Elvis would have been 81 today!
‘I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.’
– Bob Dylan (1997)
Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi which to European ears sounds as exotic as America ever gets (1935). He had a twin brother, Jessie, who was stillborn. His first stage performance came in 1945, when he was 10 years old. He sang "Old Shep" at a talent contest, and came in fifth, winning five dollars' worth of ride tickets for the Mississippi-Alabama fair. The following year, he wanted a bicycle, but his parents were too poor to buy one. His mother, Gladys, talked him into accepting a substitute gift: a guitar, which cost $12.95 at the Tupelo Hardware Company.
The family moved to Memphis when Presley was 13, and he grew up living in low-rent housing and hanging out on Beale Street. He was surrounded by Memphis blues and black R & B, and went to all-night gospel singalongs. These, along with Tennessee country music that he heard on the radio, were his musical roots. When he was 18, working as a truck driver, he wanted to give his mother a gift, so he stopped by the Memphis Recording Service, where you could record your own songs for a small fee. He had four dollars, and with that money he was able to record two songs: "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin." The Memphis Recording Service was also the home of Sun Records, and Elvis caught the attention of owner Sam Phillips, who called the young truck driver back in to see if he had any real talent.
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