A quick, chaotic tour of Elvis’s Graceland in 1958: “You see that Cadillac in front?”
Just one year after purchasing his Memphis mansion for a little over $100,000 (about $1.1million after inflation), the world’s most famous goddamn rock and roller found himself nearly 5,000 miles away, resigned to a new, temporary reality inside a US army base in Germany… The year was 1958, and Elvis Presley was only 23 years old.
Despite putting his career on hold at the arguable apex of his popularity, Presley was still very much in the media eye in the summer of ‘58, as his new movie King Creole, filmed before he was drafted into military service at the end of 1957, was about to hit cinemas… Reporters eagerly relayed questions to Elvis, and Private Presley usually got around to replying, even to the most innocuous queries, like how he felt about having to shave off his famous sideburns.
“Can’t say I miss ‘em much,” he said. “At any rate, they’re gone now. And they won’t grow back until March 24th, 1960, my gettin’ out date.”
Not that Elvis was counting down the days or anything. After all, he still had an attentive audience in the form of his fellow soldiers. “Some of the guys asked me to sing in the barracks one night,” he said sheepishly. “I gave ‘em ‘Hound Dog’, and they haven’t asked me since. I hope they’re just being polite.”
Presley wasn’t expected to be back in America any time soon, but later that summer, on August 14th, he was informed that his mother, Gladys, who was only 46, had died of a heart attack… Devastated, he flew back to Memphis for the funeral and was consoled by his father, Vernon and grandmother, Minnie Mae, both of whom agreed to accompany him back to Germany – Elvis’s barracks days were over, as he spent the rest of his two-year service living with his dad in off-base accommodations, something the US military agreed to as a means of avoiding any further unwelcome media distractions.
During this period, Presley’s Graceland mansion was left in the hands of a rag-tag group of security workers, upkeep staff, and various uncles and cousins, all caught up in the wave of Elvis’s improbable rise to superstardom. It was up to them not just to protect the house, but to handle the constant influx of curious, snooping visitors and giant bagfuls of fan mail.
Toward the end of 1958, a rumour began swirling that Elvis was too stressed about the whole situation, and that he was going to sell the entire Graceland estate to one of his rocker pals, Jerry Lee Lewis, but Vernon Presley shot those reports down. “There have never been any discussions,” he said. “It’s all a mistake, and I don’t think Mr Lewis could buy it anyway.”
In hopes of getting a better sense of just what the hell was going on at Graceland in the absence of most of the Presleys, syndicated columnist Earl Wilson headed to Memphis in December of 1958, pre-arranging an official visit through Elvis’s manager, Col Tom Parker.
Upon arrival, Wilson was greeted at the gates of Graceland by two men in full, powder blue uniforms with the letters “EP” embroidered on their jackets. One of them, as Wilson soon learned, was Elvis’s uncle, Travis Smith, who led the reporter on a whirlwind tour of the “musician’s Fort Knox.”
“Elvis has got his gold records in this playroom,” Smith informed Wilson. “23 gold records, and two more that ain’t up yet. And some more comin’.” In between the gold record room and another room filled with plaques from Cash Box magazine, there was a small bar. But wasn’t Elvis famously a teetotaler?
“He don’t use hard liquor and he don’t keep none in his house,” Elvis’s uncle explained. “This is a soda fountain bar. You can get about any kind of ice cream soda you want at this bar.”
Strolling around the rest of the sprawling colonial house, Wilson noted the absence of music, replaced with the sounds of “a constantly chattering mynah bird, a jangling telephone answered by a woman housekeeper, and the barks of Elvis’s white poodle Duke,” the latter of whom apparently hadn’t been deemed tough enough to handle the flight across the Atlantic. By contrast, one of the Presley family’s prized Cadillacs was already en route to Germany, per Elvis’s request. Even a lowly army private ought to travel in style.
There were at least five pianos of varying sizes scattered across the Graceland property, several piles of teddy bears sent by fans, and a few choice framed pictures on the walls, mostly of close family. The only one of Elvis’s various rumoured girlfriends honoured with a picture was the singer/actress Anita Wood.
At the end of the tour, Wilson was met outside by a cab driver named Roy Harper, who drew his attention to a car parked conspicuously in front of the house. “You see that Cadillac in front?” Harper said. “That’s where Elvis’s mother, Mizz Presley, stepped outta the car the last time she was out of the house before she died. That car’s not been moved since, and it never will be, either, so Elvis says.”
The car in question, presumably, was the very same 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood that Elvis bought for his mother shortly after the success of his early Sun recordings… Gladys Presley didn’t have a driver’s license, so she never drove, but it’s certainly possible she was a passenger in the famous car for her last ride outside Graceland – the ‘55 Cadi is currently part of the Graceland Museum collection… It is, sadly, no longer parked in front of the house.
