The Boy Who Would Be 'King'

Thinking about Elvis and Jesse Presley, who were born 89 years ago today

Elvis and his mother Gladys circa 1957

On January 8, 1935, Gladys Presley gave birth to twins in Tupelo, MS. The first one never got a chance at life. The second one would change the world. With talent, looks and timing, Elvis Presley brought Black music to the mainstream at a time of Jim Crow segregation, thus starting a cultural revolution still reverberating.

And yet the stillborn death of Jesse Garon Presley seems to have had the most lasting psychological effect on the family. It was a loss never truly forgotten, either by Elvis, the guilt survivor, or by his mother Gladys, who became excessively protective and doting on “the chosen one.”

When Elvis was 2, his father Vernon was sentenced to three years at the infamous Parchman’s Farm for check forgery. After serving about a year, Vernon returned to his family to find that he’d been virtually supplanted by Elvis as the dominant male. The little boy was the man, just as the man would be the little boy so many years later.

Elvis in Lubbock, where they start playing music young, in 1955.

But, oh how that boy could sing! Coming out of Memphis in 1954, Presley sang and shook those hips because he just had to, man. Raised in the Pentecostal church, which brought musical fervor to Sunday services, Elvis had no control over himself when he performed and just went where the spirit took him. Later in life, he also sang because he had to, and couldn’t control himself, but the definitions had changed.

I was two months old when Elvis released his first No. 1 single “Heartbreak Hotel” in January 1956. When I started buying records at age 8, the British Invasion was the rage and Presley was making corny movies and putting out records like “Do the Clam.” I was into the Kinks, not “The King.”

I wasn’t fully up on Presley’s prowess as a singer until my forties when I got a boxed set of his ‘60s recordings. I’d always heard that Elvis was never the same after the Army (discharged in 1960) and I bought it. But I was delighted to be wrong. Gospel, rock, pop, country, blues- he could sing anything.

A few stir-crazy months into 2020, I just needed to go for a drive, and Memphis was too far so I visited Killeen on purpose for the first and only time. That’s where Elvis lived for six months in 1958 while doing Army basic training at Fort Hood. You have to wonder what it was like to be a 22-year-old Elvis Presley, who had been an international sensation for only two years before he was doing pushups with a drill instructor barking over him.

With his celebrity, Presley could’ve dodged the military, or at least fulfilled his service by performing for the troops. But he chose the G.I. life, though he would never be an ordinary soldier. Put yourself in his army boots.

Thoughts of Private Presley rode shotgun, and his music served as the soundtrack on a glorious September day spent driving around Bell and McLennan Counties. I’ve had more exciting roadtrips and certainly more scenic sojourns (my latest trip to the HEB, for instance) but this pandemic pondering was a blessing for my soul at a most necessary time. There’s no wrong time to be born, it turns out, when it comes to being an Elvis Presley fan.

Most of the country had been in an emotional lockdown before this dynamo sped up rhythm and blues and expanded the range of popular music. Elvis set young America free with swiveling hips, and I got the same feeling of liberation- without ever having to leave the car.

There wasn’t much to see, but a whole lot to feel, at the rented 605 Oakhill Drive residence where Elvis lived with his parents. Gladys passed away from a heart attack in Aug. ’58 at age 46, leaving her son an emotional wreck during his last month at Fort Hood.

Elvis was naturally shy, but he loved his fans- at least the ones not hiding in the bushes or chasing him down the street- so he’d come out from the house each weeknight at 7 p.m. to sign autographs and talk to kids clutching his albums. It was a wonderful scene to imagine, as I sat parked in front.

Eddie Fadal and Elvis. Waco.

Then, as Elvis did almost every weekend for six months, I made the 60-mile drive to 2807 Lasker St. in Waco, where DJ friend Eddie Fadal built an addition to his house for Elvis to escape with girlfriend Anita Wood. (After a recent renovation, it’s available for booking at theelvishouse.com.)

One night, Presley wanted to go to the movies at Waco Hippodrome (still there) to see his friend Nick Adams in No Time For Sergeants. Fadal called the theater owner to let him know they’d have to sneak Elvis in the back, but the word got out and Presley’s black Cadillac was mobbed outside the theater. Elvis’s two-year stint in the army didn’t dampen the frenzy of his fans, and in fact he added new ones with his patriotism and desire to be “one of the boys.” The Presley pack had to settle for milkshakes at the Health Camp.

Elvis Presley at his final performance in Austin at Municipal Auditorium March 28, 1977. Photo by Rick Henson

Elvis Presley was born half-whole, unable to handle the incredible shifts of emotion that come with superstardom. The highs soared like a hundred white doves, but the lows were deeper and colder than well water. He was the first rock star, as his unapologetic fan Eddie Murphy said: “the first guy women just wanted to fuck.” But his only “real” friends were on the payroll.

Elvis helped usher in an era of promiscuity, drugs and groupiedom only to find that unbridled hedonism eventually catches up to you. To him, the game of life was a baseball contest that he was leading 8-0 in the fifth inning, and so he eased up and lost his focus, his intensity. By the ninth inning, he had watched the game slip away.

Perhaps Little Richard said it best after a visit to Graceland during the early ’70s. “He got what he wanted,” Richard said, “but he lost what he had.”

Lucky for us he left what he had, his music. His twin brother, meanwhile, was the ultimate symbol of unrealized potential. Both should inspire us to live a little harder for the moment.