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Elvis Presley · S1 E6
The $3.98 Guitar
Elvis wanted a rifle for his birthday. His mother talked him into a guitar instead. The world got lucky
Elvis Presley turns eleven and asks his parents for a rifle. Gladys says absolutely not, walks him to the Tupelo Hardware Company, and buys him a guitar for $7.75 instead.
"Love Me Tender" (Elvis Presley, live on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1956). Based on a Civil War folk song called 'Aura Lee,' this is Elvis at his most stripped-back: just a boy and a guitar. Every note traces back to a $7.75 instrument from a hardware store in Tupelo and a mother who said no to a rifle.
Love Me Tender, Elvis Presley (1956)
The melody is borrowed from 'Aura Lee,' written in 1861, and Elvis barely plays three chords underneath it. That simplicity is the entire point. Elvis was never a great guitar player, and he knew it. What he had was the ability to make a simple song feel like the most intimate thing you've ever heard. Listen for how bare the arrangement is: just acoustic guitar and voice, no production tricks. It sounds like someone playing in their living room because that's exactly where it started.
Sources
Guralnick, Peter. "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley." Little, Brown, 1994.
Jorgensen, Ernst. "Elvis Presley: A Life in Music." St. Martin's Press, 1998.
TAP TO REVEAL: Where exactly was Elvis' first guitar purchased?
Three Chords and the Truth
Elvis is not a natural guitarist. He learns a handful of basic chords from his uncle Vester Presley and from Pastor Frank Smith at the Assembly of God church. He never gets much better. But he plays constantly, carrying the guitar to school, strumming on the steps of Lauderdale Courts, and singing to anyone who will listen. The instrument isn't a tool for virtuosity. It's a tool for getting people to pay attention.
Sources
Guralnick, Peter. "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley." Little, Brown, 1994.
“I took the guitar to school and I'd play and sing during lunchtime. They'd say, 'Elvis, why don't you bring your guitar?' It was the only time I was popular.”
— Elvis Presley, quoted in Peter Guralnick, "Last Train to Memphis," Little, Brown, 1994
The Outsider at Humes High
At L.C. Humes High School in Memphis, Elvis is the quiet kid from the wrong side of town who dresses weird and keeps to himself. He wears his hair long with sideburns when every other boy has a crew cut. He buys pink and black shirts from Lansky Brothers when everyone else wears white. The guitar makes him visible for the first time, and in his senior year he performs at a school talent show that finally changes how his classmates see him.
Sources
Guralnick, Peter. "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley." Little, Brown, 1994.
Mason, Bobbie Ann. "Elvis Presley: A Life." Penguin, 2003.
Old Shep, Elvis Presley (1956)
The song Elvis performed at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show at age ten, standing on a chair to reach the microphone. He recorded this studio version for RCA in 1956, but the emotional core is the same: a sentimental country ballad about a boy and his dog, sung by someone who learned to connect with an audience before he had any idea what a career in music looked like.
Old Shep, Elvis Presley (1956)
"When I was a lad and Old Shep was a pup." Read the lyrics while you listen. Red Foley wrote this tearjerker in 1933, and it was the first song Elvis ever performed in public. The ten-year-old who stood on a chair and sang it to a county fair audience was the same performer who would later bring sixty million people to their feet. The delivery is simpler, but the instinct to make people feel something is already fully formed.
The Guitar Years: The File
What did Elvis do at his senior year talent show at Humes High that shocked his classmates?
It's the summer of 1953, and a newly graduated Elvis Presley drives a truck for Crown Electric Company during the day. But on his lunch break, he keeps driving past a small storefront on Union Avenue called Memphis Recording Service. Next season: the $3.98 that started everything.
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To be continued
Season 2: Sun Records
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