Last Train to Memphis

by Peter Guralnick

  What she was about to do was declare Elvis Presley off-limits to newsmen and photographers after his first day at Fort Hood. “You will have carte blanche as promised,” she said, “but just this one day. After today, nothing!” And that was the policy she stuck to.

  The first few days were extremely difficult for a very homesick, very isolated Elvis Presley. The others just watched, some of them ragged on him a little (“Boy, you ain’t wiggling right,” someone was likely to call out as he ran past, and “Miss your teddy bears, Elvis?” was a common put-down), but mostly it was Elvis’ own private battle, Rex Mansfield observed, as he struggled desperately to find his equilibrium and be accepted as one of the guys. Gradually he was, and gradually he relaxed a little, too, but recruit instructor Sergeant Bill Norwood, who befriended him and allowed him to make private calls from Norwood’s home, witnessed his homesickness and tears at first hand and worried what would happen if the others saw him like this. “When you come in my house,” he told Elvis, “you can let it all out. Do whatever you want to, and don’t worry about anything. But when you walk out of my front door, you are now Elvis Presley. You’re an actor. You’re a soldier. So, by God, I want you to act! Don’t let nobody know how you feel on the inside.”

  He got his marksman medal with a carbine, sharpshooter with a pistol, and he was named acting assistant squad leader for his squad along with Rex for his squad and “Nervous” Norvell for his. Gradually, he said, he came to be accepted. “I didn’t ask for anything, and they didn’t give me anything. I just did the same thing everybody else did. I made it very well.” He just didn’t know who to trust.

  The Colonel came to see him once or twice to get his signature on some pieces of paper and report to him on sales and strategy. It was reassuring to hear news of his career, even if he cared little about the facts and figures, but when a Waco businessman named Eddie Fadal, whom he had first met during a five-day Texas tour in January 1956, came to see him two weeks into basic, it was as though he had found a long-lost friend. Fadal, in his thirties, married with two daughters, was one of those not so rare individuals who had responded more than instantly to Elvis’ appeal. He had in fact quit his job as a Dallas DJ after Elvis’ spur-of-the-moment invitation to go out “as a general flunky,” in Fadal’s words, on that brief 1956 tour, and he had rejoined him for another few days when Elvis returned with Nick Adams for a performance at Waco’s Heart O’ Texas Coliseum later that year. “I thought, he probably won’t remember me, but I’m going over to the base and see. I went through a lot of red tape at the gate, and I went to see the sergeant of the day room, and he gave me a lot of flak, too, but finally he went to get Elvis for me. And sure enough, he did remember me. I invited him to come to our house when he could get away, told him that we’d give him a home away from home, provide him with privacy and home-cooked food and all of those things, and he said, ‘Sure, I’ll be there.’ He said, ‘I can’t come for another two weeks, but I’ll be there.’ I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you will,’ but, true to his word, in two weeks my telephone rang….”

  In the meantime Anita had come down at the invitation of Sergeant Norwood and his wife, who made their home on the post available to her. When she first arrived, Elvis was assigned to guard duty for twenty-four hours, but Sergeant Norwood suggested that, according to army regulations, he could get out of the assignment if he could find a substitute of equal rank. Elvis approached Rex Mansfield and offered him twenty dollars to take his place. “I told him straightaway that I would be glad to pull his guard duty, but in no way would I take his money,” wrote Rex, who had observed with distaste the competition for Elvis’ attention. “I said to him that I would do this for any other GI whose girl was waiting to see him…. This was the real beginning of our friendship.”

  Elvis brought Anita with him to Waco to visit Eddie Fadal. “He called me from the circle at the confluence of all the highways that come into Waco, and I had a hard time finding him because he didn’t stay right where I thought he would be. But he followed my car and he followed me out to my house, and from then on it was every weekend.” Nervous Norvell accompanied him once or twice with his wife, who had come to Texas to keep Anita company. But mostly it was just Elvis and Anita and the Fadals. They sang and played records, and Elvis called home at least once a day. “He’d say, ‘Mama,’ and I imagine she would say, ‘Son.’ And then it would just go on from there—it was weeping and sobbing, and crying. He thought his career was over. He told me many times, ‘It’s all over, Eddie.’ He told me, ‘They aren’t going to know me when I get back.’ I said, ‘Elvis, it’s not over. It’s just beginning. You’re never going to be forgotten.’ He said, ‘Naw, it’s all over. That’s it.’ He firmly believed that.”

  Toward the end of basic, Anita got word that she would be recording in New York during the first week of June, and one night as they sat around the piano, Elvis prompted her to sing Hank Williams’ “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)” and Connie Francis’ brand-new hit, “Who’s Sorry Now?,” while he mostly sang gospel. Someone turned on a tape recorder, and you can hear Eddie saying to Anita, “I can’t wait till your first record comes out.” “It better be a good one,” Elvis jumps in. “I wish they’d let me pick it.” If they did, he says, it would be a song like “Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby,” which the whole gang has just been singing. Or it might be something like “Cold Cold Heart,” something with some heartbreak in it. “What I’m afraid of is they’re going to put her on something a little too modern, a little too popular, you know what I mean?” “It will just die out quick?” “No…” “It’ll catch on and then fade?” “No, what I’m talking about—they’re gonna give her some music I’m afraid is more of a Julie London type. They got to give her something like Connie Francis sings. Something with some guts to it.” Anita demurely assents to any and all suggestions, and they go back again and again to “Happy, Happy Birthday” as Elvis sings along with the Tune Weavers’ record and ends the impromptu recital with a beautiful, self-accompanied version of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” while one of the Fadals’ daughters cries in the background. Eddie had little doubt that Elvis was going to marry Anita someday. They were so comfortable with each other, and he was so obviously at home in her company and in the Fadals’ house. “His mother said to me later that he told her the Fadals had provided him with a home away from home.”

  Furlough was scheduled to begin at 11:00 A.M. on Saturday, May 31, but at the last minute it was moved up to 6:00 A.M., and Anita and the Colonel were waiting at the post gate. Elvis dropped them in Dallas, where they caught planes to Memphis and Nashville respectively, and then continued on his way with Rex Mansfield and “Nervous” Norvell. He dropped Nervous off on Lamar Avenue and then took Rex to Graceland, where hundreds of fans were waiting at the gate when they arrived. Elvis didn’t stop the car, wrote Rex, because he was tired and impatient to see his folks, but he promised to come out later to sign autographs. “The treatment which I received from Elvis upon our arrival… was really amazing to me. After the usual hugs and kisses to his mother and dad and the warm welcome to his old friends, he turned all of his attention to me.” He showed Rex around the mansion, which Rex in his memoir sought to describe, “but mere words have limitations and seeing is better for believing…. I had never before seen the inside of any house, even in the movies, that was as beautiful and luxurious as Graceland Mansion….

  “Elvis then amazed me further by, personally, going to the trouble to take me to my parents [when they arrived at his brother-in-law’s house in Memphis]. We went out the back gate of his home through a big field in one of his many other limousines (a black Cadillac). Two of his best friends… went with us, Lamar Fike and Red West [who] was in the Marines at that time but had taken a leave to be with Elvis during his leave…. In parting… Elvis asked me to spend [the last] few of my fourteen days’ leave with him at Graceland and I could travel back to Fort Hood with him. I eagerly accepted his offer.�
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  HE FELT AS IF he had been transported back into the world to which he truly belonged—but it was no more than a tantalizing vision, he knew it was all destined to disappear. Everything seemed just the same, it was like old times, with everyone gathered at Graceland, friends, family, the fans at the gates. So what’s it like in the service, Cuz? Junior asked with that slightly malevolent sneer. Now you boys be careful, his mother said, as they all went off to go roller-skating or to the Fairgrounds, now that the weather was warm again. There were business meetings with the Colonel, the Colonel was talking to him all the time about boring business matters, decisions that had to be made.

  And what about Anita spending so much time with him in Texas? hometown reporters asked. “Well, I know the papers had us engaged, married, and everything else, but it just looked that way.” How did he like army food? “I’ve eaten things in the army that I never ate before, and I’ve eaten things that I didn’t know what it was, but after a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.” Army hours? “I’m used to them. I don’t sleep more or less than I used to, just do it at different hours. Here on leave, I’m having trouble staying awake after midnight, where I used to stay up all night.” Had he written many letters home? “I’ve never written a letter in my life.” Why was he wearing his uniform the whole time he was on leave? “Simple. I’m kinda proud of it.” And his overall impression of the army? “It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best job I can. One thing: the army teaches boys to think like men.”

  He went with his parents to a specially arranged screening of King Creole, got a haircut at Jim’s, and bought a new red Lincoln Continental convertible. He had a recording session scheduled in Nashville for the following week, which the Colonel had finally granted in the face of Steve Sholes’ near-hysterical pleas. Sholes saw them going into the wilderness for two years with no more than four releasable songs in the can and only himself to be blamed if the whole thing should suddenly fall apart. The Colonel practically made him crawl—it is evident from their correspondence that Sholes had to virtually tie himself down to keep from expressing his true feelings—but, ironically, as frustrating as the last session had been, this time everything gelled and in ten hours, over the course of a single night, they got five nearly perfect sides. For the first time Scotty and Bill were not in the studio with him, and D.J. was relegated to a supporting role, but they were scarcely missed, as top Nashville session players took their place and the session exploded with a kind of live-wire energy and musical humor that hadn’t been present for a while. There was Hank Garland on guitar, bassist Bob Moore, Floyd Cramer playing piano, and Buddy Harman on drums, while Chet Atkins came out of the booth to contribute rhythm guitar. In addition, the Jordanaires had a new member, Ray Walker, singing bass, and every time his part came up, “[Elvis] tried to throw me every way he could. He’d move his lips and not say anything, and then he’d say his line. He was giving me a rough way to go!” Tom Diskin, speaking for the Colonel, expressed his concern that the instruments were coming through too loud and might override Elvis’ voice, but Sholes reassured him that it would all be balanced out in the mix.

  By the time that Rex returned to Graceland, the whole gang was assembled, including Nick Adams, who had flown in from Hollywood, and Rex felt a distinct chill in the air. “I could feel their mistrust and resentment,” he wrote. “Later on I caught myself having those same resentments…. It was a jealous feeling like maybe Elvis would not pay as much attention to me and more attention to the new guy. Anyway, I made up my mind these guys had better accept me because I was planning to be around for a while.” Anita, too, had returned by now (“Naturally we both just felt awful when I had to go to New York for my recording session just when he came home on furlough, but we both knew it had to be”), and it was reported that she spent the last hours alone with him “without friends or parents around.”

  When he left to go back to the base in the new red Lincoln early Saturday morning, he felt both exhilarated and depressed: exhilarated because it had been so easy to slip back into the old life, depressed for much the same reason, because he couldn’t stand to let it go just like that. The Colonel had been making a study of army regulations, and back at Fort Hood, Elvis conferred with Sergeant Norwood, who advised him that once basic training was completed, permission would customarily be granted for a soldier to live off-post—if he had dependents living nearby. Within days Vernon and Gladys, who were indeed Elvis’ legal dependents, had packed up and were en route in the white Fleetwood with Vernon’s mother, Minnie, while Lamar led the way in the Lincoln Mark II. By June 21 they were ensconced just outside the Fort Hood gates in a rented three-bedroom trailer, and when, almost immediately, that proved a little cramped for five adults, they rented a house in the middle of Killeen from Judge Chester Crawford, who was planning on taking a two-month vacation, starting July 1.

  Elvis brought his parents over to meet the Fadals the first weekend they were in town and then, again, for a Fourth of July cookout the following week. His mother took immediately to Eddie’s wife, LaNelle. “She and my wife would go to the grocery store and purchase the things that Elvis liked. And then she would put on her little apron and go in the kitchen and start fixing it. She was jolly, just home folks, and we had a merry time.” Eddie had by now added on a wing to his house with its own customized hi-fi, decorating it in pink and black so that Elvis would feel more comfortable on the weekends when he came to stay. During the week, Eddie visited with the Presleys while Elvis was on duty. “Gladys would be sitting there in a rocking chair wearing a housecoat and barefoot, just as homey as anybody could be. Elvis loved banana cream pies, and there was a restaurant here that made them called the Toddle House. I’d take him a couple of those pies on a Tuesday or a Wednesday along with the latest magazines and a batch of 45s. A good friend of mine, Leonard Nixon, owned a record store, and every new 45 that came out he would call me and say, ‘Elvis would like to hear this one, I know.’ He’d just give them to me, the newest things by Connie Francis and Fats Domino and Sam Cooke, artists that Elvis really liked. We’d visit for an hour or so before Elvis got there, and then everything started jumping. They had to start fixing dinner, and the fans would gather at the door, and, you know, it was just a lot of hectic times, because they knew when he’d be home.”

  It was good times again for the Presley household, even though Gladys was not particularly looking forward to going to Germany when Elvis’ company was shipped overseas (“I just can’t see myself over there in a foreign country,” she told Lamar. “I’ve left nothing over there, and I’m not trying to find anything”), and Vernon was primarily concerned with the impact that all of this might have on his son’s career. For himself, during the week Elvis remained totally taken up with advanced basic, which consisted of training to become a tanker—Elvis placed third in tank gunnery, and occasionally he took over the company drum for marching—but he lived for the weekends. Anita came down some, but mostly he and Lamar and Rex (“Rexadus,” as he dubbed him) and a bunch of other guys headed out for Dallas or Fort Worth, where there was an airline stewardess school, or just hung out at the Fadals’ in Waco, where they would eat and fool around and play touch football. “There was always a parade of cars,” said Eddie proudly. “Every time my wife would see him driving up, she’d say, ‘Oh oh, I’ve got to feed twelve or fifteen people.’ But only Elvis would stay over.”

  Gladys was unfailingly gracious to the stream of visitors who arrived in Killeen on official business, social business, or no business at all. The Colonel came several times and closeted himself with Elvis and Vernon. “He would come into the living room,” said Eddie, “and talk with whoever was there, me and Gladys and Lamar mostly, but they talked their business behind closed doors. We never knew what went on in there, but sometimes Elvis would come out mad, and after the Colonel would leave he would cuss and fume, but other times it was amicable and he came in with a good feeling and a smile on his
face. There were times that they disagreed, but [it] had nothing to do with Elvis’ artistic endeavors. The Colonel had nothing to do with that, but he had everything to do with the business side, which I think was the way it should be.”

  A DJ named Rocky Frisco showed up one time after bicycling five hundred miles from Tulsa on a publicity stunt. When he arrived in Killeen, it was only to discover that Elvis was out on bivouac, but Gladys invited him to visit with them every day, and “I was made to feel every bit as welcome there as if I were family.” Vic Morrow, who had played the gang leader in King Creole, stopped by one time, and Vince Edwards and Billy Murphy detoured through Killeen on their way to Dallas, knowing only that Elvis was stationed there but not where he lived. They had just pulled into a service station to ask directions when Lamar (“We called him ‘Old Elephant Ass’ ”) spotted the Hollywood plates and took them out to the house. Elvis was still on duty, Gladys told them. She insisted that they stay for dinner, though, and Vernon set them up in a little tin trailer out back. Elvis finally arrived home, and they had a happy reunion, but then Vince and Billy got increasingly spooked in the trailer after everyone else had gone to bed. Around one in the morning, said Vince, “we didn’t care what he would think, the goddam animals started making so much noise we just had to get our ass out of there and get to a motel.” So they left without even saying good-bye.