Gladys Presley had a big heart, and her family knew it better than anyone.
One of the people who saw it up close was Billy Smith. Billy was Elvis’s first cousin, the son of Gladys’s oldest brother, Travis Smith. He was 8 years younger than Elvis and grew up right alongside him in Tupelo, Mississippi. Years later, in a 2006 interview with Piers Beagley of the Elvis Information Network, Billy talked about a member of the family who rarely gets mentioned.
His name was Tracy, and he was Gladys’s little brother.
Billy listed all of Gladys’s brothers and sisters for the interview: Travis, Clettes, Johnny, Lillian, Lavelle and Tracy. He said Tracy and Lavelle took after their father, with blue eyes and lighter skin.
Tracy had an illness as a young child that left him needing care for the rest of his life. Gladys took care of him herself. “Aunt Gladys looked after him as long as she lived,” Billy said.
If you’ve never seen Billy, here he is with his wife, Jo, talking about the cousin he grew up with.
Billy Smith and his wife, Jo, talk about Elvis
When Elvis bought Graceland, he brought his family with him. That included Gladys’s side.
Billy’s father, Travis, already had a job looking after Elvis. “My father Travis was the first Gate Guard that Elvis had,” Billy said. When the family moved to Graceland, Vernon asked Travis to be head gate guard there too, “just as he’d been at Elvis’ house on Audubon Drive.”
Elvis had more than one uncle who worked those gates over the years. This story belongs to Gladys’s side of the family, and to a different uncle altogether.
Billy’s family lived in a big white house on the Graceland grounds. Tracy lived right there with them. “He lived with us in that house behind Graceland,” Billy said.
Here’s Travis himself, Elvis’s first gate guard, at Graceland in 1960, so you can finally put a face to the name.
Elvis’s Uncle Travis at Graceland, 1960
So where did Tracy love to spend his time?
Down at the front gate, with his big brother.
“Sometimes Tracy would stay down there at the gate with Daddy and pretend he was a gate guard,” Billy remembered.
It’s a sweet picture. Fans gathered at those gates hoping for a glimpse of Elvis, and there beside Travis stood Tracy, keeping watch like it was his job too.
Billy spoke about Tracy with real warmth. He called him “a kind man.” Then he added one more thing about his uncle: “And, he had unbelievable strength.”
After Gladys passed away, he lived with Billy’s family and then with some of his sisters.
And Elvis never forgot his mother’s little brother. Billy summed it up in a few simple words that say a lot about the whole Presley and Smith family.
“He loved Elvis, and Elvis provided for him.”