Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon Presley and Gladys Love (née Smith) Presley in a two-room shotgun house that his father built for the occasion. Elvis’s identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered stillborn thirty-five minutes before him. Elvis became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.
Presley’s father Vernon was of Irish, German, Scottish, and English origins, and a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia through his mother, Minnie Mae Presley (née Hood). Presley’s mother Gladys was Scots-Irish with some French Norman ancestry. She and the rest of the family believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee. This belief was restated by Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017. Elaine Dundy, in her biography, supports the belief. Dundy also alleged that Elvis’ great-great grandmother Nancy Burdine Tackett was Jewish. Tackett’s family are believed to have migrated to the United States from what is now Lithuania around the time of the American Revolution; it was revealed that the original headstone for Gladys Presley, which was placed on her first grave at Memphis’ Forest Hill Cemetery in December 1964 and had been in storage in the Graceland Archives between 1977 and 2018, had not only a cross marking, but also a Star of David marking on it as well.
Gladys Presley’s headstone became publicly displayed in Graceland’s Meditation Garden in 2018. It is marked with both a cross and a Star of David.
Gladys Presley’s grave, in Graceland’s Meditation Garden, marked with only a cross
However, Nate Bloom has challenged the claim. Bloom states that Dundy reported the claim without verifying it as a “fact”. Bloom reports that there is no mention of any Jewish ancestor in any of the available census records. He furthermore cited a member of an Orthodox Jewish family, who were neighbors with Elvis’ family, who told him that Gladys never mentioned anything about a supposed Jewish ancestry.
Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, showing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938 they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by his landowner and sometime-employer. He was jailed for eight months while Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.
In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his teachers regarded him as “average”. He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley’s country song “Old Shep” during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance. The ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang “Old Shep”. He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family’s church. Presley recalled, “I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it.”
In September 1946, Presley entered a new school, Milam, for sixth grade; he was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar to school on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime and was often teased as a “trashy” kid who played hillbilly music. By then, the family was living in a largely African American neighborhood.[26] Presley was a devotee of Mississippi Slim’s show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. He was described as “crazy about music” by Slim’s younger brother, who was one of Presley’s classmates and often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley’s guitar instruction by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was aged 12, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time but succeeded in performing the following week.
