Long before Graceland, before the jumpsuits and the private planes, Elvis Presley was a Memphis teenager working the same kind of odd jobs as every other kid in his neighborhood.
His father Vernon bought him a push lawn mower, and Elvis went into business with a few friends, cutting yards around the area for four dollars each. After that came a string of regular jobs. He tore tickets as an usher at a downtown movie theater, worked in a metal factory and drove a delivery truck for Crown Electric at a dollar an hour.
None of it hinted at what was coming. He was just a quiet kid earning his way, helping his parents out, saving what little he could.
A childhood friend remembers young Elvis
Then July 1954 came around. Elvis cut his first real single at Sun Records, left the truck-driving job behind and everything started moving fast.
His own income tax returns tell the rest in cold numbers. In 1955 he made around twenty five thousand dollars. By 1956 it was over two hundred eighty thousand. And by 1958, just a few short years after four dollars a yard, Elvis was pulling in more than a million dollars a year.
Elvis the truck driver, before fame
The climb from a push lawn mower to a million a year took him almost no time at all. But the kid sweating behind that mower in the Memphis heat had no idea any of it was waiting for him.