• what are your thoughts?


  • Elvis Presley

    Elvis' early years were spent living right around the poverty line during the Great Depression. His father, Vernon, was a farm worker. His mother, Gladys, was a sewing machine operator. They lived in a two-room "shotgun" style house that they were only able to afford thanks to a loan from a local dairy farmer. Things got infinitely worse for the Presley family when Vernon was sent to prison for forging an $8 check. During this time, the farmer who loaned the money for the house called in the note and Gladys and Elvis were forced to move.

    Elvis received his first guitar as a birthday present in 1946, just as things were getting even worse for his family financially. Tired of struggling to put food on his family's table, Vernon packed them and their belongings into a truck and left for Memphis, in Elvis' words, "in the middle of the night."

    The family arrived in Memphis almost flat broke and moved into a one room apartment in a poor section of the city, where they would live until after Elvis' first year in high school. At that point, Vernon's application for public housing was accepted and the family relocated to the Lauderdale Courts housing project. While still not ideal living conditions, the move was a major step up from what the family was used to.

    During his high school years, Elvis worked various jobs and, in true rock star fashion, used what money didn't go to help his family to start sowing the early seeds of his unique image. After graduation, he got a job as a truck driver. It was during this time that he decided to stop by the Memphis Recording Service to cut a record as a birthday present for his mother. After several similar recording sessions, he caught the attention of Sam Phillips who introduced him to guitarist Scotty Moore. And the rest, is rock and roll history.


  • @sup wow that was actually pretty interesting