According to Elvis himself, Gladys was something of a hyper-protective parent, so it’s no surprise that she was reluctant to arm her baby boy with a deadly weapon. “She never let me out of her sight,” he once shared. Instead, Gladys took her son to a local general store to pick out a different item for his 11th birthday — ideally one that didn’t carry the harrowing risk of death. While traversing the isles of the Tupelo Hardware Store on January 8, 1946, Elvis spotted a guitar on one of the shelves (via History).
Though he’d never played an instrument before, the little wooden apparatus seemed to capture his appeal in a mysterious way. The guitar, modestly priced at $6.95, ended up going home with Elvis Presley that day. It almost seems serendipitous in hindsight because, as you probably already know, Elvis would go on to build an unprecedented legacy whose influence and austerity remain eternal (per History).
