Where did Elvis grow up?
Maybe the question should be: Did he ever grow up?
As Priscilla Presley commented while in Memphis in October, her former husband was basically “a kid at heart.”
“My dad loved to have fun and he loved everybody else to have fun with him,” wrote Lisa Marie Presley in “From Here to the Great Unknown,” the recently released memoir that was completed by her daughter (Elvis’ granddaughter), actress Riley Keough.
But, playfulness aside: Where did Elvis grow up?
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Elvis essentially grew up in his birth state, Mississippi. Memphis is the city most closely identified with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, thanks in large part to its status as the location of Elvis’ Graceland estate; but by the time the Presleys relocated from Tupelo to 370 Washington (their first address here) in November 1948, Elvis was 13 years old — “a loved and precious child” who already was “drawn to music in a way that he couldn’t fully express,” according to writer Peter Guralnick, in “Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley,” the first volume of his two-book Elvis biography.
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So, Elvis, it seems safe to say, “grew up” in Mississippi. As the website of the “Elvis Presley Birthplace” states: “Elvis grew up in Tupelo surrounded by his extended family including his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.”
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Certainly his years at Memphis’ Humes High School were formative, but whatever his shyness, however unremarkable his impact as a student, he was a teenager already on the path to becoming the world-famous Elvis.
In fact, he was more or less the same age as the young people who would become his biggest fans when he recorded his first Sun single six years later.