Elvis bought plenty of things on impulse, but the golden palomino he brought home in 1966 turned into something far more than a purchase. The horse was called Rising Sun, and Graceland’s whole stable ended up nicknamed the House of the Rising Sun in his honor.
The people who worked there remember how Elvis was around him. He groomed the horse himself. He would slip out to the barn alone, just to be near him, away from the noise and the crowds. One longtime hand put it about as well as anyone could, saying the horse never knew Elvis in a jumpsuit.
Sometimes Elvis would ride Rising Sun right down to the front gates of Graceland to greet the fans waiting there, sign a few autographs, then wheel around and gallop back up the drive.
Inside Elvis’s stable at Graceland
Rising Sun lived a long and easy life in those pastures, more than twenty years of it. And when that life finally came to an end in 1986, Graceland made a quiet, gentle choice about how to lay him to rest.
Stories from the Graceland stable
They buried him facing east. So that the golden horse Elvis loved would always be the first one at Graceland to meet the morning sun.
It’s a small thing to do for a horse. But it tells you most of what you need to know about how much that one meant to him.