Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935 at around 4:35 a.m. in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon Presley, a truck driver, and Gladys Love Smith, a sewing machine operator. Vernon Presley is described as "taciturn to the point of sullenness" and as "a weakling, a malingerer, always averse to work and responsibility," whereas his mother, Gladys, was "voluble, lively, full of spunk." Priscilla Presley describes her as "a surreptitious drinker and alcoholic." When she was angry, "she cussed like a sailor." Presley's twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was stillborn, thus leaving him to grow up as an only child. Jesse Garon Presley was buried in a shoebox in an unmarked grave, in Priceville Cemetery in Tupelo. In the evening of April 5, 1936, Elvis survived the forth dealiest tornado in US history in the Tupelo community that took 233 lives.
Neither Gladys nor Vernon had finished elementary school. The result was one "menial job after another. One run-down apartment after the next, barely enough money to put food on the table for a family of three." However, Presley's parents were very protective of their only surviving child. The little boy "grew up a loved and precious child. He was, everyone agreed, unusually close to his mother." "Much has been written about the unusually close relationship between Elvis and his mother, often with the suggestion of something unhealthy afoot," because "Elvis, sole survivor of a pair of twins delivered by Gladys, would reap the love and attention normally given two boys." His mother "worshipped him," said a neighbor, "from the day he was born." Elvis himself said, "My mama never let me out of her sight. I couldn't go down to the creek with the other kids."
In 1938, when Presley was three years old, his father was convicted of forgery. Vernon, Gladys's brother Travis Smith, and Luther Gable went to prison for altering a check from Orville Bean, Vernon's boss, from $3 to $8 and then cashing it at a local bank. Vernon was sentenced to three years at Mississippi State Penitentiary. Though Vernon was released after serving eight months, this event deeply influenced the life of the young family. During her husband's absence, Gladys lost the house and was forced to move in briefly with her in-laws next door. The Presley family lived just above the poverty line during their years in East Tupelo.
In 1941 Presley started school at the East Tupelo Consolidated. There he seems to have been an outsider. His few friends relate that he was separate from any crowd and did not belong to any "gang", but, according to his teachers, he was a sweet and average student, and he loved comic books. In 1943 Vernon moved to Memphis, where he found work and stayed throughout the war, coming home only on weekends.
In her book, Elvis and Gladys, Elaine Dundy cites many examples of young Presley, between the ages of eight and ten, going off to town on Saturday afternoons to listen to local musicians, attend radio shows or hang out at theaters. In January 1945 Gladys took Elvis shopping for a birthday present at Tupelo Hardware. She bought him his first guitar, in lieu of a bike and rifle, for $12.75.
In 1946 Presley started at a new school, Milam, which went from grades 5 through 9, but in 1948 the family left Tupelo, moving 110 miles northwest to Memphis, Tennessee. Here, too, the thirteen-year-old lived in the city's poorer section of town and attended a Pentecostal church. At this time, he was very much influenced by the Memphis blues music and the gospel sung at his church. His only reason for waking up in the morning was to give those he deemed "squares" a "haircut on the neckline."
In his teens Presley was still a very shy person, a "kid who had spent scarcely a night away from home in his nineteen years." He was teased by his fellow classmates who threw "things at him - rotten fruit and stuff - because he was different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama's boy." He is even said to have been cornered in the bathroom of his school by a couple of boys with scissors, but was rescued by upperclassman Red West.
Presley entered Humes High School in Memphis and worked at the school library and after school at Loew's State Theatre. In 1951 he enrolled in the school's ROTC unit and tried unsuccessfully to qualify for the high school football team, (the coach supposedly cut him from the team for not trimming his sideburns and ducktail). He spent his spare time around the African-American section of Memphis, especially on Beale Street. In 1953 he graduated from Humes, majoring in History, English, and Shop.
After graduation Presley worked at the Parker Machinists Shop, and, after working at the Precision Tool Company with his father, worked for the Crown Electric Company driving a truck. Here he began wearing his hair in his signature pompadour style.
His mother Gladys was so proud of her son, that, years later, she "would get up early in the morning to run off the fans so Elvis could sleep". She was frightened of Elvis being hurt: "She knew her boy, and she knew he could take care of himself, but what if some crazy man came after him with a gun? she said... tears streaming down her face."
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