In 1974, Elvis walked into Donald’s Furniture Store in Memphis. By the way his family told it, his father Vernon took one look at the dark, heavily carved Polynesian pieces and called it the ugliest furniture he had ever seen. Elvis just grinned and said good, sounds like me.
Then he bought the lot. The entire room, in about half an hour. Tiki-style sofas, carved chairs with little sea serpents and gargoyles crawling up them, green shag carpet that ran across the floor and up onto the ceiling.
Some of the pieces were so big they wouldn’t fit through the doors. They had to be hauled in through the windows.
Graceland on the famous room and its sessions
There’s one detail even big fans tend to get wrong. Elvis never once called it the Jungle Room. That nickname came later, from the public, after Graceland opened its doors to visitors in 1982. To Elvis, it was simply the den.
Inside the Jungle Room at Graceland
And the den earned its place in history for more than the shag carpet. Two years after that quick shopping trip, Elvis set up microphones in that very room and recorded some of the final songs of his life there.
The most photographed room in the whole house, the one everybody pictures when they think of Graceland, started out as a snap decision and a running joke between a father and his son.