A brown-haired boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, a rag-tag kid that needed to be convinced by his mother to purchase a guitar instead of a rifle. Does this sound like the iconic Elvis Presley we know of today? A local radio station offered a little-known twelve-year-old Elvis a spot on the air in 1947, but he was too timid to perform. Soon after, he moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis’s talent took shape. How did his life go from that little boy to the unabashed man that amassed a cult-like following?
Fast forward to 1954 when Elvis auditioned for a gospel ensemble called The Songfellows. It was destiny he got turned down, had they not turned Elvis down he would never have recorded “That’s All Right Mama”, which later that year a local radio disc jockey played the song. Despite the DJ having to convince the audience he was white, he went on to play the hit Roger Crudup initially performed, thirteen times that fateful day. Sam Philips, Elvis’s producer at Sun Records, was thrilled with the results. See, Sam was looking for a way to introduce the African-American sound to of young listeners of all colors and, Elvis embodied that very blues sound. Some might forget, “That’s All Right Mama” wasn’t his first recording. Elvis, in 1953 recorded his actual first record at Sun Records, a birthday gift for his mother, “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”.
In 1956 Elvis forged his breakout hit record “Heartbreak Hotel”, which was inspired by a local man who committed suicide. The devastated man with no name likely either leaped to his death off a building or shot himself after destroying any identification the man possessed and leaving a one-sentence note referring to the line “I walk this lonely street.” Whatever means he used to end his life is still up for debate today. However, one part of the story is genuine, it was a 1955 newspaper story about an anonymous man’s suicide and his cryptic note about that “lonely street”, stirred something in Elvis. When the song was released, it was Elvis’s first recording featuring his Classic Quartet with RCA Victor and his manager Colonel Tom Parker, it became a sensation with his young demographic and controversial to their parents. Colonel Parker would go on to manage Elvis’s’s career for two decades and broadening his opportunities.
After recording “Heartbreak Hotel” he flourished as an actor in “Love Me Tender”. The magic of Elvis Presley’s and Colonel Parker’s fervor as a team would have to continue after Elvis’s call from Uncle Sam. Following his separation from the military, it was back to his entertainment career, producing some of his most acclaimed work. Then through Colonel Parker’s urging Elvis spent a good deal of a decade acting in Hollywood movies and covering the soundtracks that critics mostly ridiculed after which he took seven-year hiatus from live performances. Elvis came back to the stage in 1968 when he performed a televised special, Elvis, propelling him into lucrative tours, a concert residency in Las Vegas and concert broadcasting firsts. Elvis was 42 and in severely compromised health when he passed away at Graceland in 1977, leaving behind an enormous body of work and a legacy.
