ELVIS- FROM A SHOTGUN HOUSE TO A MANSION ON A HILL- My mom's blue house is a shotgun house so we don't want to disparage shotgun houses. People, in other parts of the country, may not know that shotgun houses were generally three or four room houses that had each room opening into the next room with no hallway in the house. The doors going from room to room usually lined up with each other. The term shotgun house came about because someone in the front yard could fire a shotgun into the front door and the load would go from room to room until it went out the back door. When Elvis was born, his parents lived in a three room shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi. A shotgun house was his beginning. Graceland was his mansion on a hill. When Elvis made his first record, his family was living in public housing in downtown Memphis. I, and every other teenager in Memphis, was an early Elvis fan and I remember clearly the night when Dewey Phillips, a disc jockey at WHBQ in Memphis played a tape that Elvis had recorded earlier that day at Sun Records. Elvis took the tape to WHBQ and asked Dewey to play it. The switchboard went wild and Dewey ended up playing the tape of "That's alright Lil mama" some 15 times. I also attended Elvis's first concert at Qverton Park Shell. It was free and Elvis was joined, on stage with currently popular, country music people. You can guess who the crowd went crazy for as the Shell was inundated by teenagers. This was quite amazing for someone like Elvis who, a week before, had been in training to be a plumber's fetch boy. Elvis's few early appearances with country stars and stealing the show foretold a later time when Elvis appeared on the Grand Old Opry and was received very nearly a silent response. Country music did not recognize Elvis until after his death.
