I did some genealogy research for a friend years ago. She was related to Elvis. If I remember correctly, he had a Jewish background but liked all denominations. I hope I get this right but think he had a apostolic Pentecostal background. Plus, I know he got a lot of his singing style from Black churches. The wife of a cousin grew up with him. Right after he died in 1977, my daughters and I went to MS to see relatives. When we got to Tupelo, we went by the house where he was born since it could be seen from the highway. We had never seen so many flowers. Never will forget that. I do not go that way anymore.
“Elvis’ parents met in 1933 in the First Assembly of God in East Tupelo, Miss. Gladys’s uncles, Sims and Gains Mansell, were co-pastors.
Young Elvis was water baptized in that church in 1943 or 1944, according to biographers. That’s where he first learned to rock and roll.
‘Ministers played guitars, gyrated, and danced wildly while parishioners rolled in aisles, feverishly jumping about, and spoke in tongues’, Patricia Jobe Pierce wrote in The Ultimate Elvis.
The Presley’s moved to Memphis in 1948, when Elvis was 13. Dyson said it wasn’t long after that when Elvis and his parents began worshiping at his Church of Jesus Christ on Seventh Street at Saffarans.”
” he had a Jewish background “
__________________________________________
Wow, I had never heard that, but I now see that it is true.
I knew Elvis only through my father. He had Elvis make a visit to a charity high school football game, proceeds of which went to the Lion’s Club Foundation for the Blind.
It was an annual event called “The Blind Game”. I was in my early teens at that time.