BILLY SMITH: If you look at a lot of those pictures of Elvis in the fifties, you’ll see Junior Smith. Junior was Gene’s brother and Elvis’s and my first cousin. His mama was my daddy and Gladys’s sister, Levalle. Junior’s real name was Carroll. He’s in a lot of those Alfred Wertheimer pictures because he went on some of the New York trips. He was part of the whole traveling show. More to the point, he was in the core group of the Memphis Mafia, with Red and Gene. Of course, nobody called it the Memphis Mafia then. You’ll know Junior in these pictures. He always reminded me of Jack Elam, the actor. He looked like him. His expressions. The way he did things, the way he talked. Even had a bad eye like Elam. Elam always looked like he was about to do something really painful to you. So did Junior.
LAMAR FIKE: Junior was a really fucked-up individual. He got a Section 8 over in Korea. He was in the Big 8 stockade [military psychiatric ward].
BILLY SMITH: Junior was always sullen, but what done him in was the fact that he couldn’t get over what happened over there. He went in a village and opened fire on a woman and some kids with a Browning automatic rifle and killed them. And it drove him crazy. He saw that all the time.
LAMAR FIKE: We’d say, “Oh, oh, he’s remembering stuff again.” I used to see him sit there and hold a cigarette until it burnt through his fingers. I’m going to tell you something. If anybody was ever a killer, it was Junior Smith.
BILLY SMITH: Almost as soon as he got back from Korea, he started staying on drunks, and he couldn’t hold a job for any length of time. But in some ways, Junior was a happy-go-lucky guy. He was a lot of fun to be around, but even when he was funny, it was a solemn type of humor. It took you a second to realize, “Hey, he’s cracked a joke, here.”
LAMAR FIKE: Junior had a very sardonic wit. Everything was bullshit to him.
BILLY SMITH: Both Elvis and Vernon were crazy about him. Lee Edward, Junior’s oldest brother, had just drowned in ’56. That had a whole lot to do with the way Junior was, too, along with everything else. Anyway, Elvis wanted him around.
LAMAR FIKE: The way he could look at you. God! It would make your bladder weak. We were out in California doing Jailhouse Rock, and he was sitting there looking at me across the room. He said, “You know what I’m going to do to you?” I thought, “Oh, shit.” He said, “I’m going to kill you.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because I just don’t fuckin’ like you.” I told Elvis, “That son of a bitch is planning on killing me!” He said, “Aw, Junior’s just talking.” I said, “Bullshit!” He unnerved me no end.
BILLY SMITH: Junior was just as softhearted as he could be. But when he got to drinking, he might hurt you, or even kill you, and not realize what he was doing. Junior was a fun-loving guy, boy.
LAMAR FIKE: Red West was realty wired around him. Because Junior would just lay up and wait for you outside the door. You’d walk by, and he’d slip a blade in your ribs if he felt like it. I think Gene was capable of it, too. So Red never fucked with them. Junior was six foot tall, but I don’t think he weighed ninety pounds.
MARTY LACKER: I think Junior might have been into drugs. On top of everything else.
BILLY SMITH: Up until ’58, Junior hung out with Elvis. And then Elvis went in the army, and Junior just stayed drunk. And, ’course, my daddy, too, could pitch a bender in a minute. One night in ’60—I’m thinking it was in the fall, or maybe the winter—Junior and Daddy were drinking. They got just all sloppy drunk. Finally, Daddy went to his bedroom and passed out. And Junior went to my room and laid down on the bed.
I came home probably around eleven or eleven-thirty and went in my room. I realized Junior was there, and I started to crawl over, when I saw there was something on the bed. I could smell the alcohol, so I thought, “Well, he’s done thrown up on the bed.” So I went into the living room and laid down on the couch.
The next morning, I got up before everybody else. And something just told me to go in there. It was almost eerie. And maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed cold to me, like something was wrong. I looked at Junior, and my heart liked to stop. He had thrown up, but the stuff on the bed had some blood mixed with it, and it seemed it had come out of his nose. Oh, God, it was horrible. I stared at him for a minute or two, and I didn’t see any movement at all. I walked over and touched him, and he was stiff. Rigor mortis had set in.
I thought, “God Almighty! He’s dead!” To find somebody like that, believe me, it’s scary. I ran in to where Mama and Daddy were, and I said, “Daddy! I think Junior’s dead!” He said, “No, he’s all right.” Then he went in, and I heard him say, “Oh, my God, he is!” He’d had a cerebral hemorrhage or maybe an alcoholic seizure.
Elvis was extremely hurt by Junior’s dying. He took a lot of the blame on himself for not providing more for the family or giving them more opportunities. But the most peculiar part about this is that when Junior died, Elvis became obsessed with knowing what death was like.
Junior was at the Memphis Funeral Home, and Elvis wanted to go see the body. So we went up there about three or four A.M. The door was locked, but a guy let us in the back way. We went on up and viewed the body and all, and Elvis started talking about death in general. And then he said, “Let’s ease on back and see how they do this.”
We went on back through the little hallways. It was dark as hell, except for a little green light in the very back comer. I couldn’t see my hand in front of me because we weren’t close enough to the light. We went around, and then we saw a lot of lights, and when we passed through there, we heard this noise. It was hard to tell what it was. We were in the room where they display the caskets. Elvis looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both had our eyes wide open, with these scared looks on our faces. It was kind of comical.
This sound was a good little ways down the hall, and it was a heck of a noise. When we got down there, it got darker. And the noise got louder. Finally, Elvis stopped. I was so glad he did, man. I just froze. He looked at me and he said, “You hear that?” I said, “Yeah, and I don’t want to hear it no more. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Elvis said, “Let’s don’t go yet. Let’s see on around.”
We went on back, and we saw this mortician. There were two on duty that night—one was working, and the other one was laying there in one of the caskets snoring. That’s what the noise was. And the other guy back there had rock ’n’ roll music on.
We thought it would be real cold in there, and this wild-eyed person would come out. But he was just a normal guy. And when he saw Elvis, he stepped out and said, “Can I help you?” Elvis said, “I’m Elvis Presley. You’ve got my cousin up there, and I was just fascinated about all this.” And the mortician said, “Y’all are not supposed to be here.” But he was also just beside himself that Elvis was there. And, of course, we talked a while.
I looked around and saw a couple of bodies with sheets over ’em. I was kind of spooked. I started to back up, and damn if I didn’t back up into one of the carts that had a body on it. When them cold feet hit me, man, I damn near jumped through the ceiling. I said, “Holy mackerel!” I was ready to run, boy. Because I wasn’t quite as brave or fascinated as Elvis was. It just didn’t set well with me. But they talked for a few minutes more, and Elvis asked the mortician all kinds of questions.
He did that about three times through the years, usually when somebody he knew had passed away. He seemed to want to know a little bit more about it each time.
When it come out in Red and Sonny’s book [Elvis, What Happened?] that he liked to go to morgues, people thought he was a damn freak. And I can see that—it’s creepy. But part of it is just a Southern upbringing, and part of it is being curious about what in the hell happens when you die. He had a fear of it, and he wanted to face that fear. And I think he was just trying to bridge the gap and hold on a little longer.