Memphis, 1948. Elvis Presley was a quiet eighth grader at Humes High School.
Sitting in the same music class was George Klein. George was born in Memphis in 1935, and that year he was class president. Later on, a whole lot of Memphis would know his voice from the radio.
One day their music teacher, Miss Marman, told the class that the next week they’d sing Christmas carols instead of the usual music lesson.
George remembered exactly what happened next. “So Elvis raised his hand and he asked if he could bring his guitar in and sing.”
Not everyone took it well. “There were a few laughs in the class because it just wasn’t cool in 1948 to do that in front of anyone,” George said.
Elvis came back anyway.
“So the next week, he got up and sang Old Shep and Cold, Cold Icy Fingers.” George said he’d never seen anything like it. “At that moment, I was blown away because I’d never seen a kid get up in front of people and sing like that.”
George told that story in a 2007 interview with Scott Jenkins, later shared by the fan site Elvis Australia. He spent years on the air talking about his old classmate, and this radio chat lets you hear George tell Elvis stories in his own voice.
George Klein talks Elvis on SiriusXM’s Elvis Radio
Elvis got teased a lot back then. Kids picked on his long hair and his clothes. George said Elvis took it good-naturedly and never held a grudge.
George was one of the kids who didn’t join in, and that turned out to matter.
“I never kidded him and he never forgot that,” George said.
Fast forward a few years. Elvis’s career was taking off, and George had become a Memphis DJ. Then George got fired. The station let him go for playing too much rock ‘n’ roll, because it thought the music wouldn’t last.
It was a terrible day for a young DJ. And then Elvis heard about it.
As George told it, Elvis said to him, “you’re not fired because I’m hiring you.”
Elvis made George a traveling companion. George went along for shows in Canada, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit and Hawaii. Then Elvis took him to Hollywood for the filming of “Jailhouse Rock,” and George ended up appearing in the 1957 movie himself.
Here’s Elvis in the movie’s famous title number, a piece of film history George got to see being made.
Elvis in the “Jailhouse Rock” dance number
The friendship that started in music class lasted for decades.
George hosted “Talent Party” on Memphis TV from 1964 to 1973. Much later he hosted Elvis Radio on SiriusXM. And on Dec 5, 1970, when George married Barbara Little in Elvis’s Las Vegas hotel suite, Elvis stood up as his best man.
This look back at George and his years with Elvis is a good place to see how far the two of them came from Humes High.
A look back at George Klein, Elvis’s best man
It’s a long way from a music class at Humes High to having Elvis beside you at your own wedding in Las Vegas. George made that whole trip, and it started the week a shy boy asked if he could bring his guitar.