A Star Is Born: Elvis Presley Arrives in Tupelo
On January 8, 1935, Elvis Aaron Presley was born in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi — the surviving twin who would grow up to shake the world of music.
Shortly before dawn on January 8, 1935, in a two-room house in East Tupelo, Mississippi, Gladys Presley gave birth to twin boys. The first, Jessie Garon, was stillborn. The second, Elvis Aaron, was born alive and healthy — and he would grow up to become the most famous singer on the planet.
The house was a shotgun shack, so narrow a shot fired through the front door could supposedly fly straight out the back. It sat on Old Saltillo Road, and it had been built by Elvis's father, Vernon, then just 18, with help from his own brother and father, for a family that had almost nothing. These were the depths of the Great Depression. The Presleys relied on neighbors and government food assistance; they could barely pay the doctor who delivered the twins. Elvis would be their only child, the center of a close, poor, churchgoing family.
Music found him early. At the family's Assembly of God church, gospel singing and preaching registered deeply with the boy. At ten, he sang "Old Shep" at a talent contest at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair, carried to the microphone on a chair because he was too small to reach it, and won fifth prize. He got his first guitar at eleven. The family moved to Memphis in 1948, when he was thirteen, and there the shy teenager absorbed everything the city's radio played: Black gospel and blues, country, pop.
In 1954, the 19-year-old walked into Sun Studio in Memphis, reportedly to cut a personal record as a gift for his mother. Producer Sam Phillips heard something in his voice — a white kid who sang Black music as if it were his native tongue — and paired him with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. The session that produced "That's All Right" fused country and rhythm and blues into something the world would call rock and roll. A year later, manager Colonel Tom Parker arranged the sale of Elvis's contract to RCA Records for $35,000, then a record sum. In 1956, "Heartbreak Hotel" became his first number-one hit, and the shy boy from Tupelo became, almost overnight, the King.
What began in a 300-square-foot shack in Mississippi changed popular music forever. Elvis sold more records than anyone before him, fused the sounds of segregated America into one irresistible voice, and became the first true global pop star. Decades after his death, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The little house in Tupelo still stands, visited by fans from every corner of the earth.
Photo: Elvis Presley's birthplace house in Tupelo, Mississippi, still standing as a museum, by Bubba73 (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
