Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History

4 “A Tradition-Conscious Cotton City”: (East) Tupelo, Mississippi, Birthplace of Elvis Presley

87 4 “A Tradition-Conscious Cotton City” (East) Tupelo, Mississippi, Birthplace of Elvis Presley Michael T. Bertrand Elvis Aron Presley was born a little after 4:30 A.M. on January 8, 1935, at the East Tupelo home of his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley. She was a sewing machine operator; he, an eighth grade dropout who at various times worked as a truck driver, painter, sharecropper, and carpenter.1 Contrary to later lore and legend likely concocted by patronizing pundits seeking to comprehend the intense devotion of the singer’s followers and fans, the northeast Mississippi nativity did not include a stable, manger, ox, or ass. In attendance were Vernon (who had risen early to be at his job at five), Minnie Mae and J. D. Presley (Vernon’s mother and father), a midwife, an unnamed friend, and the last arrival, a doctor. Vernon had summoned the general practitioner when Gladys began experiencing complications. Alas, Gladys gave birth to Elvis approximately half an hour after the physician had delivered a stillborn twin (named Jesse Garon). A family member or friend placed the dead child in a shoebox, tied the box with a red ribbon , and buried the cardboard casket the next day in an unmarked grave at nearby Priceville Cemetery. Afterward, no one could remember where the tiny corpse had been buried. (Years later, as an adult, Elvis would drive to Tupelo and spend hours walking through the graveyard searching in vain for the forgotten tomb of the brother he would never forget.) Meanwhile, Gladys and the live infant were taken to the hospital, where the mother sadly learned that she would be incapable of having any further children. Both she and the son who would receive the love and attention meant for a houseful soon returned to the home where he had been born, a selfconstructed two-room shotgun shanty located at 306 Old Saltillo Road. To 88 (East) Tupelo, Mississippi, Birthplace of Elvis Presley add insult to injury, the impoverished Presleys had not been able to pay the fifteen-dollar physician’s fee; the doctor received his recompense from the county. For the boy who eventually would become “King,” it certainly had been an inauspicious beginning.2 Such origins, however, placed Presley’s rise to prominence within a larger and national mythological framework. Albeit well worn, the creedlike chronicle effectively imparted how Elvis had overcome incredible odds to attain tremendous success. He undoubtedly lived out a musical and regional version of the American dream. East Tupelo, the “Bethlehem of Rock ’n’ Roll,” was an essential element in this saga, the proverbial “log cabin” beginnings that gave meaning to the ensuing journey. Like that of Abraham Lincoln, Elvis’s life and career suggested that the circumstances of one’s birth did not necessarily have to limit a person’s ambitions. The less-than-resplendent residence built by Vernon on Old Saltillo served as a reminder that equality of opportunity, not equality of condition, fueled the rags-to-riches subplot that validated the nation’s historical narrative. Accordingly , for countless numbers of people, the American experience has promised possibility; significantly, to many who have admired Presley, it was a promise that Tupelo’s “favorite son” personified and had been able to fulfill.3 In a seemingly begrudging concession to popular tastes, state administrators in Mississippi acknowledged in Presley and his legion of traveling devotees another possibility: the promise of tourism dollars. Statistics at the Figure 4.1. The photomural that greets visitors to the Elvis Presley Birthplace Museum in Tupelo. (Photograph courtesy of Micaela Bertrand.) Michael T. Bertrand 89 conclusion of the twentieth century indicated that tourism and recreation ranked as the third-largest industry in the state (behind agriculture and health care). Economic development officials and legislators, taking note that long-gone native musicians such as Elvis, Robert Johnson, and Jimmie Rodgers continued to fascinate people the world over, eventually concluded that the state’s musical heritage represented Mississippi’s next great cash crop. Many proponents no doubt realized that the blues, country, and rock ’n’ roll had roots buried deep in the state’s soil; less apparent, perhaps, was the irony that events and conditions associated with Mississippi’s first and greatest cash crop, cotton, had been responsible for creating the economic and political powerlessness that privileged music as one of the few forms of expression available to otherwise voiceless working-class black and white...