Teenager in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they gained admission to a two-bedroom apartment in the city-run public housing complex known as the Courts.    Presley was enrolled at Humes High School, where he received a C in music in eighth grade.    When his music teacher told him he couldn't sing, he brought his guitar to class the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me" in an effort to prove otherwise. Classmate Katie Mae Shook recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing."    That incident aside, he was generally perceived as too shy to perform openly.    He was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy".    Sometime in 1950, Presley began practicing guitar regularly in the laundry room under the family apartment.    His tutor was Jesse Lee Denson, a neighbor two-and-a-half years his senior.    They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts.    That September, Presley began ushering at Loew's State Theater to boost the family income, but his mother made him quit as she feared it was affecting his school work.    Other jobs followed during his school years: Precision Tool, Loew's again, MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, he began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline.    On his own time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers.    By his senior year, he was wearing them.    Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes's "Annual Minstrel" show in April 1953.    Singing and playing guitar, he opened with Teresa Brewer's "Till I Waltz Again With You".    The performance seems to have done much for his popularity at school.

Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear.   He frequented record stores with jukeboxes and listening booths.    He knew all of Hank Snow’s songs and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills.    The Southern Gospel singer Jake Hess, one of Presley's favorite performers, was a significant influence on his
ballad-singing style.    Presley was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the clear influence of African American spiritual music.    He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.    Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the backbeat-driven music known as rhythm and blues.    Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street.    By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley already
seems to have singled out music as his future.

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