Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was born just over a half-hour following the birth of a stillborn twin brother, in a two room house in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1935. His father Vernon earned what little living he made doing odd jobs and demonstrating a decided lack of motivation. Elvis knew the pinch of hunger as a child and his mother was frequently forced to accept charity from churches, friends, and the government. When Vernon went to jail for eight months for attempting to pass an altered check the family was forced to move in with relatives. Elvis was in grade school in 1945 when his teachers recognized his singing talent during the morning prayers which were prevalent in the day.
Elvis made his first public singing performance after his teachers urged him to enter a singing contest, in which he later said he placed fifth. He received a guitar the same year and learned some rudimentary chords. The following year, with his family then living in a mostly black neighborhood, Elvis began to develop a taste for the hillbilly music which he learned to play and sing, though when he did so at school he was often sneered at by his fellow students. The sneers extended to bullying. Among his few friends was the brother of hillbilly singer Mississippi Slim, who had Elvis play on his radio program in Tupelo.
When the Presley’s relocated to Memphis in 1948 they stayed in rooming houses until finally receiving a government housing two bedroom apartment. In 1950 Elvis took a job as a theatre usher, and he continued playing with other like-minded young musicians. Elvis took a series of jobs in Memphis, his income going to flashy clothes that he saw in shop windows in Beale Street, the heart of blues music in Memphis. By the mid-fifties he had overcome much of his shyness over performing publicly and had even made some early recordings, though nothing had caught on with the public. That changed when he recorded That’s All Right in July 1954.
Elvis Presley’s rise from that point was meteoric. By the end of the decade he was one of the most famous Americans in the country, appearing on stage, on television, and in motion pictures. His record sales skyrocketed as did sales of other Elvis merchandise, which according to the Wall Street Journal was more than $22 million in 1957 alone. After just one year at RCA his records accounted for 50% of the company’s total sales. After military service in the late 1950s Elvis returned to the business of recording and performing, though mostly on television and in the motion pictures which he made. He never achieved the massive response he had generated prior to his military service.
Elvis was generous with friends and family all of his life, as well as with the members of his large entourage. He still managed to leave a sizable estate, which has continued to earn large sums decades after his death. In the early 21st century there were over 15,000 licensed Elvis products which generated income for his estate, and for five consecutive years he topped Forbes list of the most income generated by a deceased celebrity. Graceland, his mansion outside of Memphis, is visited by hundreds of thousands of fans annually, many of whom make the trip to nearby Tupelo, where they can also visit the shotgun shack where he was born, and was once too poor to continue to live there.