Elvis Legend Swivels On, 25 Years Later

Aug. 12 -- The King may be dead, but it's still "long live the King" as far as Elvis Presley fans are concerned.

Known worldwide by just his one name, Elvis died 25 years ago this Friday at the age of 42. In his death, he became even larger than life, frozen forever in time.

"There have been a lot of tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king," said rocker Bruce Springsteen.

Reinventing Pop Culture

It is almost impossible to remember a world before Presley, a time when hearing the lyrics "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog, cryin' all the time," wouldn't summon a picture of Presley to mind.

His was a sound that was so big and so new, that it would not just reinvent music — it would reinvent pop culture in a way that was almost painfully thrilling. Presley stood the 1950s on end, and half a century later, he's still "The King."

Women screamed, cried and fainted at Presley shows, while his hair, his wiggling hips and his 18 No. 1 hits seemed to be everywhere. Presley basically defined stardom for a generation.

But he would die too young — and nearly bankrupt. Fans who made pilgrimages to Graceland, his home in Memphis, Tenn., mourned en masse after his death — and still do.

Every August, they light candles again — in memory of the first American icon of rock 'n' roll.

Sharecropper's Son Played Guitar

Presley had a life that still seems remarkable today. The son of a sharecropper, he got his first guitar as a birthday present, because it was cheaper than a bicycle.

Elvis Aron Presley was born at 4 a.m. on Jan. 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jesse Garon, died at birth. His father, Vernon, a Mississippi sharecropper, struggled to feed his family, and even served time in jail for writing bad checks.

His mother, Gladys was Elvis' inspiration and best friend. The young Presley vowed that somehow he would take care of them.

"He always had the idea, the vision that he was going to do something great. He didn't know what it was," said Presley biographer Peter Guralnick.

Presley was a shy, soft-spoken truck driver, just 18 years old, when he first walked into Sam Phillips' now famous Sun Studios in Memphis.

"What you saw on that stage later on was entirely different [from] what I saw when he first came in and made that little record for his mother," Phillips said.