10 Things You Should Know About Elvis on His Birthday

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on this date, January 8, 1935. Here are 10 Things You Should Know About the King!

10 Things You Should Know About Elvis Presley

1. He was very polite. "He was always taught manners," Sam Phillips says. "His mother thought there was no reason to treat people except with great respect. If you didn't say 'yes-sir' and 'no-sir', that was a cardinal sin."
2. But you wouldn't like him when he was angry. "He was real slow to anger," Phillips says. "But once he was angered pound for pound I don't know of a person who was stronger. I remember one time at the gas station out the back of the Peabody Hotel. This one person who didn't like his long sideburns wouldn't leave him alone. Elvis had him down on the concrete in no time flat."
3. Colonel Tom Parker really was a colonel. Kind of. Presley's legendary manager was given an honorary colonel's commission in October 1948 by Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Parker did serve in the U.S. Army in 1930 and 1931, but he didn't attain the rank of colonel. (Parker wasn't his real name, either.)
4. Elvis's gold suit was the genuine article. The colonel had it designed for him for the opening date of a 10-city tour in 1957. It was made by famous Hollywood tailor Nudie Cohen and cost $2,500. During the show, Elvis fell to his knees and left a pile of gold leaf on the stage. Afterward, a distraught Parker begged him never to do such a move again.
5. He really loved his mother, Gladys. At her funeral in 1958, he tried to jump into her grave. For days afterward, he carried her nightgown around with him.
6. He was a very spiritual man. Larry Geller, who became Presley's hairdresser and guru in 1964, introduced him to spirituality. Geller gave him books he would cherish for the rest of his life: Autobiography of a Yogi, The Impersonal Life and Beyond the Himalayas. "I've always known there had to be a purpose for my life," Presley once said, "There's got to be a reason why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley.
7. He made 31 movies over 13 years. "Elvis hated most of those later films," says friend and bodyguard Red West. "I mean, in Stay Away, Joe they had him singing to a bull."
8. He never sold more records in a year than in 1956. That's when the single "Hound Dog" and its B-side, "Don't Be Cruel," sold 4.6 million copies in the United States.
9. And never fewer than he sold in 1967. That year was the nadir of his Hollywood period. "The Easy Come, Easy Go EP never charted," Jorgensen says. "That's when Presley's management realized something had to change. The movie was horrible. The songs were poor and poorly recorded, with bad arrangements. And Elvis didn't sing them particularly well. I'm told the Cokes and burgers during the sessions were OK."
10. Elvis was an officer of the Memphis police force. Shelby County sheriff Roy Nixon made the King a chief deputy in 1970. He had legal authority, and could have made arrests.