Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley was the first real rock and roll star. A white southerner who singing blues laced with country. Presley brought together music from both sides of the color line. Presley performed this music with a "natural hip swiveling sexuality" that made him a teen idol and a role model for generations of "cool" rebels. Presley was repeatedly dismissed as vulgar, incompetent and a bad influence. However, the force of his music and image transferred to the mainstream, it was time for a change.

Born January 8, 1935, in East Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley was the son of Gladys and Vernon Presley, a sewing machine operator and a truck driver. Presley's twin brother Jesse Garon was stillborn, and he grew up as an only child. At age three, his dad was sent to prison for forgery. It seems that Vernon, Travis Smith, and Luther Gable changed the amount of a check from Version's boss from $3 to $8 and cashed it at a local bank.

A cropped photograph depicts singer Elvis Presley'...

English: Elvis Presley meeting Richard Nixon. On D...

Promotional photograph of Elvis Presley, taken in ...

The Presleys attended the First Assembly of God Church whose Pentecostal services always included singing. Entering the fifth grade, Presley is asked by his teacher, Mrs. J.C. Grimes to enter a talent contest on children's day at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. At the age of ten, dressed in a cowboy suit, and standing on a chair to reach the microphone, Presley for his rendition of Red Foley's "Old Shep" won second place, a $5 prize and a free ticket to all the rides. On his birthday the following January he received a guitar. Over the next year,Vernon's brother Vester gave him basic guitar lessons.

In 1948 after losing another job his dad moved the family to Memphis. Glady's brothers got him a job at the Precision Tool Company and the Presleys moved into a...