Joe Esposito was a 20-year-old from Chicago with an office job waiting for him at home. He was drafted into the Army in 1958, did basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, and saw Elvis Presley around the base a few times — but never spoke to him. Elvis was the world’s most famous soldier. Joe was nobody.
Then both men were posted to Germany, and one of Joe’s friends turned up with a question.
They played touch football at the weekends with Elvis and his crowd, and they were short of players. Did Joe fancy a game?
He went. Elvis walked straight over and introduced himself. Joe’s description of what happened next is four words long, and it is the beginning of one of the most important friendships in music history. “It was just a click.”
One Of The Best Interviews About Elvis Presley By His Best Friend
Before they were discharged, Elvis asked him what he planned to do when he got home. Joe mentioned the office job in Chicago. He never took it.
From 1960 until 1977, Joe Esposito was Elvis Presley’s right-hand man — keeping the diary, running the household, managing the entourage, and, from 1970, working as his road manager when Elvis returned to touring. He became the unofficial leader of the group the press called the Memphis Mafia, and everybody called him “Diamond Joe.”
The measure of how close they were is in the two ceremonies that bracket the friendship. Joe was co-best man at Elvis’s wedding to Priscilla in 1967 — his wife Joanie was matron of honor. Ten years later, he was a pallbearer at Elvis’s funeral.
Elvis Presley Joe Esposito Talks To Larry Ling About Elvis
He was in the house on 16 August 1977. The job that fell to him that afternoon was one almost nobody would want. He had to make the phone calls.
His own account of it is quiet and very human: “I had to tell some of the people close to Elvis that he had died. I didn’t want them to hear it on the news, so I called and told Priscilla about it. Parker, too. It was a tough situation.”
Joe Esposito died in 2016 at age 78. He spent the rest of his life telling people what Elvis was actually like.