, Gladys's brother Travis Smith, and Luther Gable went to prison for altering a check from Orville Bean, Vernon's boss, from $3 to $8 and then cashing it at a local bank. Vernon was sentenced to three years at Parchman Farms Penitentiary. Though Vernon was released after serving eight months, this event deeply influenced the life of the young family. During her husband's absence, Gladys lost the house and was forced to move in briefly with her in-laws next door. The Presley family lived just above the poverty line during their years in East Tupelo.

In 1941 Presley started school at the East Tupelo Consolidated. There he seems to have been an outsider. His few friends relate that he was separate from any crowd and did not belong to any gang, but, according to his teachers, he was a sweet and average student, and he loved comic books. In 1943 Vernon moved to Memphis, where he found work and stayed throughout the war, coming home only on weekends. This certainly strengthened the relationship between mother and boy.

In 1946 Presley started at a new school, Milam, which went from grades 5 through 9, but in 1948 the family left Tupelo, moving 110 miles northwest to Memphis, Tennessee. Here too, the 13-year-old lived in the city's poorer section of town and attended a Pentecostal church. At this time, he was very much influenced by the Memphis blues music and the gospel sung at his church.

Presley entered Humes High School in Memphis taking up work at the school library and after school at Loew's State Theatre. In 1951 he enrolled in the school's ROTC unit, tried unsuccessfully to qualify for the high school football team (supposedly cut from the team by the coach for not trimming his sideburns and ducktail), spending his spare time around the African-American section of Memphis, especially on Beale Street. In 1953 he graduated from Humes, majoring in History, English, and Shop.

After graduation Presley worked first at Parker Machinists Shop, and then for the Precision Tool Company with his father, finally working for the Crown Electric Company driving a truck, where he began wearing his hair the trademarked pompadour style.

Shyness

Presley's parents were very protective. He grew up a loved and precious child. He was, everyone agreed, unusually close to his mother. His mother Gladys worshiped him, said a neighbor, from the day he was born. Presley himself said, My mama never let me out of her sight. I couldn't go down to the creek with the other kids.

In his teens, Presley was still a very shy person, a kid who had spent scarcely a night away from home in his nineteen years. He was teased by his fellow classmates who threw things at him - rotten fruit and stuff - because he was different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama's boy.

First Steps Towards Being a Musician

The common story that the Presleys formed a popular gospel trio who sang in church and traveled about to various revival meetings is probably not true. However, in 1945 Presley, just ten years old, entered a singing contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. Decked out in a cowboy outfit, he had to stand on a chair to reach the microphone singing Red Foley's Old Shep. He won second place, a $5 prize and a free ticket to all the rides.

On his birthday in January 1946 he received a guitar purchased from Tupelo Hardware Store. In his seventh-grade year at Milam he seems to have taken this guitar to school every day. Many of the other children denigrated him as a trashy kind of boy playing trashy hillbilly music. Over the next year, Vernon's brother Johnny Smith and Assembly of God pastor Frank Smith gave him basic guitar lessons.

Some years later, in Memphis, Tennessee, the young Presley spent much of his spare time hanging around the black section of town, especially on Beale Street, where bluesmen like Furry Lewis and B B King performed. B B King says that he knew Elvis before he was popular. He used to come around and be around us a lot. There was a place we used to go and hang out on Beale Street. Beale Street in Memphis was notorious for its bars, prostitutes and gambling establishments. Music producer Jim Dickinson called it the center of all evil in the known universe. But it was a place where young Presley could hear black music.

Sam Phillips of Sun Records, was looking for a white man with a Negro sound and the Negro feel, with whom he could make a billion dollars, because he thought black blues and boogie-woogie music might become tremendously popular among white people if presented in the right way. He found his man in Presley.

Sun Recordings

On July 18, 1953 Elvis Presley paid $8.25 to record the first of two double-sided demos acetates at Sun Studios, My Happiness and That's When Your Heartaches Begin, which were popular ballads at the time. According to the official Presley website, Presley gave it to his mother as a much-belated birthday present. Presley returned to Sun Studios (706 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee) on January 4, 1954. He again paid $8.25 to record a second demo, I'll Never Stand in Your Way and It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You.

Sun Records founder Sam Phillips and assistant Marion Keisker heard the discs and called Presley on June 26, 1954 to fill in for a missing ballad singer. Although that session was not productive, Phillips put Presley together with local musicians Scotty Moore and Bill Black to see what might develop. During a rehearsal break on July 5, 1954, Presley began singing a blues song written by Arthur Crudup called That's All Right. Phillips liked the resulting record and on July 19, 1954 he released it as a 78-rpm single backed with Presley's hopped-up version of Bill Monroe's bluegrass song Blue Moon of Kentucky. Memphis radio station WHBQ began playing it two days later, the record became a local hit and Presley began a regular touring schedule which expanded his fame beyond Tennessee.

Country music star Hank Snow arranged to have Presley perform at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry and his performance was well received. Nonetheless, one of the show's executives was not impressed and hinted that Presley should give up his music.

Presley's second single, Good Rockin' Tonight, with I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine on the B-side, was released on September 25, 1954. He then continued to tour the South. On October 16, 1954, he made his first appearance on Louisiana Hayride, a radio broadcast of live country music in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was a hit with the large audience. His releases began to reach the top of the country charts. Following this, Presley was signed to a one-year contract for a weekly performance, during which time he was introduced to Colonel Tom Parker.

Apart from these country songs, many of Presley's first hits were blues numbers by black bluesmen.

At the start of his fame, Moore described Presley as a typical coddled son, still very shy, and more comfortable just sitting there with a guitar than trying to talk to you.

National exposure began on January 28, 1956, when Presley, Moore, Black and drummer D J Fontana made their first National Television appearance on the Dorsey brothers' Stage Show. It was the first of six appearances on the show and the first of eight performances recorded and broadcast from CBS TV Studio 50 at 1697 Broadway, New York. After the success of their first appearance they were signed to five more in early 1956 (February 4, 11, 18 and March 17 and 24).

Voice Characteristics

Elvis Presley was a baritone whose voice had an extraordinary compass - the so-called register - and a very wide range of vocal color. It covered two octaves and a third, from the baritone low-G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D flat. Presley's best octave was in the middle, D-flat to D-flat. In ballads and country songs he was able to belt out full-voiced high Gs and As, showing a remarkable ability to naturally assimilate styles.

Presley's range, though impressive in its own right, did not in itself make his voice that remarkable, at least in terms of how it measured against musical notation. What made it extraordinary, was where its center of gravity lay. By that measure, and according to Gregory Sandows, Music Professor at Columbia University, Presley was at once a bass, a baritone, and a tenor, most unusual among singers in either classical or popular music.

Presley and His Manager Colonel Tom Parker

On August 15, 1955, Presley was signed by Hank Snow Attractions, a management company jointly owned by singer Hank Snow and Colonel Tom Parker. Shortly thereafter, Colonel Parker took full control and recognizing the limitations of Sun Studios, negotiated a deal with RCA Victor Records who acquired Presley's Sun contract for $35,000 on November 21, 1955.

Parker was a master promoter who wasted no time in furthering Presley's image, licensing everything from guitars to cookware. Parker's first major coup was to market Presley on television. First, he had Presley booked in six of the Dorsey Shows (CBS). Presley appeared on the show on January 28, 1956, then on February 4, 11 and 18, 1956, with two more appearances on March 17 and 24, 1956. In March, he was able to obtain a lucrative deal with Milton Berle (NBC), for two appearances: The first appearance on April 3, 1956. The second appearance was controversial pertaining to Presley's performance of Hound Dog on the June 5, 1956. It sparked a storm over his gyrations while singing. The controversy lasted through the rest of the 50's. However, that show drew such huge ratings that Steve Allen (ABC) booked him for one appearance, which took place early on July 1, 1956. That night, Allen had for the first time beaten The Ed Sullivan Show in the Sunday night ratings, prompting Sullivan (CBS) to book Presley for three appearances: September 9, and October 28, 1956 as well as January 6, 1957, for an unprecedented fee of $50,000. On September 9, 1956, at his first of three appearances on the Sullivan show, Presley drew an estimated 82.5% percent of the television audience, calculated at between 55-60 million viewers.

Parker eventually negotiated a multi-picture seven-year contract with MGM Studios that shifted Presley's focus from music to films. Under the terms of his contract, Presley earned a fee for performing plus a percentage of the profits on the films, most of which were huge moneymakers. These were usually musicals based around Presley performances, and marked the beginning of his transition from rebellious rock and roller to all-round family entertainer. Presley was praised by all his directors, including the highly respected Michael Curtiz, as unfailingly polite and extremely hardworking.

Presley began his movie career with Love Me Tender (opened on November 15, 1956). The movies Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole (1958) are regarded as among his best early films.

Parker's success led to Presley expanding the Colonel's management contract to an even 50/50 split. Over the years, much has been written about Colonel Parker, most of it critical. Marty Lacker, a lifelong friend and a member of the Memphis Mafia, says he thought of Parker as a "hustler and scam artist" who abused Presley's reliance on him. Priscilla Presley admits that Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it. This would explain the strong influence the Colonel had on Presley. Nonetheless, Lacker acknowledged that Parker was a master promoter.

American Idol

According to Rolling Stone magazine, it was Elvis who made rock 'n' roll the international language of pop. A PBS documentary described Presley as an American music giant of the 20th century who single-handedly changed the course of music and culture in the mid-1950s. His recordings, dance moves, attitude and clothing came to be seen as embodiments of rock and roll. His music was heavily influenced by African-American blues, Christian gospel, and Southern country.

Presley sang both hard driving rockabilly, rock and roll dance songs and ballads, laying a commercial foundation upon which other rock musicians would build their careers. African-American performers like Little Richard and Chuck Berry came to national prominence after Presley's acceptance among mass audiences of white teenagers. Singers like Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison and others immediately followed in his wake. The Beatles superstar John Lennon later observed, Before Elvis, there was nothing.

During the post-WWII economic boom of the 1950s, many parents were able to give their teenaged children much higher weekly allowances, signaling a shift in the buying power and purchasing habits of American teens. During the 1940s Bobby Soxers had idolized Frank Sinatra, but the buyers of his records were mostly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Presley triggered a juggernaut of demand for his records by near-teens and early teens aged ten and up. Along with Presley's ducktail haircut, the demand for black slacks and loose, open-necked shirts resulted in new lines of clothing for teenaged boys whereas a girl might get a pink portable 45 rpm record player for her bedroom. Meanwhile American teenagers began buying newly available portable transistor radios and listened to rock 'n' roll on them (helping to propel that fledgling industry from an estimated 100,000 units sold in 1955 to 5,000,000 units by the end of 1958). Teens were asserting more independence and Elvis Presley became a national symbol of their parents' consternation.

A Danger to American Culture

Teenagers came to Presley's concerts in unprecedented numbers. When he performed at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair in 1956, 100 National Guardsmen surrounded the stage to control crowds of excited fans. The singer was considered to represent a threat to the moral well-being of young American women. Robert Kaiser says he was the first who gave the people a music that hit them where they lived, deep in their emotions, yes, even below their belts. Other singers had been doing this for generations, but they were black. Therefore, his performance style was frequently criticized. Social guardians blasted anyone responsible for exposing impressionable teenagers to his gyrating figure and suggestive gestures. The Louisville chief of police, for instance, called for a no-wiggle rule to halt any lewd, lascivious contortions that would excite the crowd. Even Priscilla Presley confirms that his performances were labeled obscene. My mother stated emphatically that he was 'a bad influence for teenage girls. He arouses things in them that shouldn't be aroused.' According to rhythm and blues artist Hank Ballard, In white society, the movement of the butt, the shaking of the leg, all that was considered obscene. Now here's this white boy that grinding and rolling his belly and shaking that notorious leg. I hadn't even seen the black dudes doing that. Presley complained bitterly in a June 27, 1956, interview about being singled out as obscene. Due to his controversial style of song and stage performances, municipal politicians began denying permits for Elvis Presley appearances. This caused teens to pile into cars and traveled elsewhere to see him perform. Adult programmers announced they would not play Presley's music on their radio stations due to religious convictions that his music was devil music and to racist beliefs that it was nigger music. Many of Presley's records were condemned as wicked by Pentecostal preachers who thumped their pulpits with Bibles, warning congregations to keep heathen rock and roll music out of their homes and away from their children's ears (especially the music of that backslidden Pentecostal pup). However, the economic power of Presley's fans became evident when they tuned in alternative radio stations playing his records. In an era when radio stations were shifting to an all-music format, in reaction to competition from television, profit-conscious radio station owners learned quickly when sponsors bought more advertising time on new all rock and roll stations, some of which reached enormous markets at night with clear channel signals from AM broadcasts.

In August, 1956 in Jacksonville, Florida a local Juvenile Court judge called Presley a savage and threatened to arrest him if he shook his body while performing at Jacksonville's Florida Theatre, justifying the restrictions by saying his music was undermining the youth of America. Throughout the performance, Presley stood still as ordered but poked fun at the judge by wiggling a finger. Similar attempts to stop his sinful gyrations continued for more than a year and included his often-noted January 6, 1957 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (during which he performed the spiritual number Peace in the Valley), when he was filmed only from the waist up.

Phenomenal Success

Elvis Presley's impact on the American youth consumer market was noted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on December 31, 1956 when business journalist Louis M Kohlmeier wrote, Elvis Presley today is a business, and reported on the singer's record and merchandise sales. Half a century later, historian Ian Brailsford (University of Auckland, New Zealand) commented, The phenomenal success of Elvis Presley in 1956 convinced many doubters of the financial opportunities existing in the youth market.

American Soldier

On December 20, 1957, at the peak of his career, Presley received his draft notice for a two-year service with the United States Army. On March 24, 1958, he was inducted into the Army at the Memphis Draft Board. In spite of thousands upon thousands of letters sent to the Army expressing his fans' wishes that he be spared, or that he be given special treatment, Presley received none of it and was widely praised for neither avoiding the draft nor serving part time in domestic positions such as the Special Services. The media speculated on whether two years out of the limelight would damage his career.

Presley sailed to Europe on the USS General George M. Randall (AP-115) and served in Germany, attaining the rank of sergeant. During his service, he met many people in the US Army bases he was trained at and abroad, both in Germany and in France, where he traveled on leave on at least three different occasions. Years later, many still recall with much admiration and affection their time together with Elvis Presley, no matter how casual or short-lived the encounter may have been. Among those Presley met were his wife-to-be - the then 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu; noted International Herald Tribune correspondent and humorist Art Buchwald; future US Secretary of State Colin Powell (then a lieutenant with the Third Army Division in Germany); and Walter Alden, the father of Presley's last girlfriend Ginger Alden.

Presley's impact on people, even during his two-year stint in the Army, was remarkable, even reaching beyond his career as an entertainer. When he first entered the Army, only 2% of the American population had been vaccinated against polio. Private Presley got his shot on TV, an event carried by all three major networks. By the time of his discharge, an estimated 85% of the population had been vaccinated.

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged on March 5.

1960s Movie Star

Presley was an enthusiastic James Dean fan and returned from the military eager to make a career as a movie star. Although he was definitely not the most talented actor around, he became a film genre of his own. Pop film staples of the early sixties, such as the Presley musicals and the AlP beach movies were mainly produced for a teenage audience and called by film critics a pantheon of bad taste. In the sixties, at Colonel Parker's command, Presley withdrew from concerts and television appearances, after his final appearance with Frank Sinatra on NBC entitled Welcome Home Elvis where he sang Witchcraft/Love Me Tender with Sinatra, in order to make these movies. He blamed his fading popularity on his humdrum movies, Priscilla Presley recalled in her 1985 autobiography, Elvis and Me. He loathed their stock plots and short shooting schedules. He could have demanded better, more substantial scripts but he didn't. According to most critics, the scripts of the movies were all the same, the songs progressively worse. The latter were written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll. For Blue Hawaii and its soundtrack LP, fourteen songs were cut in just three days. Julie Parrish, starring in Paradise, Hawaiian Style, says that Presley hated such songs and that he couldn't stop laughing while he was recording one of them.

Although film critics chastised these movies for their lack of depth, the fans turned out and they managed to be profitable. According to Jerry Hopkins's book, Elvis in Hawaii, Presley's pretty-as-a-postcard movies even boosted the new state's (Hawaii) tourism. Some of his most enduring and popular songs came from those movies. Altogether, Presley had made 27 movies during the 1960s, which had grossed about $130 million, and he had sold a hundred million records, which had made $150 million.

1968 Comeback

Presley's star had faded slightly over the 1960s as he made his movies and America was struck by changing styles and tastes after the British Invasion spearheaded by the Beatles.

Until the late sixties Presley continued to star in many B-movies, featuring soundtracks that were of increasingly lower quality. Presley had become deeply dissatisfied with the direction his career had taken over the ensuing seven years, most notably the film contracts with a demanding schedule that eliminated creative recording and giving public concerts. This lead to a triumphant televised performance later dubbed the '68 Comeback Special, aired on the NBC television network on December 3, 1968. This special saw him return to his rock and roll roots.

The comeback of 1968 was followed by a 1969 return to live performances, first in Las Vegas and then across the United States. The return concerts were noted for the constant stream of sold-out shows, with many setting attendance records in the venues where he performed.

Two concert films were also released: Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972).

The Final Years

After seven years off the top of the charts, Presley's song Suspicious Minds hit number one on the Billboard music charts on November 1, 1969. He also reached number one on charts elsewhere: In the Ghetto did so in West Germany in 1969 and The Wonder of You did so in the UK in 1970.

The Aloha from Hawaii concert in January 1973 was the first of its kind to be broadcast worldwide via satellite and was seen by at least one billion viewers worldwide. The soundtrack album to the show reached number-one in the charts.

Presley recorded a number of country hits in his final years. Way Down was languishing in the American Country Music chart shortly before his death in 1977, and reached number one the week after his death. It also topped the UK pop charts at the same time.

Between 1969 and 1977 Presley gave over 1,000 sold-out performances in Las Vegas and on tour. He was the first artist to have four shows in a row sold to capacity crowds at New York's Madison Square Garden.

From 1971 to his death in 1977 Presley employed the Stamps Quartet, a gospel group, for his backup vocals. He recorded several gospel albums, earning three Grammy Awards for his gospel music. In his later years his live stage performances almost always included a rendition of How Great Thou Art, the 19th century gospel song made famous by George Beverly Shea. Although some critics say that the singer travestied, commercialized and soft-soaped gospel to the point where it became nauseating, twenty-four years after his death, the Gospel Music Association inducted him into its Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001).

After his divorce in 1973 Presley became increasingly isolated, overweight, and battling an addiction to prescription drugs which took a heavy toll on his appearance, health, and performances. He made his last live concert appearance in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena on June 26, 1977.

Death and Burial

On August 16, 1977, at his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis Aaron Presley was found lying on the floor of his bedroom's bathroom by his fiancee, Ginger Alden, who had been asleep. He was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead at 3.30 pm. Presley was 42 years old.

At a press conference following his death, one of the medical examiners declared that he had died of a heart attack. Heart disease was very prevalent in his family. His mother, Gladys Presley, died of a heart attack brought on by acute hepatitis at age 46. Presley's father Vernon died of heart failure two years later, in 1979, at age 63.

Hundreds of thousands of Presley fans, the press, and celebrities lined the street to witness Elvis Presley's funeral and Jackie Kahane gave the eulogy.

Elvis Presley was originally buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis next to his mother. After an attempted theft of the body, his remains and his mother's remains were moved to Graceland to the meditation gardens.

Following Presley's death in 1977, US President Jimmy Carter said: Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique and irreplaceable. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense and he was a symbol to people the world over, of the vitality, rebelliousness, and good humor of his country.

Controversy Surrounding Death

In her 1987 book Elvis and Kathy, friend and backup vocalist Kathy Westmoreland wrote Everyone knew he was sick, that each public appearance brought him to the point of exhaustion.

According to Peter Guralnick's book, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (1999), drug use was heavily implicated in this unanticipated death of a middle-aged man with no known history of heart disease...no one ruled out the possibility of anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist, to which he was known to have had a mild allergy of long standing...There was little disagreement in fact between the two principal laboratory reports and analyses filed two months later, with each stating a strong belief that the primary cause of death was poly-pharmacy, and the Bio-science Laboratories report...indicating the detection of fourteen drugs in Elvis' system, ten in significant quantity.

In his book, Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, Albert Goldman even went as far as to suggest that Presley committed suicide by overdosing on a stash of drugs that he stockpiled. David Stanley, Presley's stepbrother, who was at Graceland the day Presley died, is said to have removed the needles and drug packets near Presley's body before the paramedics arrived, suggesting that he did not want to see Presley's name tarred with the brush of suicide.

On the other hand, some of his closest family members, friends, band members, and background singers have long disputed stories concerning Presley's alleged drug abuse and self-destructive lifestyle. At the same time, they have not denied that he did take prescription medications for bona fide or suspected health problems. For instance, Vernon Presley, Kathy Westmoreland, Charlie Hodge, and J D Sumner pointed out that Presley also suffered from severe health problems unrelated to drug abuse. These health problems included glaucoma, chronic insomnia, and bone cancer. The illness may have increased his dependency on prescription medication. In 1977 alone, his personal physician Dr. George Constantine Nichopoulos (usually referred to as Dr Nick) had prescribed 10,000 hits of amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, laxatives, and hormones.
 

Graceland Tours of the museums at Graceland are available, though no flash photography or video cameras are allowed inside. The tour of the Graceland mansion is an audio tour, and the upper floor is not open to visitors. The tour enters through the front door, and living areas and the kitchen are first on the tour. The tour continues through the basement, where Elvis' media room with its three televisions can be viewed. A bar and billiards room can also be found. The tour continues back upstairs, through the famous Jungle Room, then outside to Elvis' grave. Other tours include Elvis' auto and aircraft collections. One of the most impressive displays is the trophy room off of the main house, displaying Elvis' huge collection of gold and platinum records and other awards, stage costumes, photographs and more. Graceland is believed to be the second most visited private residence in the United States, behind the White House.