Graceland: Elvis Lives

Night had fallen, but the heat of the day hung in the August air. A hushed crowd of about 10,000 people filled the four-lane road in front of Graceland, which police had barricaded.

The 29th anniversary of Elvis' death neared, and his fans had gathered to pay their respects at the annual vigil. The candles they held cast halos of light on their faces. Some people had already stood for hours in a snaking line. They wanted to be ready when the gates to Graceland opened at 9 p.m. Patient veterans of the vigil sat in lawn chairs, fanning themselves and drinking soda from coolers, content to wait until the middle of the night when the crowds fade.

Elvis' voice, singing "How Great Thou Art," came to us from speakers in the trees. The master of ceremonies marked the beginning of the vigil with a homily of sorts: "Elvis, I need you more and more. ... When you sang from deep within your heart and soul, your body just poured out this contagious energy of love."

Jerri Engelby sat with friends in lawn chairs in front of an altar she'd made out of tea lights, some artificial flowers and photos of Elvis. She smiled tranquilly. "This is my 13th straight vigil," she said. "And I've been here five times already since January." What's the appeal?

"I was 13 when I first saw him in 1956. It was a lightning bolt. How can you explain love when it hits? I am still in love with him today. He taught me how to live."

To pass through the gates of Graceland, especially on the night of the annual vigil, is to take a pilgrimage unlike any other. Graceland looms large in the American landscape, and that's not because of the architecture, which is unexceptional. It's because Elvis Presley lived there. No American icon, secular or spiritual, draws like Elvis, even 29 years after his death.

In 1950s America, Elvis did strike like a bolt of lightning. When he performed, the music shook his whole body. Uncalculated joy streamed through every cell. No white performer had ever rocked like that before. He was wild and beautiful, and the music was wild and beautiful. That unpretentious country boy ignited the sexuality of a repressed country, carried the music of black America over the racial divide and revolutionized pop culture worldwide. All without intending to do so.

Elvis Aron Presley was born in 1935 in a two-room shotgun shack in Tupelo, Miss., about 100 miles southeast of Memphis. The house and an adjacent museum and chapel are Tupelo's major tourist attractions today.

Even though 71 years have passed, the house is still on the outskirts of town. The dirt road has been replaced with asphalt, and the farm yards and outbuildings have become gardens, walkways and a parking lot. Still, inside the house, it might as well be 1935.

"This here corner is right where Elvis was born, along with his stillborn brother Garon," said a woman named Eloise, who informed me I couldn't take notes or shoot photos inside the house. "The room is the same except for the wallpaper -- they had it covered with newspaper -- and the floor covering. They didn't have none on the floor."

Fresh paint and meticulous restoration couldn't hide that it would have been a raw wooden shack on a dirt road. No plumbing. No electricity. Elvis' dad, Vernon, drifted from job to job and spent some time in jail. His mom, Gladys, picked cotton.

The museum exhibits a variety of Elvis artifacts. Prominently displayed is a towel Elvis used after a shower at a hotel in Monroe, La., in 1975. The woman who stole it kept it in her freezer for 17 years to preserve the moisture.

According to Dick Guyton, director of the museum, that kind of fanaticism is not unusual. "I walked into the meditation chapel once and there was a woman down on her knees, hugging and kissing the floor," he said.

Guyton said the birthplace gets about 80,000 visitors a year, 40 percent of them international and half of those from the United Kingdom. "That's a puzzle," he said. "Elvis never performed in England."

When I left his office, I detected English accents coming from the porch of the shack. Friends Helen Owen of Yorkshire and Michelle Matthews of Sheffield were spending a week of vacation on an Elvis pilgrimage.

"It's probably the fact that we never got Elvis that makes us so mad about him now," said Matthews, 42. "I just had to come to see everything that was Elvis."

Owen said she sensed something special in the atmosphere. "The feeling is ... " her eyes went skyward, as if she were looking for the words in the puffy white clouds. Finally she said, "Elvis will never die, will he?"

I picked up the pilgrimage trail at a major shrine of rock history, Sun Studios, where Elvis caught his big break at age 20. The whole operation fit into a dumpy one-story brick storefront on a busy corner, not far from downtown Memphis.

A living-history museum of sorts now occupies the studio and the building next to it, a cafe. The old studio has the same yellowing fiberboard acoustic tile that proprietor Sam Phillips installed himself. "Some people consider this room the birthplace of rock 'n' roll," said guide Mark Wallace. "This room is where Elvis, Johnny Cash, and the Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis, cut their first hits."

Wallace said that Sam Phillips wanted to deliver the best music in Memphis to a broader audience: That meant blues and the electric sounds of the nightclubs. It meant music by black performers, who couldn't get airplay in the South of the 1950s. Phillips ran into that brick wall as he began recording such groups as the Prisonaires, who actually were inmates that he temporarily sprung for a recording session.

He needed a crossover act to break the ice, and he found it in Elvis. For months, Elvis had been hanging around, asking for a chance to record. Even though Phillips was not initially impressed with Elvis' skill, he set him up with a couple of musicians for a session to see if there might be something more there to draw out.

At the end of that lackluster taping, Elvis cut loose on a cover of Arthur (Big Boy) Crudup's "That's All Right." Delivered with a passionate wail, it was completely unlike the conventional, restrained harmonies that characterized white pop music at the time. Phillips recognized that he had witnessed and heard something special. That song by a black Delta blues singer became Elvis' first hit. Within two years, Elvis was the biggest music act in America.

Wallace pointed out a chrome microphone that Elvis had used, and said we were welcome to pose with it, "but please don't kiss it."

One by one, the people on the tour -- from Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States -- took turns caressing and posing with the microphone that once had captured the voice of Elvis.

During Elvis Week, the festival that culminates with the vigil Aug. 16, the King's life is reenacted and dissected again and again. In a parking lot across the street from Graceland, Elvis Tribute Artists perform nonstop, for free. A note: For ETAs and their followers, the term "Elvis impersonator" sounds more like theft and less like homage.

There were more than 100 ETAs in attendance, including a black Elvis, an Israeli Elvis, and Radney Pennington, a 5-year-old from Branson, Mo. His aunt, Heather Wilkes, said Radney saw an adult ETA at a show in Branson at age 2 and since then has been obsessed, dressing, singing and acting like the King. He goes by "Little E," prefers the Vegas Elvis look and is very confident about his shtick. "Someone asked him if he ever wanted to be on 'American Idol' and he said 'I'm too good for that,' " his aunt said.

For those who want to get to know the historical Elvis, there are other options.

In a variety of venues, former friends and associates share their memories and, if they have written one, sell books. There are exclusive seminars for elite Elvis fans who pay big bucks, and there are free events like George Klein's annual memorial service.

The event was at noon at Memphis State University. Heat radiated in waves off the pavement, but it was blessedly frigid in the darkened auditorium, where a somber mood prevailed. Klein, a Memphis DJ who was in Elvis' inner circle, still works the microphone, hosting a show on Sirius Satellite radio's Elvis Radio ("The only all-Elvis, all-the-time, radio station"). He'd lined up an impressive group of speakers, including Elvis' private nurse, former backup singers and Mark James, who wrote "Suspicious Minds."

There were some uncomfortable moments. Elvis' old friends shared fond memories, but they didn't gloss over the drug use, womanizing or the wild mood swings that marred the end of his life. One friend told of his fear of incurring Elvis' wrath, and recounted a time when Presley shot a TV set with a pistol because it was getting bad reception.

Klein introduced Dr. George Nichopoulos, one of Elvis' last doctors. Nichopoulos, now elderly, leaned on the podium and said, with a chuckle, "I'm trying to remember a story that isn't dirty." A woman at the back of the auditorium bellowed, "BOOOO!" Others hushed her, and Nichopoulos continued talking.

More than anything else I saw in Memphis, that exchange illuminated the awkward juncture where facts confront faith. Elvis was a larger-than-life icon with some glaring human flaws. It takes the biggest kind of love to embrace the darkness along with the light.

The focal point of nearly every Elvis pilgrimage is a visit to Graceland, the home he bought for himself and his parents when he was 22 years old.

More than 650,000 people go through the house each year. It's on four-lane Elvis Presley Boulevard, a slab lined by strip malls, Elvis museums, souvenir shops and just up the hill, a gas station that also sells fried chicken.

The tour of Graceland is a fast-moving affair. The house is not exceptional -- it's a limestone Colonial Revival shaded by big old hardwoods. Elvis' private quarters are off limits. Green shag carpeting, a lot of houseplants and vaguely tropical furniture give the Jungle Room its name. The media room in the basement boasts a vertigo-inducing combination of bright yellow carpet and paint, mirrors, multiple TV screens and ceramic monkeys. But all of it -- the walls of golden records, the jumpsuits, the newspaper clippings -- pales compared with the glittering ardor the fans carry in their hearts.

The night of the vigil, I spent four hours in line before reaching the grave, well after midnight. Elvis' mom, dad, grandmother and stillborn brother are all buried along with Elvis in the "Meditation Garden" next to the swimming pool. The candles we held lit the tombstones. A pile of roses and cards 2 or 3 feet deep blanketed Elvis' marble slab.

The people around me were mournful. Some cried. Behind me, I could see a line of burning candles stretching a quarter-mile down to the gate and beyond. Elvis would never be alone that night.

Just before the gates had opened, I'd met Sharon Kalmen of Farmington, Minn., who said she'd only missed one vigil. She offered the best summation of this vast and lasting phenomenon.

"I can't explain the attraction," she said. "It's like George Klein [the Memphis DJ] says: 'If you're an Elvis fan, no explanation is necessary. If you're not, there is no explanation.' "

CHRIS WELSCH • 612-673-7113 • cwelsch@startribune.com