In 1974, Elvis Presley walked into a Memphis furniture store called Donald’s, looked at a set of wild Polynesian furniture, and bought the entire collection in about thirty minutes. Carved wood. Fake fur upholstery. Tiki faces. And to finish it off, thick green shag carpet on the floor and on the ceiling. It is the most famous room at Graceland; more than 600,000 people come to see it every year, and the story of how it got there is even better than the room itself.
Here’s the part fans love. According to the story told for decades, Elvis’s father Vernon had walked through that very same store on that very same day. He came home and told his son he’d seen the ugliest furniture he had ever laid eyes on. What Vernon didn’t know was that Elvis had already bought all of it — and it was on its way to the house.
Elvis Presley’s ‘Jungle Room’, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee
The space started as a screened porch in the 1960s before being turned into a proper room. In 1965, Elvis had an indoor rock waterfall installed along one wall. Then came the furniture, chosen because it reminded him of Hawaii, the place he loved most — though every piece of it was actually bought right there in Memphis. He filled it out with plastic plants, coloured lights, and animal prints until the whole thing looked like a tiki bar had been dropped into a Tennessee mansion.
Here’s something almost nobody knows: Elvis never once called it the Jungle Room. To him it was simply “the den” — the room where he sat with his friends and family. The famous nickname was coined by a journalist shortly after Graceland opened to the public in 1982, five years after Elvis died. The name stuck instantly, because it fit.
Graceland – The Jungle Room Sessions
Then that ridiculous carpet turned out to be useful. By 1976, Elvis was worn out and didn’t want to travel to Nashville to record, but he still owed RCA an album. So the record company came to him. They worked out that the den was perfect for recording because all that shag carpet on the walls and ceiling naturally soaked up sound. They hung blankets as extra baffles, cleared out the furniture, and switched off the waterfall. An RCA mobile studio truck was sent from Nashville — and promptly broke down outside Memphis and had to be towed through the gates of Graceland.
On February 2, 1976, they started rolling. There were no vocal booths and no isolation rooms, so more than a dozen musicians crammed in elbow to elbow — which is exactly how Elvis wanted it. Guitarist James Burton said Elvis always wanted the musicians and singers right there with him. Those sessions produced “Moody Blue,” “Hurt,” and “Way Down.” Elvis came back for two more nights that October, and then it was finished. Those were the last studio recordings Elvis Presley ever made — cut in his own living room, on a set of furniture his father thought was hideous.