This Day in American History: Elvis Presley Dies
- ForAmerica
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
On this day in 1977, a truck driver's son from Tupelo, Mississippi -- who'd once paid $4 of his own money to record a song for his mother -- was found dead in his Memphis mansion at age 42, and American music lost the man who'd invented rock and roll stardom itself.
Elvis Aaron Presley was born in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935; his twin brother, Jesse, was stillborn. Raised on gospel music at church with his parents, Elvis got his first guitar at 11 and, at 18, walked into Sam Phillips's Sun Records studio in Memphis and paid four dollars to record a song as a gift for his mother. Phillips heard something in the raw, soulful quality of his voice, and in 1954 released Presley's take on the blues song "That's All Right" -- a regional hit that launched his career. RCA bought his contract for a then-record $40,000 in 1955, and "Heartbreak Hotel" made him a national sensation the following year.
What followed was an unmatched run: dozens of number-one hits, 27 feature films through the 1960s, a two-year stint as a U.S. Army sergeant in Germany, a legendary 1968 television comeback special, and a Las Vegas residency that redefined what a live music spectacle could be. Presley sold an estimated 500 million records worldwide across pop, country, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and gospel -- a genre-spanning commercial reach no artist before him had come close to.
By the mid-1970s, years of prescription drug dependence and declining health had taken a visible toll. On the afternoon of August 16, 1977, his fiancée Ginger Alden found him unresponsive on his bathroom floor at Graceland. Paramedics and doctors at Baptist Memorial Hospital were unable to revive him; his official cause of death was listed as cardiac arrhythmia, though later toxicology findings pointed to multiple prescription drugs in his system. He was 42 years old.
More than 20,000 grieving fans traveled to Graceland to pay their respects in the days that followed, some driving for a full day or longer and spending money they didn't have to say goodbye. John Lennon's tribute captured what millions felt: "The King is dead, but rock and roll will never die." Presley is buried in Graceland's Meditation Garden alongside his parents and daughter Lisa Marie, and the mansion he once called home is now one of America's most-visited private residences, drawing hundreds of thousands of fans every year to the gates of the King's own kingdom.
Also on this day:
1858 -- Britain's Queen Victoria transmits the first telegraphed message over the newly laid transatlantic cable to President James Buchanan.
1962 -- The Beatles fire original drummer Pete Best, replacing him with Ringo Starr.
1969 -- Woodstock enters its second day of performances in Bethel, New York.
1991 -- Pope John Paul II begins the first-ever papal visit to Hungary.
Four dollars to record a song for his mother, and 500 million records later, the King was gone -- but his gates at Graceland have never stopped drawing a crowd.
Source: HISTORY.com, Graceland, Wikipedia
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