So how much do you know about Elvis Presley?
Here’s six lesser known facts about the king of rock n’ roll.
1. The founder of the Presley family in America was Johannes Valentin Bressler, who was born in the village of Hochstadt in Germany in 1669.
He brought his family to America looking for a better life in June 1710 and landed in New York.
They stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel in New Jersey. (I made that last bit up.)
2. His great-great-great-grandmother was a full blood Cherokee named Morning White Dove.
She married William Mansell, a settler in western Tennessee, in 1818.
The appellation ‘white’ in Morning Dove’s name refers to her status as a friendly Indian. Early American settlers called peaceable Indians ‘white’, while ‘red’ was the designation for warring Indians or those who sided with the British in the Revolutionary War.
It was common for male settlers in the West to marry ‘white’ Indians as there was a scarcity of females on the American frontier.
Oh, let me be your Running Bear.
3. He was born Elvis Aaron Presley on January 8, 1935 and his mother gave birth to an identical twin later that morning, but he was still born.
His twin was named Jesse Garon Presley.
Elvis was his parent’s only child.
4. The Memphis World, an African American newspaper, reported that Presley once defied Memphis’s segregation laws by going to the local amusement park on a ‘colored night.’
5. In 1970 he performed at the International in Las Vegas with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, after threats were made against his life.
SO DO NOT step on that man’s blue suede shoes.
6. Elvis was introduced to drugs not by the Memphis Mafia, but by an army sergeant while on maneuvers in Germany in 1959.
Conscription led to prescription.
A pity, when you remember what happened to him later …
Last month ten of my subscribers won my Kennedy bundle – two books about the JFK era, THE KENNEDY ENDEAVOUR by New York Times best selling author Bob Mayer and my own NAKED IN LA!
I’m getting ready to offer another bundle this week to all my subscribers – and all you have to do to win one is be on my mailing list!
JUST CLICK HERE TO JOIN!
