Presley Elvis - Elvis memories : the real Elvis Presley, by those who knew him

T he signs are everywhere to Elviss birthplace they declare. Well, yes and no. The house is the one in which he was born. The church is the one in which he prayed and where he sang his first gospel songs. But they are not where they were originally, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. Brick by brick, log by log they have been moved to either end of a landscaped grassy mound. Appropriately, the two buildings if that is not glorifying a shack and a chapel whose structures were originally put up by local artisans who knew a hammer and shovel much better than any architects blueprint have been arranged alongside the statue of a local boy made good. The house itself (and its painfully primitive furniture) was built in 1934, just before the stars birth, by Elviss father Vernon and daddys (remember, this is the Deep South we are talking about, where they use the term well beyond childhood) brother Vester working with their own father, Jesse Presley.

Its all appropriate because without the blessing of that local boy in working mans dungarees, the one with the tousled hair and the guitar that he first saw on a rack in the nearby hardware store, Tupelo would be just another Mississippi town, its 45,000-strong population like any other from that part of the world, driving down Main Street, seeing rail tracks that have both good and bad sides, overhead power cables, some greenery and lots of Confederate flags flying around the place. For this is as deep as the Deep South gets. As much part of the fabric as a dish of grits and gravy. The accents, the words they speak, betray the origins of the few septuagenarians who really do remember the Presley family and their boy Elvis.

The people of Tupelo claim him as their own. Susie Dent, who goes around Tupelo stressing the work of the North East Mississippi Historical and Genealogical Society with great effect, it has to be said plainly needs to stress the Elvis Connection whenever she can. She emphasises that not only was Tupelo influenced by him, but he was influenced by Tupelo.

As she said: He had a Christian upbringing. The old-style fundamentalist churches had loads of music and he got a lot of soul from that music. He went from rags to riches, but a lot of people thought his magic would rub off on them. But did it? He was pretty good at giving away his wealth. We shall see that as the story moves on. And then, said Susie, his musical riches stayed around.

What becomes clear is that it took a long time for Tupelo really to appreciate him. When I first came here in 1970, Susie said, most people had never even been to his birthplace, but now with the influx of people from all over the world, people have more respect for him.

So there is more to this place than those locals. The signs are the big giveaway. For this is, above all, a place of pilgrimage and, in truth, many of the pilgrims make this a combination of Graceland and Lourdes in the belief that Elvis couldnt possibly have died without leaving behind some mystical powers. They think and possibly really do believe that they know more about the young Presley to whom they owe so much than those who can actually recall the time when he carried a few poor quality groceries home for his mother, Gladys, in what they describe, round and about, as his wagon in effect, a combination of wooden box and old pram wheels.

The day I was there, a couple, Sheri and Lois Hathaway had travelled 500 miles to pay their annual visit to the house, two tiny rooms in which the young Elvis, his mother Gladys and his father, newly released from jail, slept and a living room-cum -kitchen and somewhat grandly, I thought laundry room, where they did everything else.

Was this perhaps really some religious rite for the visitors? Well, said Sheri, it makes you feel closer to Elvis Presley. It started for us when we became fans forty years ago.

Tupelo is the sort of place where people tend to know everyone elses business. There are those who knew the Presley story before he became famous, and no one more so than the local genealogists, like Julien Riley. He told me how the family stemmed from both Scottish and Native American roots. But, although as this story moves on you will hear people who make statements to the contrary, suggestions that he had Jewish blood are denied by this source at least.