In 1958, everybody knew the name Elvis Presley. Hardly anyone remembers that another Presley got his own record deal that same year. He was 62 years old, and he was Elvis’s grandfather.
His name was Jessie D. McDowell Presley. Some sources spell it “Jesse,” and the family just called him J.D. He was Vernon Presley’s father, which made him Elvis’s grandpa on his dad’s side. Jessie was born April 9, 1896, in Itawamba County, Mississippi.
He later settled in Louisville, Kentucky, and he was nobody’s idea of a pop star. Jessie was a carpenter by trade. In Louisville he worked as a night watchman at the Pepsi-Cola plant.
Then in 1958 he signed a recording contract with Legacy Records, a small Louisville label.
The man who ran the label had a sweet way of describing him. He said Jessie sang “like a grandfather singing to his grandchildren.” Jessie would settle into a rocking chair and sing what he called “cotton-pickin’ songs.”
Of course people wanted to know one thing. Could Grandpa move like Elvis? When somebody asked about swinging his hips like his famous grandson, Jessie had a quick comeback: “I’d break it if I did.”
A fan channel has posted what it bills as Jessie’s 1958 interview and performance, and it’s worth a few minutes just to see Elvis’s grandpa on film and hear how gently he sings.
Elvis’s grandfather Jessie Presley on film in 1958
So what was on the record? One side was a song called “Who’s That Kickin’ My Dog Around.” It also went by a second name, “The Billy Goat Song.”
Yes, that’s a real title. While the world was screaming for Elvis, his grandpa was singing about somebody kicking his dog around.
And he didn’t keep it to himself. On July 9, 1958, Jessie went on CBS TV’s “I’ve Got A Secret,” billed as “Grandpa Jesse Pressley,” and he sang “The Billy Goat Song” for a national audience. The president of Legacy Records went on the show with him, so the little Louisville label got its big night too.
The other side of the record was called “Swingin’ in the Orchard.” If you’d like to hear Jessie’s voice on an actual 1958 recording, this upload plays the song from start to finish.
Jessie Presley’s 1958 recording of “Swingin’ in the Orchard”
The record never caught on. Jessie went back to his quiet life in Louisville, and his singing career stayed a funny family footnote.
But he never stopped following his grandson’s. The Elvis Information Network put it simply: “Elvis’ Grandfather was rightly proud of his Grandson and kept a collection of scrapbooks about him.”
Those scrapbooks got a happy chapter of their own on Nov. 7, 1971. That night Elvis played Freedom Hall in Louisville. Somewhere out in that big crowd sat the old night watchman who once sang “The Billy Goat Song” on national TV.
Elvis knew he was there. As Elvis Australia tells it, “he introduced his Grandfather, who was in the audience, to the crowd.”
We don’t have Elvis’s exact words from that moment. It’s easy to guess how Jessie felt, though, when his grandson pointed him out to a hall full of fans.