Elvis has never left the building

FROM his birthplace in Mississippi to the Memphis mansion he named Graceland, Elvis Presley lives on for the 800,000 people who visit each year.

Humble beginnings ... from the two room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi,where Elvis was born ...

NINA Holcomb has been working at the birthplace of Elvis Presley at Tupelo, Mississippi for a year. The two-bedroom house hasn't changed much since 1934 when it was built by Elvis's father, Vernon, who borrowed $US180 ($A235) for materials, on land he sharecropped.

Elvis was born to Gladys on January 8, 1935; an identical twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn.

"Elvis was part Cherokee, wasn't he?" I ask.

"Oh yeah, he was half and his mother was three-quarters," Holcomb says. I try to do the maths.

"So that's maybe why he was so good-looking?" I ask.

"The Presley men are all good-looking." Then she whispers: "And they're all womanisers."

Not everybody is that irreverent about The King, with the story wall in the house covered in tributes from his friends, many referring to his religious upbringing.

One by Annie Presley, cousin by marriage and a dear friend of Gladys, says: "Elvis never forgot his raisin'." Another tells of Elvis sneaking away to the black Baptist church to listen to gospel music.

The family had to move out of the house when Elvis was three when Vernon couldn't repay the $180 loan. The home was repossessed.

Then, in 1948, Vernon moved the family to Memphis, about 160km to the north, to look for work. What they couldn't load in their 1939 Plymouth (a replica of which is also on the site) they left behind.

In 1956 and '57, Elvis returned to Tupelo to perform benefit concerts at the fairgrounds; the money was used to buy back his birthplace and build a park – and later a magnificent museum, which is visited now by around 100,000 people a year. But it's Graceland, his home in Memphis, where he lived from the age of 22 until his death on August 17, 1977, at the age of 42, which is the most visited private residence in the world – with nearly 700,000 sightseers a year.

Earlier this year it was made a National Historic Landmark.

Elvis bought the property for $US103,000 ($A145,182) in 1957 with earnings from his first hit record, Heartbreak Hotel.

His former wife, Priscilla Presley, opened Graceland's doors to the public in 1980, but it is his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, who is its sole owner, and it's her voice that is heard the most on the audio tour through the house.

Graceland is much smaller than I expected, more a large colonial-style house than a mansion. At 3734 Elvis Presley Boulevard, it's about 14km south of central Memphis.

It took us a few goes to find the exit to the former Bellevue Boulevard – an ugly highway to Mississippi full of chain stores, gas stations and car sales yards. An adjacent shopping mall has been turned into a virtual theme park with restaurants, a theatre and two museums.

You can pay just to see the Graceland mansion across the road ($30), or spend another $11 for the Platinum Tour, which includes the Sincerely Elvis museum ($9.60) and several rooms of personal items; the Elvis Presley Automobile Museum ($16.45) has cars and motorcycles; or tour the King's two jets ($11) and the Elvis After Dark exhibit themed around him being a "night person". Then there's the $75.25 VIP tour (with discounts if you've already been to Tupelo).

Everything about the set-up is corny (particularly the souvenirs). We stuck to guitar picks and postcards, and decided to forgo the Elvis recipe books, although I ordered Elvis's favourite sandwich – toasted peanut butter and banana – at the diner.

After a short minibus ride across the road to the mansion, the audio tour informs us that the upstairs floor of Graceland, where Elvis died, remains private. But the downstairs rooms which are open (and roped), are the ones that he would have shown his friends.

We're told the kitchen was like Grand Central and the TV was always on. Elvis liked TVs. There are three televisions in the TV room, an idea Elvis copied after he heard President Lyndon B. Johnson liked to watch all three major networks' news simultaneously.

The poolroom's ceilings and walls are covered in 400m of multicoloured fabric. The pool table's felt is torn – a friend apparently tried a trick shot which didn't work out.

The famous so-called jungle room has an indoor waterfall, green shag carpet and fake fur upholstery, from its '74 redecoration. It was to remind Elvis of Hawaii and was simply known as the den. Tacky, yes, but this was the '70s.

In his office we're told he liked reading books of a spiritual nature, and he would underline and write "Amen" next to the pertinent passages. His hobbies included his gun collection and karate. Elvis re-decorated the house several times and added outbuildings, but he left the main house largely alone.

On the last morning of his life, Elvis was in the racquetball building, playing the piano and singing songs including Unchained Melody for friends. Then he went to bed and was found dead hours later, having suffered heart failure.

Flowers and tributes arrive almost daily at the graves in the meditation ground where he, his parents and grandmother Minnie Mae Presley are buried. There's also a marker for his dead twin, Jessie.

Back across the road, we found the automobile museum more interesting, with motorised toys and cars including Gladys's pink Cadillac.

The Lisa Marie, a Convair 880 jet bought in 1975, is more a series of narrow rooms with a guest bathroom featuring a gold-plated sink.

Fifteen different types of soft drinks were available for passengers as Elvis "didn't care for the taste of alcohol". And we're told his favourite on-board viewing was Blazing Saddles and episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

There's a shuttle to Sun Studios 15 minutes away, where Sam Phillips first recorded The King.

We're told the music heritage of Memphis played a large role in forming his combination of black rhythm and blues, and white country music which became rock 'n' roll.

Matt Lewis, who has been performing Elvis as part of the Legends in Music show at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas (known as the "best of the best of impersonation shows") for the past four years, says Elvis's mystique is still so strong that the crowd goes wild, even for an impersonator.

"He was the coolest guy in rock 'n' roll history – with a tragic end," Lewis declares.

The Sunday Telegraph