Send us Fan Mail Mr. Presley, I'd like to begin in Tupelo, move through Sun Records and the explosion of the 1950s, and then spend time with Vegas ., the pills, the isolation, and the wreckage. Mr. Bartley, it seems that you really knew about my life. Mr. Bartley, I was born January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, into poverty and instability. MY twin brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn. That loss was not an abstract line on a genealogy chart. It marked MY parents, especially MY mother Gladys, and by all accounts left me with a lingering sense of being “the one who lived” and needing somehow to prove worthy of that accident. Mr. Presley, could you describe your life in Tupelo? Mr. Bartley, you might say that our world was modest houses, odd jobs, and the sounds of the rural South. Church was central. Hymns were sung full-throttle, white Southern gospel quartets layering harmony, preachers who treated volume as proof of conviction. Just outside that world, Black congregations where the same God was praised with even greater rhythmic fire; blues guitar lines drifting out of doorways; early country music and sentimental pop on the radio. Mr. Presley, then were you a music prodigy? No, Mr. Bartley, I can't really say that I was. I was shy, deeply bonded to my mother, uneasy about money and status, and often embarrassed. But I listened. I soaked up voices and styles. You might say that the vulnerability that later made me easy to manage also made me unusually open as a young artist: a receiver before I was ever a transmitter. That is an interesting way, Mr. Presley, of putting it. Mr. Bartley, in 1948 the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, chasing work and stability. My family landed in public housing projects—tight spaces, thin walls, and a city thumping with music. What would you say was the effect, Mr. Presley, of Memphis upon you? AH, Mr. Bartley, Memphis put me closer to Beale Street: Black blues, rhythm & blues, club bands who could make small rooms lift off the floor. I could hear - and feel - that edge, the swing, the looseness. Memphis also gave me access to a mix of radio stations and record shops that didn’t respect tidy genre borders. I could take in country ballads, white gospel, Black gospel, blues, sentimental pop—sometimes within a single afternoon. Support the show Thank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.
