Vernon Elvis and Gladys Presley were typical Mississippians of their generation. Vernon was a truck driver for a dairy and a wholesale grocery. Gladys worked as a sewing machine operator at the Tupelo Garment Factory. The Presley family was the epitome of the word poor, living on, and off, welfare. Vernon even spent time in Parchman Prison for writing bad checks.

At the age of ten, Elvis came in second place at the Mississippi- Alabama Fair and Dairy Show talent contest for his rendition of "Old Shep." The prize for the contest was a meager five dollars and free admission to the amusement rides, but ten- year- old Elvis may have obtained a much greater gift from the contest: inspiration.

For his 11th birthday, Elvis wanted a bicycle. Instead, he received a small, very cheap guitar. His uncles taught him some chords, and before long, he was singing and accompanying himself in church.

In his later youth, Elvis vowed to get rich and buy his Mothe

Sometime later in the year, Sam Phillips received a demo recording of a song from Nashville. The song, "Without You," was a simple ballad. The song itself fascinated Phillips and he was prepared to release the song exactly as it was. He loved not only the song but also the singer. However, as often happened, the demo singer was an unknown black kid who just happened to be hanging around the studio. No one knew who he was or where he was.

For the Presley's, music began in the church. Years later, Elvis boasted of knowing "practically every religious song that has ever been written." "When I was four or five," Elvis recalled "all I looked forward to was Sundays, when we could go to church. This was the only singing training I ever had."

Marion Keisker, Phillips' secretary, was running the recording service on that busy day and, because of the crowd, Elvis had to patiently wait a great length of time for his turn to record music. Elvis had come to record a song for his mother's birthday, or at least that is what he told Keisker. However, it has since been realized that Elvis probably just wanted to hear himself, (until this time it is doubtful Elvis had been given the opportunity to hear himself.) because, his mother's birthday was in April, about ten months after Elvis was making his first recording. A few years later Elvis stated, "I went to Sun, paid my four bucks to the lady because I had a notion to find out what I really sounded like. I had been singing all my life and I was kind of curious."

The studio itself was very small. It measured a mere 30 by 18 feet; but all of the equipment, which was something Elvis had never seen before, made him feel not only very nervous, but also awestruck. Elvis hated his first recording and later said that it "sounded like someone was beating on a bucket lid." Keisker, however, felt differently about the sound that Elvis was producing and because of that, slipped a spare tape into an extra recording machine, a practice that was simply unheard of. She felt that she had found exactly what Sam Phillps was searching for. Sam was always saying that if he could find a white man who could sing with the sound and feel of a black man, he could make a billion dollars. Keisker thought she had found that man. Before Elvis left the recording booth that day, Keisker took down his address and a telephone number of a neighbor, because the Presley's had no phone at the time.

The Presley family attended the First Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church, first in Tupelo, and later in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis obviously learned a great deal of his stagecraft from the fl

Some common words found in the essay are:
Sam Phillips, Keisker Phillips', Fair Dairy, Jake Hess, Elvis Elvis', White Gospel, Mother Cadillac, Elvis Presley, Sam Phillps, January Elvis, sam phillips, jake hess, gospel music, recording service, rock 'n' roll, beale street, rock 'n', career elvis, 'n' roll, ten elvis, elvis aron presley, gospel music gospel, youth elvis,
Approximate Word count = 1780
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)