Graceland and the Elvis Economy

Elvis Presley drove past Graceland for the first time in early nineteen fifty-seven and told his mother he wanted to buy it. The mansion had been built in nineteen thirty-nine on a thirteen-acre estate in what was then a rural stretch of Whitehaven, south of Memphis. The asking price was one hundred two thousand five hundred dollars. Presley bought it in March nineteen fifty-seven. He was twenty-two years old and had been a recording artist for three years.

He had walked into Sun Studio in nineteen fifty-three to record two songs for his mother's birthday, paying four dollars in studio time. Sam Phillips signed him, recorded him, and sold his contract to RCA Victor in November nineteen fifty-five for thirty-five thousand dollars, which was the largest amount ever paid for a recording artist's contract at that point. Phillips used the money to sign Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. The Black musicians whose blues recordings had shaped the style Presley inherited received no share of that transaction.

Graceland receives approximately six hundred thousand visitors per year, making it the second most visited private residence in the United States after the White House. It generates more tourism revenue for Memphis than any other single attraction. The economy of Memphis music tourism flows primarily through Presley's name and image.

The musicians whose tradition he absorbed, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, and the dozens of others who built the Delta blues form that filtered through Sun Studio into his recordings, are memorialized in museums along Highway Sixty-One that draw a fraction of Graceland's traffic. The exchange was not equal then, and it is not equal now in how the history is visited.