On October 3, 1945, a small, shy ten-year-old boy stood on a chair at a county fair in Tupelo, Mississippi, because he wasn’t tall enough to reach the microphone. He was wearing glasses. He had no guitar and no band. He sang an old, sad song called “Old Shep” completely on his own, and then he stepped down and waited to hear the results. He came fifth. His name was Elvis Presley, and that was the first time he ever sang in public.
He hadn’t even wanted to enter. His teacher, Mrs. Oleta Grimes, had heard him singing at school that morning and pushed him into it. The whole thing was broadcast live on local radio station WELO, which means Elvis Presley’s very first performance went out over the air — and no recording of it survives anywhere. Second place would have won five dollars and free passes for all the rides at the fair. Elvis didn’t get them.
Elvis at Toccopola High School
Ask him about that day years later, and he didn’t talk about the singing at all. What he remembered most vividly was that he had misbehaved and got “a whipping from my Mama.” There’s a photograph of some of the contestants from that afternoon, and it backs him up completely. Two children stand there proudly clutching trophies. Elvis stands beside them in his glasses, empty-handed.
A few months later, the moment that changed everything came. Elvis went to Tupelo Hardware Company with his mother to get a bicycle, spotted a rifle he wanted instead, and threw a fit when Gladys refused to buy it. To calm him down, somebody put a guitar in his hands. It cost $7.75. He walked out of that shop with the first guitar he ever owned, and the store is still open in Tupelo today.
In 1948, when Elvis was 13, the family packed up and left for Memphis. Nobody in Tupelo particularly noticed them go.
Tupelo Welcomes Elvis Presley Home (Parade 1956)
But on September 26, 1956, he came back — and the way he came back is the stuff of legend. He was flown in from Hollywood, where he was filming Love Me Tender, purely for this one day. The Mississippi Highway Patrol escorted him from the state line all the way into town. A banner across Main Street read “Tupelo Welcomes Elvis Presley Home.” There was a parade with school bands playing his songs and floats built around him. The Governor declared it Elvis Presley Day. The Mayor handed him the key to the city — made by a local workshop in the shape of a guitar, engraved with “EP” and the words Welcome Home.
And the venue for that homecoming concert? The same fairgrounds where he had stood on a chair eleven years earlier and come fifth.
Here’s the part that says the most about him. After those shows, Elvis told the Mayor he’d seen the little house he was born in and noticed there was land for sale around it. He then bought it and gave it to Tupelo. He came back again the following year and handed over roughly $14,000 to build a youth recreation center near his birthplace, so local kids would have somewhere to go. Nobody asked him to do either of those things. The boy who came fifth turned around and bought his hometown a playground.