In 1969, Elvis Presley was about to do something he hadn’t done in years. He was going back on a live stage, for a long run of shows at the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas. He put together a tight new band to back him, and the man he picked to sit behind the drums was Ronnie Tutt.
Tutt was a session drummer from Texas, and he’d go on to play with Elvis for most of the rest of the King’s career. He watched Elvis closely and caught every move, so the beat would land right where Elvis wanted it. That’s how he drove some of the most famous concerts Elvis ever gave.
While he was there in 1969, Elvis started giving gifts to the people around him. Ronnie got a solid gold Swiss watch. He always said it was the first present Elvis ever gave him.
What made it special wasn’t the gold.
It was what Elvis had put on the back. He didn’t sign it “Elvis.” He signed it with a silly nickname he’d made up for himself, and he even spelled it wrong. Years later Ronnie still lit up when he talked about it.
“On the back of it, it says: ‘To Ronnie – from ‘Squirly’ EP’, he didn’t even say ‘Elvis’. And he mis-spelled the word ‘Squirly’. It’s real special to me, you know.”
So the King of Rock and Roll called himself a squirrel. Tutt said Elvis was going around in 1969 and 1970 calling himself “the original squirrel,” or “squirly,” and he dropped a letter when he had it put on the watch.
Ronnie wasn’t the only one. Elvis gave his Las Vegas bandleader, Bobby Morris, a gold watch too. Morris was the man who led the orchestra for those first International shows. His is a 14-karat gold Baume & Mercier with the hotel’s logo on it, and the back reads “To Bobby, from Squirrly, E. P.” Same joke, spelled a little differently again.
Morris’s watch later turned up for sale. It sold at RR Auction in July 2018 for $12,301, then again in May 2019 for about $12,500. The close-up photos of that engraved caseback are the clearest look anyone has at how Elvis signed these little gifts. Just keep in mind those pictures are Bobby’s watch, not Ronnie’s.
Ronnie Tutt passed away in 2021. But there’s old footage of him sitting back and telling his own Elvis stories, and they’re the kind only a man who stood a few feet away every night could tell.
Here he is, years later, talking about a different surprise from Elvis. Not the watch this time, but a ring.
Ronnie Tutt remembers a surprise gift from Elvis
Tutt spent more time up close with Elvis than almost anyone, and he never got tired of these stories. The watch was only the start of them. Read on for more about the man behind the drums and the King who signed himself “Squirly.”