In August 1956, a judge in Florida did something no judge has done before or since. He issued a warning to a 21-year-old singer that amounted to an injunction on his hips. If Elvis Presley moved them on stage that night, arrest warrants were ready, and he would be taken straight to jail. What Elvis … Read more
The man who controlled the biggest career in music history did not come from Hollywood, or Nashville, or any record company. He came from a traveling carnival — and the way he made his living before Elvis Presley is so outrageous that people assume it’s a joke. It isn’t. Colonel Tom Parker caught ordinary brown … Read more
“Are You Lonesome Tonight?” is one of the saddest songs Elvis Presley ever recorded. It went to number one in 1960, and it’s about a man begging to know if the woman who left him still thinks about him. There is nothing funny in it anywhere. Which is why the most famous performance of it … Read more
In January 1954, a fifteen-year-old girl at a church function in Memphis spotted a boy she couldn’t stop looking at. He was nineteen, shy to the point of silence, and had a strange haircut and clothes nobody else in the congregation would have dared to wear. Her name was Dixie Locke. His name was Elvis … Read more
Walk through the Graceland exhibits in Memphis, and you’ll come to a 25-inch RCA color television from the 1970s with a bullet hole in the screen. It isn’t a replica or a prop. Elvis Presley genuinely pulled out a gun and shot his own TV set while it was switched on, and the story of … Read more
In May 1957, Elvis Presley was filming what would become the most famous dance sequence of his career. The song was “Jailhouse Rock.” The scene required him to slide down a pole — and he threw himself into it exactly the way he threw himself into everything. He hit the pole so hard that he … Read more
On Tuesday, December 4, 1956, a guitarist called Carl Perkins booked a normal day’s work at Sun Studio in Memphis. He’d written and recorded “Blue Suede Shoes” and was there to cut some new songs with his brothers. To beef up the sound, the studio boss brought in a young piano player nobody outside Memphis … Read more
On the evening of July 5, 1954, three men sat in a small, boiling-hot recording studio on Union Avenue in Memphis, getting absolutely nowhere. A 19-year-old truck driver named Elvis Presley had been trying for hours to record slow ballads with two musicians he barely knew — guitarist Scotty Moore and bass player Bill Black. … Read more
The phone rang at four in the morning at her aunt’s house in Memphis. Her aunt answered in her politest Southern voice, said “Why, yes, she is — just a moment please,” and then turned around wide-eyed: “Oh my God. It’s Elvis Presley on the phone.” The young woman who took that call was Linda … Read more
In the spring of 1960, a black Lincoln Continental pulled up outside a boarding school in Virginia to collect three small boys. Billy was 7. Rick was 6. David was 4. Their mother introduced them to the man beside her as their new daddy — and then the car drove them to their new home. … Read more