Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley was born in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi, US. Elvis Presley's background is described as White American; Southern working poor. Growing up, the family was in poverty — his identical twin was stillborn; his father served eight months for check forgery and the family lost the house his father had built. Born in a two-room shotgun house; his mother could afford the guitar, not the bicycle.

Born

1935 · Tupelo, Mississippi, US

Roots

White American; Southern working poor

Family

Poverty

His identical twin was stillborn; his father served eight months for check forgery and the family lost the house his father had built.

Education

Humes High School, Memphis; the family lived in public housing

Started with

A $7.75 guitar

From Tupelo Hardware, on his eleventh birthday — the bicycle he wanted cost too much.

Affiliations & societies

None documented.

Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.

The pathway

1. 1946 · age 11
   The guitar$7.75

   Pentecostal church music and Beale Street radio shape the sound.

2. 1953 · age 18
   A truck driver at Sun Records$4

   Pays about four dollars to cut two songs — a gift for his mother, by the studio's telling.

3. 1954 · age 19
   That's All Right

   An off-hours jam Sam Phillips puts on tape; Memphis radio plays it fourteen times in one night.

4. 1955 · age 20
   RCA buys the contract$35K

   A record price for a singer at the time.

5. 1956 · age 21
   Heartbreak Hotel

   Ed Sullivan, filmed from the waist up, and the first of eighteen US number ones.

6. 1968 · age 33
   The Comeback Special

   Black leather, live and stripped down, after a decade lost to formula films.

7. 1977 · age 42
   Dies at Graceland

   Cardiac arrest tied to prescription-drug misuse; the estate becomes one of the most visited homes in America.