Tupelo Elvis Fan Club

09/03/2026

“We used to have parties in some of our apartments. We would invite kids from the school and what have you. We’d have Cokes, and listen to music, and all of us would be dancing. Well, Elvis didn’t dance. All of us would be dancing, and Elvis would be mimicking the guitar to the beat of the record. He was doing his own gyrations even back then—the identical gyrations that you saw when he turned professional. It was just feeling and movement that he had when he played music. It was the feeling you got from listening to the bop beat that was popular back at that time.”

- Buzzy Forbes

Elvis up close
Dick Heard and Rose Clayton

09/02/2026

🎸 ELVIS ’56 IS COMING HOME!

On September 26, Tupelo celebrates 70 years since Elvis’ legendary 1956 homecoming concert — and Downtown Tupelo is bringing Down on Main to the party!

Catch Wyly Bigger performing as part of the Down on Main Concert Series, along with Brothers Windham and Elvis tribute artist Nick Perkins, recreating the 1956 Homecoming Concert.

📍 Fairpark
🕕 6–10:30 PM
🎟️ FREE ADMISSION
🪑 Bring your lawn chairs!

One big night. One hometown celebration. Elvis ’56. 🎶

09/02/2026

“Elvis used to attend our gospel concerts in Memphis every month when I was with the Blackwood Brothers. He would come to the concerts when he was a kid-fourteen years old-and come around backstage. At that time I didn’t even know his name. He was just a nice kid, and we were friends from the very beginning. I used to let him in the back door for our shows for nothing; and then the first thing I knew, [after he became famous] he let me in the back door of his concerts for nothing. And when he needed a gospel quartet, well, he’d contact me.”

- JD Sumner

Elvis up close
Dick Heard and Rose Clayton

09/01/2026

“All the boys used to play football. In fact, on Saturdays sometimes when it wasn’t football season, we would go to other people’s neighborhoods to have football contests. It wasn’t unusual to put up ten or fifteen cents a game.

We was playing football down there one day, and when we got through we come in. Id done been bounced off the concrete, and my elbows were blue and bloody and messed up. We walked in the living room there, and Mrs. Presley looked at me, and she just burst into tears.

She was soft-hearted. She couldn’t take a whole lot of that sort of stuff.”

- Buzz Forbes

Elvis up close
Dick Heard and Rose Clayton

08/31/2026

“Wait,” Gladys called out to him. “There’s another baby inside.”
Dr. Hunt paused at the door, turned slowly toward the bed, and said, “I think not. I’ve been delivering babies for years in these parts. I think I’d know if there was another baby there. There isn’t. I’m going back to my office. I’ll fill out the necessary paperwork on the stillbirth there.” Gladys insisted. About that time, the second baby made its presence known. Dr. Hunt slipped out of his warm coat and returned to Gladys’ bedside.
Sure enough, there was a second baby. Gladys’ labor continued another half-hour or so. The second baby was born. Dr. Hunt logged the time in his ledger as 4:35 a.m. Back in his office, he would fill out the forms for not one, but two births. First, 4 a.m., the stillbirth of the first-born. He mistakenly spelled the infant’s name as Jesse Garion Presley. Next, 4:35 a.m., the birth of the second son. Again, a misspelling. Evis Aaron Presley. Maybe because Vernon, until his own death, called his son “Evis,” with a short “E,” more often than he called him “Elvis.” The Presleys always wrote off Dr. Hunt’s misspellings to his age. Mrs. Potter disagrees. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “my father was having trouble with his eyes. He didn’t like to wear glasses. He would rather try to read without them. He would hold a paper way out in front of him before he would put them on.
“This might have been the reason he misspelled the names.”

He listed in his records that Lee County was the place of birth; the father’s name was written as VE. Presley, white, 18, occupation: laborer; the mother’s maiden name as Gladys Smith, white, 21, housewife. Dr. Hunt also logged the twin births in his ledger as a “labor case.” He billed the Presleys fifteen dollars. Like many Lee Countians during the Depression, the Presleys could not pay. The fee was later paid by “welfare.

Later, his books would show a June 7, 1939 visit to the home of Vernon and Gladys Presley. His entry recorded it as a visit to the baby at residence. The charge was two dollars. This time the Presleys paid.

Early Elvis The Tupelo Years
Bill E. Burk

08/29/2026

“The girls went crazy! Elvis didn’t know why; none of us knew why. When we came off stage, somebody told Elvis it was because he was shaking his leg. That was a natural thing for him. It wasn’t planned.

Most guys would stand flat-footed, play guitar, and pat their foot. Well, Elvis would just kinda roll up on the balls of his feet-kinda in a tense way—and with his arm playing rhythm and everything. He was wearing those big, baggy pants back in those days, and his britches leg would just start going crazy. Naturally, once he found out what was happening, he started embellishing on that real quick. I mean, he was smart.”

- Scotty Moore

Elvis Up Close
Dick Heard and Rose Clayton

08/28/2026

08/28/2026

“The stories about his love for Gladys are not exaggerated.
When she died, he was in mourning for a long time-extreme mourning. physically crying all the time. He was completely destroyed.”

- George Klein

Elvis up close
Dick Heard and Rose Clayton

08/27/2026

We’ve had so many people checking in and asking about our Executive Director, Roy Turner, and we want you to know how much that means to all of us.

Roy is taking some time away from the Birthplace to focus on his health and recovery, and we hope you’ll continue to keep him in your prayers.

Here at the Birthplace, it’s business as usual. Our doors are open, our events and programs are moving forward, and our team is taking good care of the place Roy loves so much.

If you’d like to send Roy a card or a note of encouragement, please send it to:

Roy Turner
Elvis Presley Birthplace
P.O. Box 1339
Tupelo, MS 38802

We know Roy would be touched by every prayer, card, and kind word sent his way. ❤️