ELVIS PRESLEY HOME PAGE

Elvis Presley had a profound impact on Western popular culture. He sang, he acted, he shook his famous hips and reduced a generation of female fans to hysterics. He bought big cars and planes and gave away several fortunes even as his career ebbed and flowed. He built a palatial home, Graceland, whose name is as famous as his and which has become like a national shrine to some of his most devoted fans, on par with Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. And finally, when he died on August 16, 1977, Elvis left a wake of impersonators and persistent rumors that "The King" was not dead; was just taking a little time off or, if the tabloids are to be believed, was abducted by aliens and taking his act out on the biggest road of them all.

Elvis Aron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi. Elvis's twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, leaving Vernon and Gladys Presley to raise their son as an only child. Vernon struggled to make ends meet, but a large extended family of grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles provided assistance and showered young Elvis with an onordinate amount of attention. Elvis liked the spotlight early on, and was futher encouraged to make a name for himself by his early heroes, the traveling preachers and black bluemen whose words and music Elvis absorbed as hungrily as he did Gladys's southern cooking. A move with his family to Memphis, Tennessee brought Elvis into even closer contact with the blues and gospel music he loved, and by the time he guaduated from high school in 1953, he knew he wanted a career as a singer.