• Elvis’s first girlfriend was childhood sweetheart 16-year-old Dixie Locke, a high-school senior who was his first prom date.
• Elvis was born at 4.36 a.m. on 8 January 1935 at the home of his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, in Old Bailey Road, East Tupelo, Mississippi.
• He weighed 5lb (2kg) at birth and was the second of twins. His older brother, Jesse Aaron, was stillborn at 4 a.m.
• In October 1945, at age ten, Elvis won second prize in a talent contest, singing the tearjerker ‘Old Shep’ at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo.
• Elvis’s mother bought him his first guitar, costing $7.75, at a Tupelo hardware store as a present for his 11th birthday.
• At his first public appearance, with the L C Humes High School band in April 1963, his name was misspelled ‘Elvis Prestly’ on the programme.
• On his first billed appearance, at the Overton Park Shell, Memphis, in the summer of 1964, a newspaper advertisement referred to him as ‘Ellis Presley’.
• When Elvis’s first record was released he was a semi-illiterate truck driver.
• His first commercial recording session took place in the Sun Records studio in Memphis on 5 July 1954. He taped ‘Harbour Lights’, and after a break, recorded ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ with Scotty Moore and Bill Black.
• Scotty Moore and disc jockey Bob Neal were Elvis’s managers before he signed with self-styled ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, a former dog catcher and carnival barker, on 15 March 1956.
• Parker, an illegal immigrant from the Netherlands in 1929, who claimed to have been born in Virginia, went on to shamefully mishandle Elvis’s career – taking a 50 per cent cut of all Elvis’s earnings, as well as lucrative fees for granting contracts. He made more money than his client.
• After his conscription in the army, mainly served in Germany, Elvis returned to the United States on 5 March 1960, and was honourably discharged at Fort Dix.
• Since his death Elvis is said to have been spotted by scores of witnesses both in the United States and other countries.
• Elvis recorded more than 650 songs – 18 of his singles reached number one in the charts. With a three-octave voice, his hits covered a range of styles, including country, gospel, rock ’n’ roll, rhythm and blues, and pop.
• In 1957, at age 22, Elvis bought Graceland. It was a 23-room mansion ten miles (16 km) south of Memphis, which, with various outbuildings, stood in 13.8 acres of land. It overlooked Route 51, which was later renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard. He paid $100,000 cash for the property.
• Major Bill Smith, a record producer who met Elvis in 1956, says he talked to Elvis after his supposed death and received two remarkable cassettes in the mail, allegedly sent by the King. A police voice identification expert from Houston compared one of the tapes with an Elvis interview from 1962 and found a staggering 35 instances where the voice patterns matched.
• The biggest Elvis hit, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, was written in just 22 minutes by retired dishwasher repairman Tommy Durden and Nashville songwriter Mae Boren Axton.
• Elvis had his longest run in the Top 100 singles chart with ‘All Shook Up’, which lasted an incredible 30 weeks – with eight straight weeks at number one.
• Elvis produced a staggering 45 gold records, each one selling over a million copies. No artist had ever achieved such sales, until Elvis proved it could be done.
• Gail Brewer Giorgio, author of Is Elvis Alive? released an hour-long cassette of an alleged conversation with Elvis, recorded four years after his death. Elvis talks of travelling around Europe, his need for privacy and his wish to resume his career – all in the familiar, low, slightly slurred drawl.
• Elvis and Priscilla divorced on 11 October 1973. He had several girlfriends afterwards. The last was Ginger Aiden, who found him sprawled on the bathroom floor at 2.30 p.m. on 18 August 1977. She said they had planned to marry on Christmas Day. Elvis had already ordered a £27,600 ring.
• Partly because of his wild spending, and partly because ‘Colonel’ Parker took such a huge slice of his income, Elvis had only £2.75 million when he died. His estate has made more since his death than he made when he was alive.
• Elvis’s first screen kiss came in his second movie, Loving You, when actress Jana Lund made screen history by being the first woman to kiss Elvis on film. It was also his first colour movie.
• For Elvis, Loving You was a family affair, as both his mother and father appeared on camera in the production.
• Elvis was touchy about his height and secretly wore lifts in his shoes to make him appear taller.
• Elvis’s favourite actress was Shelley Fabares, who appeared in three of his films.
• If he wanted to book seats or travel incognito, Elvis frequently used the names Dr John Carpenter or John Burrows Jnr.
• Elvis was a big animal-lover and his many pets at Graceland included cats, dogs, ducks, fish, ponies, peacocks, a parrot and a chimpanzee.
• Priscilla Ann Beaulieu was just 14, a grey-eyed, 5 ft 3 (1.5 m) schoolgirl, when Elvis fell in love with her while serving in the army in Germany. Her stepfather was a US Air Force Captain.
• The first music Elvis Aaron Presley ever heard was in his early years at the First Assembly of God Church, in East Tupelo, Mississippi.
• Love Me Tender was Elvis’s first movie. He played opposite veteran stars Debra Paget and Richard Egan.
• Elvis proposed to Priscilla on Christmas Eve 1966. They married at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas on 1 May 1967. The wedding ring had a three-carat diamond surrounded by 20 other diamonds.
• In 1948, when Elvis was 13, the family packed its belongings in cardboard boxes and paper bags, and moved to Memphis in their 1939 Packard.
• On 14 August 1958 Gladys Presley died of a heart attack, brought on by acute hepatitis, at the Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Elvis was devastated.
• Exactly nine months after the wedding, on 1 February 1968, Lisa Marie Presley was born in Memphis. Had she been a boy, they would have named him John Baron Presley.
• Elvis made 31 movies but desperately wanted more substantial, challenging roles. However, ‘Colonel’ Parker and the movie moguls saw a source of easy money in his mindless, low-budget films. They used the huge profits to bankroll more important movies, featuring established stars.