Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [27]
Jessie, liking a taste of fame, made a three-song record of his own, “The Roots of Elvis,” and in 1958, he won a spot on the television show I’ve Got a Secret. There, the sixty-two-year-old, seated in a rocking chair, sang “The Billy Goat Song” in a high, thin tenor as host Garry Moore backed him on drums. The elder Presley, who would last work as a night watchman at the Louisville Pepsi-Cola plant, told a Toronto newspaper reporter that he didn’t like rock and roll, preferring the religious and working songs he learned picking cotton in Mississippi. And no, he didn’t want Elvis to help him. “I want to make it on my own,” he said. Elvis was amused, and the two remained friendly until J.D.’s death from heart disease in 1973.
Jessie’s desertion meant that Minnie Mae had nowhere to go but to her children. By 1946 she was living with Vernon, Gladys, and Elvis, whom she adored. The feeling was mutual. With her dry wit, laconic manner, and elongated body, she resembled, if not a James Agee character, then certainly a Walker Evans Depression-era photograph come to life. Gladys was glad to have her help (“She did all the work,” in Lillian Smith’s view), and Elvis found her a comical figure.
One day he was playing ball and overthrew his pitch, missing her face by a fraction of an inch. He promptly nicknamed her “Dodger,” a term of endearment that stuck throughout her life. The living arrangement also took hold. Vernon counted her a dependent on his 1947 tax return, and she never left the Presley household again. Minnie Mae would reside under the same roof as Elvis all her life and outlive her famous grandson by three years.
By the time Elvis entered seventh grade in 1947, his mind was seldom on his studies. His grade point average was about 70, making him a C− student. But the twelve-year-old felt confident enough about his musicianship to take his guitar to school with him almost every day, practicing chords and working on new songs during lunch. Classmate Roland Tindall remembered that he announced to the class more than once that he was going to sing at the Grand Ole Opry. If the majority of his fellow students ignored him or smirked at his bid for attention—a group of bullies, intolerant of another rendition of “Old Shep,” would cut the strings off his guitar at some point—others knew he had a shot at stardom.
“Most people wouldn’t believe this,” a classmate said years later, “but I went up to him and I told him, ‘Elvis, one of these days you’re gonna be famous.’ And he smiled at me and said, ‘I sure hope so.’ ”
Maggie Morgan also supported his ambition. She’d gone with him to perform on WELO, where he still gazed motionless at hillbilly singer Mississippi Slim, and as far as she was concerned, theirs was a serious relationship. He’d told her he loved her, and she’d whispered back, “I love you, too.” And they’d shared three kisses—one during the carving of the heart on the tree, another on the swing on his parents’ front porch, and the third in the car en route to a church rally.
“I didn’t expect my life to end or go anywhere without Elvis. He was my love. He was my man.”
But if things were going well for the young couple, Vernon Presley was just about at the end of his rope. Living in a “colored” neighborhood on Tupelo’s North Green Street, where Elvis heard early R & B, jump blues, and swing tunes throbbing through the walls at the nearby juke joints, the family was deeply in debt. Vernon was still driving a grocery truck and scraping to make a living (“There’s a story that he pretty much got kicked out of Tupelo for moonshining,” says Billy Smith), and Gladys brought in a little money as a seamstress. But the bank was threatening to foreclose on a loan, and the Presleys were buying everything on time and borrowing money where they could. Gladys remembered her son’s concern.
“Elvis would hear us worrying about our