Everywhere Elvis Presley went in the 1970s, people called him the King. They yelled it from their seats and held up homemade signs. A few fans even brought real crowns to the shows and handed them up to the stage, like he was royalty.
Elvis always took the gifts with a smile. He was gracious about it every single time. But one of the women who stood a few feet behind him, night after night, said there was something he never told the crowd.
Her name was Myrna Smith. She sang with the Sweet Inspirations, the backup group that worked with Elvis from 1969 until 1977. So she had a close-up view of him for years. She watched the crowns come in, and she saw how he really felt about all of it once the lights went down.
In an interview she gave before she passed away in 2010, Myrna explained it in a few plain words.
She said fans “liked to give him crowns because they thought of him as the King of Rock n’ Roll.” Then came the part most people never heard. Elvis didn’t actually like being called that, and the reason had nothing to do with music.
“He didn’t like that title because, y’know, a spiritual thing,” Myrna said. “He felt there’s only one king. But he would graciously take the gifts.”
That was Elvis all over. He wasn’t going to embarrass a fan or wave off a present. He’d accept the crown, say thank you, and keep his own beliefs to himself.
He didn’t always stay quiet about it, though. At a concert in South Bend, Indiana, in the fall of 1974, some fans reportedly held up a banner naming him the King, and Elvis answered them right from the stage. His exact words that night are disputed, and folks still argue over what was really said. But the heart of it matched everything Myrna remembered. To him, the only real king was Christ.
Gospel singer J.D. Sumner, who toured with Elvis for years, once told a similar story about a crown handed over in Las Vegas.
You can hear Myrna tell her version in her own voice. She’s warm about him, and the way she describes his manners toward fans tells you a lot about who he was offstage.
Myrna Smith, one of Elvis’s backup singers, remembers the man behind the title
There’s also a recording from that 1974 night in Indiana, where you can hear the moment the crowd pushed the title on him. The popular wording floating around online may not match what’s actually on the tape, so give it a listen and judge for yourself.
Audio from the 1974 Indiana concert where fans called Elvis the King
Elvis gave the world a hundred famous moments up on a stage. Myrna held onto this quieter one, and it’s the story she wanted people to hear.