On 22 September 1958, a troop ship called the USS General Randall sailed out of New York for Germany, carrying thousands of American soldiers. One of them was Elvis Presley.
His mother had been dead for five weeks.
Gladys Presley died on 14 August 1958, aged 46, while Elvis was in the Army. He had been given emergency leave, buried her, and then been sent straight back to his unit. Now he was being shipped across an ocean, away from everything he knew, still in shock.
And on that ship was a small man from Alabama named Charlie Hodge.
The Elvis I knew, Charlie Hodge
They had met briefly once before. Charlie was a gospel singer who stood five foot three, so short that he performed standing on a crate. Elvis always laughed about it.
Once the ship had sailed, Elvis came looking for him. As Charlie remembered it: “Charlie, I don’t know a single one of those guys up in my compartment. You want to move up there with me?” Charlie moved in.
What happened next is what has stayed with fans ever since. During the day, Elvis seemed fine — smiling, relaxed, joking with the men. At night, alone in his bunk, he grieved.
Charlie’s own words: “I would lie there in the darkness and listen as he quietly moaned from down in his heart. After a while I would climb down and sit on the side of his bunk. I’d tell him jokes and stories until he began to feel a little better and could fall asleep.”
Charlie Hodge, a close friend to Elvis, kept Elvis’s memory alive – Charlie performing on stage in 1981
Then the line that says everything about him: “I made it my goal to keep Elvis laughing all the way across the ocean.”
That was the start. Charlie stayed for seventeen years — singing harmony, playing guitar, handing him water and scarves, catching his guitar when he threw it. He was in the house the day Elvis died. He was with the escort that brought Elvis and his mother home to Graceland. And he stayed on for a year afterward, helping Vernon.
He kept performing Elvis songs for fans until the end. Charlie Hodge died in 2006.