Elvis Presley Homesite Preserves Legend’s Tupelo History
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Before the adoring crowds, before the swaying hips, before Graceland, before there was a “King,” there was Tupelo. Elvis Presley was born in the northeast Mississippi city on Jan. 8, 1935, in a two-room home that his father built for $180. Each year, more than 80,000 people visit the home, which Elvis once remarked could fit inside his living room at Graceland. The house nearly passed into obscurity in the 1950s when the land came up for sale. But Elvis happened to be stopping through in 1956 to play a concert at the fair, and he decided to donate the proceeds of his show to preserve his boyhood home and save the 15-acre plot from development.
“I’m sure he wasn’t thinking in 1956 that it was going to be what it is today, but he had foresight enough to not want to see that little shack that he was born in be torn down,” says Linda Elliff, director of sales for the Tupelo Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Now, though, it is probably one of the most popular attractions in the state of Mississippi.”
The property has evolved over the years, with the restoration of the house completed by the Tupelo Garden Club before Elvis’s death, the construction of a meditation chapel in 1979 and the opening of a museum in 1992.
Today, the site also includes the fully restored Assembly of God church that Elvis attended with his family as a little boy, a 60-foot story wall covered with accounts written by people who knew Elvis in Tupelo and a replica of the vehicle that Vernon Presley took his family to Memphis in when Elvis was 13 years old.
“People have really enjoyed seeing the early life of Elvis Presley because nobody has ever told that story before,” says Dick Guyton, executive director of the Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation, which runs the park. “That’s what we’re all about. We let Graceland take care of the famous entertainer Elvis, and we portray to the fans his early years, his beginning, and how those 13 years in Tupelo affected the rest of his life.”
Aside from being shaped by the culture of Tupelo in the 1930s, Elvis received his earliest introduction to music in the city. The Presleys were quite poor, and they were forced to leave the home Vernon had built and bounce around east Tupelo, living with relatives or renting inexpensively. Their wanderings took them for a time to a predominantly black neighborhood, and it was there that Elvis was exposed to rhythm and blues and black gospel music. He also fell under the influence of gospel at his church, where his pastor taught him a few chords on the guitar. And he discovered country music by listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio.
Elvis’ mother bought him his first guitar at the Tupelo Hardware Store, which is still in business and still selling guitars.
“There are fans of Elvis who are avid and want his whole story, and for years, all they could get was the entertainer Elvis, because the birthplace had not developed to the point that it was really worth coming to Tupelo,” Guyton says. “But now we tell that story, and I think that’s another reason that people are going to continue to come down here: because they want to know they whole story. They want to know why he turned out to be the most famous entertainer of all time, and it was because of those formative years here in Tupelo.”
Story by Michaela Jackson
