In 1958, the most famous man in America sat down in a barber’s chair on an army base — and 55 members of the press crowded into the room to watch it happen. Not a concert. Not a film premiere. A haircut. Cameras rolled as Elvis Presley’s famous black pompadour and sideburns dropped to the floor. And the line he came out with while it was happening is still quoted nearly seventy years later: “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”
It was the biggest story in the country because Elvis’s hair had become a genuine political issue. He had been declared eligible for the draft, and the question everybody wanted answered wasn’t whether he’d serve. It was what the Army would do about his hair. Things went so far that lawmakers — including a US Senator — were fielding letters from constituents asking whether the singer might be granted an exemption from the regulation-buzz-cut requirement so he could keep his pompadour and sideburns.
He got no exemption. On March 24, 1958, at about half past six in the morning, Elvis reported to the Memphis draft board with his parents. He was 23 years old. He’d already had his first number ones, made films, and been condemned from pulpits across America. Now he was issued a serial number, given a physical, and — in a nice touch — put in charge of his group of recruits for the bus ride out.
Elvis Presley Army Haircut in 1958
The haircut took place at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and it became a full-press event. The barber was a man named James Peterson. The room was packed with reporters and photographers to catch a glimpse.
There’s a lovely detail about the most famous photograph from that day. A local newspaper photographer called Jack Cleavenger suggested that Elvis pick up some of his shorn hair and blow it out of his hand. Elvis obliged — and that improvised shot became one of the best-known images ever taken of him.
The Army got Private Presley, and the world got a genuinely shocking image: the wild man of rock and roll, shaved down to a regulation cut, in olive drab. He was assigned to the Second Armored Division — the “Hell on Wheels” outfit once commanded by General Patton. Within days, Colonel Parker had received 5,000 pieces of fan mail addressed to Elvis at Fort Chaffee.
Elvis Presley Sideburn
Underneath the joke, he was frightened. Rock and roll moved fast, and two years is a long time to vanish. While he was stationed in Germany, he said something that shows how thin the confidence really was: “I have no way of telling if my fame is fading. You just don’t know. I hope the folks back home haven’t forgotten me.”
They hadn’t. He came back in 1960 not as a forgotten teen idol but as something closer to a national institution — the rebel who’d served his country like everybody else’s son. That barbershop at Fort Chaffee is now a museum, and you can stand in the room where it happened. Every so often they give out free buzz cuts to visitors in the same chair.