Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi. His twin brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn; Elvis grew up an only child, unusually close to his mother Gladys. The family was poor; Vernon Presley went to prison briefly for check fraud. They moved to Memphis when Elvis was thirteen, settling in public housing, and it was there that his musical education began in earnest, the white country music on the radio, the Black gospel and blues he heard on Beale Street and in the churches, the passion that made him feel something burning inside him. He was shy, an outsider, but something happened when he picked up a guitar. In 1954, he walked into Sam Phillips' Sun Records to record a song for his mother.