Every August, Graceland fills up with people who loved Elvis Presley from a distance. But scattered through the schedule are a handful of people who knew him up close — the bodyguards, the tour managers, the co-stars, the girlfriend.
Elvis Week 2026 ran from August 8 to 16 and marked 49 years since he died. And the men and women who actually shared rooms with him told stories this year that you will not find in any documentary.
The most relaxed event of the week was the smallest. It was called “Burger Thursday”, held on August 13 at The Guest House at Graceland, and the idea was beautifully simple. Two of Elvis’s closest friends, Charles Stone and Sam Thompson, now both live in Dallas and have met for lunch every week for six years. So Graceland let fans pull up a chair and join in. The two men sat around a checkered tablecloth with burgers in hand and just talked.
Their routes into Elvis’s world were completely different. Sam Thompson was a Shelby County sheriff’s deputy who met Elvis in November 1972, when his sister Linda Thompson started dating him. The two men hit it off instantly, and Sam ended up as Elvis’s personal bodyguard. Charles Stone came from the concert business and ran the tour production side. Elvis trusted both, and fifty years later they are still close.
Elvis Friends Talk On Elvis Week
The food talk was the best part. Elvis liked his burgers well done and late at night. Because so little was open at three in the morning, the crew ate a lot of Krystal, which were about nine cents each back then, and the man sent out to fetch them was nicknamed “Hamburger James.” Then there was the meatloaf phase. As Sam told the room, Elvis got on a meatloaf kick and ate it every single day — which meant the whole entourage ate it every single day, until they finally had to ask him whether there was anything else on earth they could have instead.
Then came the story of the day Elvis went missing.
The group was in Cincinnati, sleeping through the days like bats, when Sam woke at two in the afternoon to find Elvis standing in the hotel hallway, sweaty, hair everywhere, staring out the window at a hotel across the street. His air conditioning had broken. So Elvis walked out of the building and straight into a major road, trailed by his crew in red jackets and about fifty fans, and marched into the other hotel.
Elvis, a huge Pink Panther fan, asked the front desk clerk for a room in an Inspector Clouseau voice. The clerk, without looking up, said they were full, because Elvis was in town. They got a room in the end, and it was so cold they could see their breath. Charles Stone, meanwhile, had no idea where his headliner had gone. “For two hours we couldn’t find him.”
Elvis Week 2026: “This is Elvis” (1981) Producer Andrew Solt discusses Elvis
The week’s other big draw was Conversations on Elvis on August 15, hosted by Tom Brown at the Graceland Soundstage, and it brought out a genuinely starry line-up: actor George Hamilton, making his Elvis Week debut and talking about his friendship with both Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker; Jimmy Hawkins, who co-starred in Girl Happy and Spinout; documentarian Andrew Solt; former backing vocalist Larry Strickland; and the Stamps Vocal Quartet, who were given a Graceland “Legends” award. Adam-12 star Kent McCord, who started as an extra in Elvis films, described him in one word: “truly humble.” As McCord put it, Elvis would have liked to be a regular guy sometimes.
Elsewhere, Jerry Schilling appeared at the Elvis 1956 show alongside the Blackwood Brothers Quartet and archivist Angie Marchese, and Linda Thompson hosted a tour of the Graceland archives. She turned up at Burger Thursday too, as a surprise — carrying a birthday cake for her brother Sam, having flown in from Malibu. She admitted something rather touching when they handed her the microphone. “When I was with Elvis, I was laser-focused on Elvis. So I don’t remember much but him.”
And the week ended on a sad note. Sam Thompson recalled driving Lisa Marie back to Priscilla a few days before Elvis died and hearing Elvis talk about his plans. He wanted to tour Europe, starting with London. He never got the chance. Linda’s response to that was five words: “It’s never long enough.”