Referred to in The Commercial Appeal in October 1954 as “our homegrown hillbilly singer,” Elvis Presley, recording artist, was first acknowledged in his hometown newspapers a few months earlier, in a July 28 column in the Memphis Press-Scimitar by veteran arts writer Edwin Howard, who reported that “the 19-year-old Humes High School graduate” and “truck driver for Crown Electric Co.” had “signed a recording contract with Sun Record Co. of Memphis, and already has a disk out that promises to be the biggest hit that Sun has ever pressed.”
The five-paragraph story about Elvis and his debut single, “That’s All Right” backed with “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” was the third of five items in Howard’s column. The first item announced the return of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to the Fairgrounds, while the second item was about the fact that a young Memphis actress, Jennie Lee Davis, was apprenticing for the summer at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia.
The Elvis item was illustrated with Presley’s first newspaper portrait: He looks as awkward as a prom date, in a combed but ragged haircut and a narrow bow tie. But even though the singer trekked down to the newspaper office to sit for photographer Jim Reid, he is not quoted in the story. The quotes go to Marion Keisker “of the Sun office,” who observes that both sides of Elvis’ single “seem to be equally popular on popular, folk and race record programs. This boy has something that seems to appeal to everybody.”
Elvis Presley’s first newspaper portrait from 1954.
Elvis’ career would continue to be chronicled by Memphis newspapers over the next two decades and three years with a similar mixture of pride and neglect. On the one hand, the exploits of the city’s favorite son — the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the Hollywood superstar — demanded coverage; on the other, the newspapers that gave Elvis his first significant publicity and that from the start fostered a mutually beneficial relationship with the seemingly shy young singer seemed to take Presley’s presence for granted. Whether protective of his privacy or weary of his primacy, The Commercial Appeal and the Press-Scimitar rarely pursued in-depth interviews or sought to pen definitive portraits of the King. It was as if his remarkable proximity, like that of the Mississippi, did not need to be remarked upon.
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Nevertheless, the newspapers, especially in the early years, did have quite a bit of access to Elvis, who seems to have been a congenial if hardly loquacious subject. So here, culled from the archives, are some selected “Elvis Quotes,” from a few of those interviews and Memphis public appearances.
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In general, Elvis may have spoken more eloquently with his hips and through his songs, but he could, on occasion, turn a phrase.
‘I thought I Was the One would sell better than Heartbreak Hotel’
Elvis Presley dropped by The Commercial Appeal on the night of May 8, 1956, and found an offbeat note. He saw a story that a Canadian radio station was banning his records. “A lot of people like it,” was one of his comments.
On May 8, 1956, “the current teenage heart throb, Elvis Presley,” dropped by The Commercial Appeal’s city room, after returning to Memphis from his debut shows in Las Vegas.
About his Vegas experience, he said: “Man, I really liked Vegas, I’m going back there the first chance I get. I was really nervous the first night because my audience was all adults. No youngsters. But I told myself I was going to rock ‘em — and I did.”
On his guitar playing: “Man, I don’t know a sharp from a flat.”
On the music industry: “It’s a funny business… I thought ‘I Was the One’ would sell better than ‘Heartbreak Hotel.'”
Told that a Nova Scotia radio station had removed his records from their playlist, he said: “The more they try to ban the stuff, man, the more they’ll have to listen… I mean, man, a lot of people like it, man. It’s really hot right now.”
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‘More than anything else I want the folks back home to think right of me’
Robert Johnson of the Memphis Press-Scimitar was in Las Vegas for those Elvis shows. He led his May 4, 1956, report with these words: “Country boy in high cotton. That’s Elvis Presley today.” At a diner where Elvis ate “canteloupe and ice cream” for a 4:30 p.m. “breakfast,” the singer shared some thoughts.
On what Johnson characterized as the “bedlam!” of the “laughing, shouting, idolatrous mob” of women fans who “swarmed” the singer and “shredded” his shirt after his show: “Honestly, I love it. They’re the ones who like me, and they’re just trying to show it… It wasn’t as bad as some of the times. Like when they threw rocks through the bus windows so they could grab and try to get autographs. The roughest was in Texas. After my shirt went I got scratched all over my back, and somebody raked me under the arm. It hurt.”
On his vices, if any: “I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. Never touched a drop of liquor in my life and don’t intend to… I guess I enjoy dating more than anything. Is that wrong? I think I’d be crazy if I didn’t. I like to take a girl out and look around and have fun.”
On what music he likes, “other than his own”: “All kinds. I like Crosby, Como, Sinatra, all the big ones. They had to be good to get there. I’ve always been kind of partial to Dean Martin. I like the Four Lads. And I’m real partial to good religious quartets.”
On his wants and worries: “More than anything else I want the folks back home to think right of me. Just because I managed to do a little something, I don’t want anyone back home to think I got the big head.”
ELVIS PRESLEY IN TUPELO: Touring the Mississippi town where the King was born
‘If I had to stand still and sing, I’d be lost’
Elvis Presley leaves Memphis’ Union Station early March 7, 1960. A crowd of 200 waited in the cold to see Elvis safely home from his stint in the Army. He arrived via private rail car on Southern Railway’s Tennessean about 7:45 a.m. After speaking with fans, he hopped in Insp. Fred Woodward’s police car and was driven to Graceland escorted by city police, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers.
On March 7, 1960, Elvis returned by train to Memphis after two years in the Army — he “came home a hero today,” in the words of reporter Bill E. Burk of the Press-Scimitar — and held a press conference at Graceland. He also talked to Burk on the train, before the press conference.
Asked if he was too old to rock ‘n’ roll (he was 25), he said: “Man, I’m not that old yet. I’m not feeble. I can still move around.”
Asked if he planned to wiggle his hips when he returned to performing: “I’m gonna sing and I’ll let the shaking come naturally. If I had to stand still and sing, I’d be lost. I can’t get any feeling that way.”
On his service: “I’m kind of proud of this uniform. If I weren’t, I’d not be wearing it now.”
On what he read while stationed in Germany: “I read Mad magazine a lot. Other than that, I read Western novels, some magazines. No movie magazines, though.”
On his post-Army career: “I really don’t know what’s ahead. I’m not exactly worried, but I’m not sure of myself, either.”
He added: “My real ambition is to develop as an actor. It’s been said I want to pattern myself after Frank Sinatra. That’s not true. While Mr. Sinatra as an actor is to be admired, I wouldn’t want to pattern myself after him. I want to do it my own way, using my own techniques and styles.”
On what he missed about his home: “I missed everything about Memphis. You name it, I missed it.”
‘I like to work in California but when a picture is over I get out of there’
On Feb. 25, 1961, Elvis — the “onetime truck driver who has made millions,” per the Press-Scimitar — was honored during a luncheon at the Hotel Claridge on North Main (which now houses private residences). He held a press conference after the lunch.
Asked “How’s your love life?,” Elvis said: “It hasn’t progressed any. It’s about like it was. I’ll let you know if anything new comes up. I couldn’t hide it anyway.”
On his new enthusiasms: “I break boards for exercise sometimes.”
Also: “A cigar once in a while, rarely, only when the Colonel gives me one.” (The reference, of course, is to his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.)
On coming back home: “I like to work in California but when a picture is over I get out of there. I’m from Tupelo. The same old crowd I was raised with is still there, living in the same houses.” (This apparently was a comforting thought, not a criticism.)
‘AT HOME WITH ELVIS PRESLEY’: The King shared glimpse into his life and Graceland in 1965
‘I do date Ann-Margret some’
In 1963, Edwin Howard of the Memphis Press-Scimitar traveled to Hollywood, to visit the set of Elvis’ feature film, “Kissin’ Cousins,” in which the King plays identical twins (a brunet Air Force officer and a blond hillbilly). The headline was unusually pensive for a Presley report: “‘You Grow Old,’ Elvis Philosophizes – He Tells of Busy Life.” Indeed, Elvis sounds somewhat weary of the movie musical treadmill. If he still hoped “to develop as an actor,” he apparently decided the set of “Kissin’ Cousins” was not the place to discuss that ambition.
On being cast as twins: “Say, have you seen the blond wig I wear in this picture?… It’s awful. The first day they put it on me I wouldn’t come out of the dressing room for an hour. I finally called the Colonel in and said, ‘Colonel, I‘m not comin’ out in this thing.’ But of course I finally had to.”
On moviemaking: “You get a little older and you get a little more adjusted to it. It gets to be just a job. I guess the biggest thing is the mental strain, trying to remember your lines and look your best, and all that.”
Any recreation? “I don’t have much time for anything else while I’m working. We’re on a pretty tight schedule with this picture. Work pretty late every night. The fellows and I play a little football. On Sunday afternoons we usually go over to Valley Junior College, not far from the house I’m leasing in Bel Air, and play a while. That’s about all the recreation I have time for.”
Well, not exactly: “I do date Ann-Margret some.”
‘I can never forget the longing to be someone’
Elvis Presley at his piano inside Graceland in this 1965 photograph. Elvis had misgivings about allowing pictures to be made inside his home. “It’s not that I don’t want pictures,” he said. “You know what I mean. Some people might think I am looking for publicity or trying to exploit my home. I certainly don’t want anyone to think that.”
Ann-Margret was mentioned again when reporter James Kingsley of The Commercial Appeal visited Elvis at Graceland for a profile that appeared March 7, 1965, in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine section, Mid-South. “There’s a first time for everything, and The Commercial Appeal has always been nice to me,” Elvis said, explaining why he let the newspaper into his home. (Also, Kinglsey was a fellow Tupelonian who had known Elvis since “grade school days.”) The story was probably the most in-depth Elvis portrait the newspaper produced.
On his childhood: “We were broke, man, broke. I remember we left Tupelo overnight. Dad packed all our belongings in boxes and put them on the top and in the trunk of a 1939 Plymouth. We just headed to Memphis. Things had to be better.”
On growing up poor: “I can never forget the longing to be someone. I guess if you are poor you always think bigger and want more than those who have everything when they are born… So our dreams and ambitions could be much greater because we had so much farther to go than anyone else.”
On marriage plans: “I pray that some day I will find the right girl and that we can get married and raise a little Elvis Jr., maybe without the spotlight always being focused on us. I would name my first daughter Gladys, after my mother.” (In fact, this story appeared two years after Elvis had moved Priscilla Beaulieu — 10 years his junior — into Graceland. The couple married in 1967, and had their first and only child — named Lisa Marie, not Gladys — in 1968.)
On Ann-Margret: “How are you supposed to act or sing with her around?”
‘It all started right here in Memphis for me’
In 1969, Elvis recorded in Memphis for the first time since the Sun era, cutting numerous now classic tracks at Chips Moman’s American Sound Studio. Characterized by reporter James Kingsley as “the only recording-session interview with Elvis allowed by RCA-Victor since he joined their roster in the 1950s,” the story ran Jan. 23.
On recording in his hometown: “It all started right here in Memphis for me, man, and it feels so good working in this studio.
“As far as I’m concerned, Memphis is the place. I can do a session at home without having to travel to other parts of the country, and the musicians here are fantastic. We have some hits, don’t we Chips?” (Elvis was correct: The January sessions yielded “Suspicious Minds,” “In the Ghetto” and “Rubberneckin’.”)
‘My dreams have come true a hundred times over’
Elvis Presley is reflected in the roof of his automobile as he looks into the camera after attending a luncheon Jan. 16, 1971, at what was then the Holiday Inn Rivermont. The luncheon was part of the festivities surrounding his being named one of the Jaycees of America’s Ten Outstanding Young Men in America.
On Jan. 16, 1971, Elvis was named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of America by the Jaycees, in a ceremony at the Holiday Inn-Rivermont (which has since been converted into condominiums). Among those in attendance were future President of the United States George H.W. Bush (then, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) and Ron Ziegler, Press Secretary to then-President Richard Nixon. (“Li’l Abner” cartoonist Al Capp — whose comic strip lampooned Elvis with a character named “Hawg McCall” — was scheduled to be the master of ceremonies, but he “did not appear,” according to The Commercial Appeal.) According to the newspapers, as Elvis made his remarks to the Jaycees, “tears rushed to his eyes.”
Said Elvis: “I’ve always been a dreamer. When I was young I used to read comic books and go to movies, and I was the hero. My dreams have come true a hundred times over.”
‘It never ceases to amaze me’
On July 5, 1976, Elvis performed at the Mid-South Coliseum — 22 years to the day after he recorded his debut single at Sun. The sold-out show was his final Memphis concert. He died on Aug. 16, 1977, at the age of 42.
As if remembering the 1960 press conference in which he was asked if he had grown too old to rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis made this song introduction during the show: “This is the first song I ever recorded here, called ‘That’s All Right.’ I’ve had some people say, ‘Well, you can’t do that song anymore.’ Well, by God, you just watch me.”
Women screamed, and Elvis said: “It never ceases to amaze me.”