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.