January 8, 1935 - Elvis was born.
Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935, in a two-room shotgun house in East Tupelo, then a separate municipality that some called the "roughest town in north Mississippi."
Though poor, Elvis's parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, were not unlike many others in Mississippi at that time, for the country was in the midst of the Great Depression.
The unemployment rate in the United States in 1935 was 20.1 percent.
Times were hard in the U.S., especially in the South, when Elvis Presley entered this world.
To be born poor then was not unusual. What was unusual about Elvis at his birth is that he was a twin.
His identical twin brother, Jesse Garon, did not survive, making Elvis what is called today a "twin-less twin."
Elvis was cherished by his family, but psychologists say that losing a twin can deeply affect the baby's mother and the surviving twin.
Elvis no doubt later yearned for a brother to help him through the rough spots of his life - of which there were many.
Elvis later changed his middle name, Aaron, to Aron, to more closely match his twin's middle name (Garon).
Elvis's mother - a strong and supportive presence in his life - told the young Elvis that a surviving twin gets the strength of both children, and all evidence indicates that, in this case anyway, she was right.
The shotgun house Baby Elvis called home, the "Birthplace Home of Elvis Presley" in Tupelo, was built by his father, his uncle, and paternal grandfather.
It is visited by thousands of people from all over the world.
"You can take this birthplace and put it in my living room at Graceland," Elvis later said.
But what these thousands of visitors do not realize is that Elvis lived not only in that two-room shotgun but in houses all over Tupelo.
They lost the shotgun house in 1938 when Elvis's father and two other men went to Parchman Farm-the Mississippi State Penitentiary- to serve eight months for altering a four-dollar check.
Elvis and his mother moved in with relatives in Tupelo.
His father's imprisonment
was traumatic to 3.5-year-old Elvis, who, according to a cousin, would sit on the porch "crying his eyes out" for his daddy.
Often Elvis and Gladys took the bus to Parchman on the weekends to visit him.
After release from Parchman, Vernon, as a day-laborer, had to continue to support his mother as well as his family; as a consequence, the Presleys were to become renters, like many families, moving from one affordable space to another.
The constant in their lives was church - Vernon and Gladys had met at the Assembly of God Church and they continued to attend church there, where music was becoming a big attraction to little Elvis.
The next year, at age four, Elvis, overhearing his parents fret about paying the bills, revealed his specific plans for looking after his family - in style.
He announced for the first time (there were many similar announcements to come) that he was going to buy two Cadillacs, one for his mother and father and one for him.
