In Memphis, a Cadillac with Elvis Presley behind the wheel wasn’t going to stay a secret for long. People knew his cars. And once they spotted him, a quiet drive turned into a crowd in a hurry.
But every now and then, Elvis wanted to get out of the house and just be by himself. So he found a way.
The man who told the story best was Marty Lacker. Marty went to school with Elvis in Memphis and grew up to be part of the “Memphis Mafia,” the nickname for Elvis’s close circle of friends and helpers. Marty was close enough that he was one of the best men at Elvis’s 1967 wedding. If anybody knew Elvis’s habits around town, it was him.
Joe Krein’s long sit-down interview with Marty is a good place to meet the man himself and hear how he talks about his years with Elvis.
Marty Lacker talks about life in Elvis’s inner circle
Years later, Marty answered fan questions for a website called the Elvis Information Network. One fan had heard a rumor and wanted to know if it was true. Did Elvis really drive an old Chevy pickup around Memphis undercover?
Marty set him straight. It wasn’t a Chevy, and it wasn’t a pickup.
“It was an old black panel van that was mainly used to haul the garbage to the dump,” he said.
A panel van is the plain, boxy kind of work van that nobody gives a second glance. This one did the dirty jobs. And that was exactly what made it perfect.
Marty went on, “but occasionally Elvis would use it and go off by himself with a bunch of bananas and a gallon of ice water.”
So that was the whole setup. One old black van, a bunch of bananas on the seat and a gallon of ice water to wash them down. Elvis Presley, rolling through his own hometown in a vehicle that usually carried trash.
And it worked. In Marty’s words, Elvis “was un noticed in the truck.”
Marty wasn’t the only one who remembered it. Anita Wood, Elvis’s girlfriend in the late 1950s, told interviewer David Adams about the same trick. She remembered riding around with him in “a black panel truck,” and she said, “nobody would recognize him in that truck.”
It’s a funny picture when you think about it. People around Memphis were watching for his Cadillacs, and Elvis was rolling right past them in the garbage van with his bananas.
The tribute below is full of real photos of Marty with Elvis over the years, and it shows just how close the two of them were.
Photos of Marty Lacker with Elvis through the years
The Cadillacs were right there at home. But on the days Elvis wanted a little peace, he picked the van instead.
Marty held on to that memory and shared it when a fan asked, which is how we know about it now.