Last Train to Memphis

by Peter Guralnick

  Some guys from Tupelo showed up at the same performance, and Elvis recalled them, too, riding on a train with George sometime later. “We’d be going through some little country town, and he’d say, ‘Shit, this reminds me of Tupelo.’ He said, ‘You remember when we were in San Francisco, George, and those guys came up to us, and all they wanted to talk about was Tupelo? They kept saying, “Elvis, remember back in Tupelo?” And all I was thinking was, “Fuck Tupelo. I want to forget about Tupelo.” ’ He wasn’t putting down Tupelo. He just meant he was glad to get out. Tupelo was a little small town where there really wasn’t much to do. Memphis was where everything had happened for him.”

  BACK HOME IN MEMPHIS the same overhanging miasma continued to prevail. In the midst of public celebration an unsettling sense of spiritual malaise would overtake him, which he might share, occasionally, with friends or reveal, almost despite himself, in public statements. After the Easter service at First Assembly, for example, which he had proudly attended with Yvonne Lime, he had sought out the Reverend Hamill. “He said, ‘Pastor, I am the most miserable young man you have ever seen. I have got more money than I can ever spend. I have thousands of fans out there, and I have a lot of people who call themselves my friends, but I am miserable. I am not doing a lot of things that you taught me, and I am doing some things that you taught me not to do.’ ” To Photoplay magazine he announced, in what the magazine described as a state of dejection and what might more accurately be seen as a moment of near-desperation: “I never expected to be anybody important. Maybe I’m not now, but whatever I am, whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me. Some people I know can’t figure out how Elvis Presley happened. I don’t blame them for wondering that. Sometimes I wonder myself…. But no matter what I do, I don’t forget about God. I feel he’s watching every move I make. And in a way it’s good for me. I’ll never feel comfortable taking a strong drink, and I’ll never feel easy smoking a cigarette. I just don’t think those things are right for me…. I just want to let a few people know that the way I live is by doing what I think God wants me to. I want someone to understand.”

  He visited Lansky’s one night at 9:00 or 10:00, “and we had a big feast for him,” said Guy Lansky. “I went down to the deli to pick up corn beef and salami, we had a beautiful spread for him, and all he wanted was potato salad. He reached over and got that quart of potato salad and said, ‘That’s all I’m going to eat.’ And I said, ‘How about a corn beef sandwich, Elvis?’ And he said, ‘No, Mr. Lansky, this is all I want. Give the rest to Lamar. He’s my garbage disposal.’ He got a big laugh out of that, but Lamar didn’t take it so pleasantly. There were still some customers in the store, and Elvis said, ‘Give them anything they want’—I mean, up to a certain limit. I said, ‘You’re on, Elvis. Whatever they want.’ Man, they couldn’t get over it, the customers—and of course it was mostly black customers in Lansky’s at that time—but for his entourage he didn’t buy them anything, he never bought them anything. I couldn’t figure that one out.”

  On December 6 he attended the WDIA Goodwill Revue once again. His appearance didn’t cause the commotion that it had the year before, but he had his picture taken with Little Junior Parker (the originator of “Mystery Train”) and Bobby “Blue” Bland, and he was quoted in the paper as saying that this music was “the real thing…. Right from the heart.” You couldn’t beat it, he said, watching from the wings and smiling and swaying to the music. “The audience shouted in time to the solid rhythm,” reported the paper. “ ‘Man,’ grinned Elvis, ‘what about that!’ ”

  It was a strangely desultory Christmas. The tree was taken down out of storage, Elvis distributed a considerable amount of money to local charities as well as the United Fund and the March of Dimes, the Christmas album reached the number-one chart position even as it encountered vicious criticism (from Irving Berlin, among others) for what was seen as a desecration of the traditional Christmas spirit. The Colonel told him he had two more movies definitely lined up upon the completion of the new Hal Wallis production, a specially tailored adaptation of the Harold Robbins novel A Stone for Danny Fisher. The first of the outside projects was an unnamed picture for Twentieth Century Fox, the other a Hank Williams biopic for MGM—both, if he bothered to read the trades, at enormous sums of money—but he doubted somehow that either was ever going to get made.

  About ten days before Christmas he started getting serious pitches from the army, the navy, and the air force about what they could do for him. They had suggestions for various kinds of deals—the navy proposed an “Elvis Presley company” that could be specially trained, and the air force offered a deal where he would merely tour recruiting centers around the country—but when he and the Colonel talked it over, he could see that the Colonel was right once again, it would merely serve to inflame public opinion and create a vicious backlash if he did not go in and receive the same treatment as every other citizen.

  Then, on December 19, he got word informally from Milton Bowers, chairman of the draft board since 1943 and former president of the Memphis School Board, that his induction notice was ready and that he could simply stop by the draft board to pick it up. Bowers didn’t want to put it in the mail, he said, for fear that the news would be leaked by someone who saw the letter addressed in an official Selective Service envelope.

  Elvis dropped in at the Sun studio the next day, just after picking up his notice, and announced cheerfully, “Hey, I’m going in,” but with George and Cliff and the other guys he was somewhat more revealing. “We were at Graceland,” said George, “and I walked in. First thing he did was hand me the note. I said, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘Read it.’ And I opened it up, and it said: ‘GREETINGS.’ I said, ‘Oh no, Elvis.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been drafted.’ He was devastated—just down, depressed. I said, ‘Damn, what are we going to do?’ He said, ‘Man, I don’t know.’ He said, ‘The Colonel says we might could get a deferment to make King Creole, but he says I probably got to go.’ I said, ‘Well, man, there’s no war going on’—we were trying to make him feel better, me and Cliff and Arthur, and Gene. Cliff said, ‘Wait a minute, Elvis, they’ll never take you. You’re too big! You’re the biggest thing in show biz. They won’t let them take you, the kids won’t let them. Elvis, just think’—and Cliff’s a real quick thinker, and he said, he immediately zeroed in, ‘Elvis, you’re paying the government ten million dollars a year in taxes, you know there’s no war going on. It’s all—’ And so he kind of got Elvis’ mind off it, but the last thing Elvis said when he got on the damn bus to go in the army was, ‘Fuck Cliff Gleaves!’ ”

  James Page, a Press-Scimitar reporter, caught up with him well after midnight as he was coming in from a night on the town. There were dozens of fans still at the gate maintaining a mournful vigil when Elvis roared up in his Continental. He professed himself relieved to have the situation finally resolved and expressed sincere feelings of gratitude for “what this country has given me. And now I’m ready to return a little. It’s the only adult way to look at it.”

  “Would you like to go into Special Services?”

  “I want to go where I can do the best job.”

  “What about your movie contracts?”

  “Don’t know—just don’t know.”

  “How about a look at your draft notice?”

  Elvis grinned sheepishly: “Man, I don’t know what I did with it.”

  The search was on.

  “Maybe in the kitchen,” someone suggested. It wasn’t.

  “Last time I saw it, it was right there,” said Elvis and pointed to a place in the front hall. No notice.

  Finally: “Here’s the envelope—the notice must be in my parents’ bedroom.”

  One thing sure: There is a notice for Elvis and “I’ll do what I have to—like any American boy.”

  He left for Nashville that same night to deliver his Christmas present to the Colonel. It was a little red Isetta sports car, and he loaded it onto a rented truck, which he
drove, with Lamar and Cliff following in the Lincoln. They arrived at the Colonel’s home in Madison early the next morning, but there was already a gang of reporters and photographers waiting. He and the Colonel posed for pictures in the car. “It is snug,” observed Parker. “It is only a small, small way of showing my feelings for you,” replied Elvis on the record. “Now isn’t he a sweet kid?” Colonel said to the newspapermen, his eyes “dewing up.” “He could have just sent something in the mail.” In addition, Elvis answered questions about the draft (who knew, he said, he just might reenlist when his hitch was up) and even tried on an army surplus set of fatigues, which a photographer thoughtfully provided and in which he looked exceedingly uncomfortable. “ ‘I guess I’ll be wearing this stuff for real, soon,’ he said, looking ruefully down at the green twill.” Whatever private feelings he had he kept to himself or reserved for the private conference that he and the Colonel had, as per custom, behind closed doors.

  Gordon Stoker came out at the Colonel’s direction to pick up the Jordanaires’ four thousand dollars in Christmas bonuses, and Elvis asked if he’d be going to the Opry that night. “He told me, ‘If I had some kind of clothes, I’d go with you guys. Well, I called Mallernee’s down on Sixth—I happened to know the man who owned the store—and I told them, ‘I’m going to bring Elvis Presley in there to get something to wear down to the Grand Ole Opry tonight, but if any of the salesmen or anyone makes anything over him, he’ll walk right out in the middle of a fitting, so don’t tell anyone he’s coming.’ Anyway, surprisingly, he picked out a tuxedo with a tux shirt, tux tie, even tux shoes. I was shocked. I thought he’d just buy a suit or a sports coat. But that’s what he wore down to the Opry that night.”

  His draft situation was really bugging him, Stoker felt; he still couldn’t understand why the Colonel hadn’t fixed things better, but he didn’t say much about it. At the Opry that night he just walked out onstage and waved and visited with old friends backstage. How were things going? asked T. Tommy Cutrer, who had promoted him in Shreveport and was announcing the Opry now. “He said, ‘It’s lonesome, T.’ I said, ‘How can you talk about that, with thousands of people…’ He said, ‘Well, I can’t go get a hamburger, I can’t go in some little greasy joint, I can’t go water-skiing or shopping’—and he loved to go shopping. By this time he’d dyed his hair and had on makeup, which was strange to me. The only one of the Opry stars that would make up back then was Ferlin Husky, and that was to go onstage. So I said, ‘Cat, why you got that shit on you?’ He said, ‘Well, that’s what the movies want.’ But he never changed a bit, he was always the same.”

  He had his picture taken with old friends and current Opry stars: he and the Colonel posed with the Duke of Paducah and Faron Young and booking agent Hubert Long, and he was pictured with his arm around an absolutely thrilled-looking Brenda Lee (who at thirteen looked no older than ten), with Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Hawkshaw Hawkins, the Wilburn Brothers, even Hank Snow, who seemed to hold no grudge against his onetime protégé even if his feelings toward his former partner were less than mixed. Jimmie Rodgers Snow, too, came by with his fifteen-year-old fiancée to say hello, “and he asked me what I was doing. I said, ‘Nothing special, why?’ And he said, ‘Why don’t you come over to Memphis around the first, we’ll have some fun.’ And I said, ‘Fine.’ ” Then he changed back into the clothes he had worn on the trip over and, according to Gordon Stoker, threw his new tux into a barrel full of stage ropes before setting off on the 230-mile drive back to Memphis.

  By Monday morning the draft board had received a letter from Paramount studio head Y. Frank Freeman requesting a sixty-day deferment for Elvis on the basis of financial hardship: the studio had already spent between $300,000 and $350,000 in preproduction costs for King Creole (formerly Sing, You Sinners) and stood to lose that amount or more if Elvis Presley were not permitted to film it. That was all very well, declared draft board chairman Milton Bowers, the board might very well look favorably upon such a request, but the request had to come from the inductee. On Tuesday, December 24, Elvis wrote to the draft board, explaining that as far as he was concerned he was ready to enter the army immediately, but he was requesting the deferment for Paramount “so these folks will not lose so much money, with all they have done so far.” He concluded by wishing the three board members a merry Christmas. Three days later the request was granted, which the Colonel called “very kind,” adding, “I know of nothing that would prevent his induction when his deferment is up. And I don’t think Elvis would consider making another request, because I know how he feels personally about it.” “I’m glad for the studio’s sake,” Elvis said. “I’m glad they were nice enough to let me make this picture because I think it will be the best one I’ve made.”

  Jimmie Rodgers Snow arrived on the afternoon of New Year’s Day, and Lamar picked him up at the airport. Snow had been undergoing something of a spiritual crisis of late, brought on by his recognition of an increasing dependence on pills and alcohol, but he and Elvis just picked up where they had left off a year and a half before. “When I first arrived there was somebody at the door getting his signature on a special delivery. He just tossed it on the couch, didn’t even open it until much later when he said, ‘Oh yeah, my gold record.’

  “He introduced me to all his friends, and we ran around all night and slept all day. When we would come downstairs probably at two or three in the afternoon, his mother would always be there, sitting in the kitchen drinking a beer. He’d go up and kiss her, and we’d go down and shoot pool or sing at the piano, talk about what we were going to do that night, which was either go see his movie, Jailhouse Rock, at the theater with a bunch of girls or go roller-skating, things like that. When we went to the movies, he rented the whole theater, and he’d sit beside me and say, ‘What did you think of me in that scene? How’d I do? Was I flat on that note? Did I hold it too long?’ He was just the same. He used to love for me to imitate Winston Churchill, put a cigar in my mouth and sound just like Churchill—he’d want me to do that for everybody, and he loved it every time. It was nothing for him to be driving down the street at night and all of a sudden put his brakes on, open the car door up, jump out, make a face back at the cars behind him, and get back in and drive off and laugh.

  “Sometimes he’d get serious and sit down at that white piano, and we’d sing gospel songs. And, of course, I’d been a Christian in 1950, ’51, I didn’t stay with it very long but I was being tugged on at that time by God to go into the ministry, get married and give up my career. So we’d get serious, which I didn’t really want to because I was fighting it then, but we’d talk about the Lord and he would voice his feelings, and then we would get off of it and go into fun things.”

  Cliff and Lamar got into a fight that week over a badminton game, and Lamar finally egged Cliff to the point that Cliff hit him over the head with his racket. Mr. Presley was pissed off, and Mrs. Presley got so upset that Elvis had to fire the two of them. He apologized as they were packing, trying to sort out what was theirs and what was his (“Oh, just keep it,” he said of every item), and he told them he was sure that once things had cooled down he could hire them back. It was just that his mama was so nervous with everything that was going on that she couldn’t have that kind of uproar around the house. “She just couldn’t cope with [the idea of] him being gone,” her sister Lillian said. Vernon was tight-lipped about it, but Gladys’ mood was increasingly somber, and her eyes were limpid pools of sadness.

  He asked George to accompany him once again to California, but George had just started a new job deejaying at WHUY out in Millington, so he couldn’t go. He gave Jimmy Snow the script for King Creole, “because he wanted to know if I’d be interested in going out to California with him and maybe do a part in the film. And it was in the bedroom upstairs as I was reading the script that I made my decision, which I told him about the next day. I told him I really appreciated the opportunity. It was something I had wanted to do all my life. ‘But,’ I said, ‘
strange as it may seem, I think I’m going to go back and quit the business and go into the ministry.’ Which he thought was wonderful, he was very complimentary and wished me a lot of luck and anything he could do, just let him know. So that’s what I did.”

  He celebrated his twenty-third birthday on January 8 with a party at home and asked Alan Fortas if he would accompany Gene and him to California. “I was working for my father in the junk business, and Elvis asked me if I thought I could get off for a little while. I said, ‘You know how that is, Elvis. You work for your father, you can do what you want to.’ He said, ‘Good, we leave for California in two days.’ ” At the last minute he took Cliff back, but Lamar remained in the doghouse for the time being, so when they embarked on January 10 it was just Gene, Cliff, and Alan, plus the Colonel, “security chief” Bitsy Mott, Freddy Bienstock, and Tom Diskin. There were huge crowds at every stop, alerted, Alan felt sure, by an intentional leak from the Colonel’s organization. “That was the first time I’d been around the Colonel, and I thought, ‘Man, this guy is tough.’ He was just—he didn’t trust anybody. Didn’t like anybody. At least that was the impression he gave. You didn’t know if he was serious or kidding—of course he was just looking out for one person: Elvis. He just didn’t want people taking advantage.”