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My Dinner With Vernon
I have a confession
to make. I was once invited to visit Elvis at Graceland, to jam with him,
and I didn’t go.
I have a buddy who jammed with Elvis, though not at Graceland. It was
in a warehouse in Alabama. Elvis came by on a motorcycle, saw the band
through an open bay door, and asked if he could sit in on drums for a
while. I suspect Elvis’s drumming wasn’t much better than my
buddy Wayne Scott’s. Wayne says he couldn’t talk Elvis into
singing or playing guitar. No, nobody taped it: this was before everybody
had portable cassette recorders.
I have Bill Black’s autograph. (Bill Black was the bass-playing half
of Scotty and Bill, Elvis’s original back-up band.) And I once got
to hang out with Scotty Moore, Elvis’s original lead guitar player,
in a Nashville studio, when I was a player on a session he engineered.
He told me why he and Black both left Elvis. It was over money! They wanted
a raise from their $125 a week salary (this was after many tours, gold
records and movies). Elvis said the Colonel took care of that stuff. The
Colonel said he saw no reason for a raise when most musicians would pay
just to play with Elvis.
What a drag, that Elvis wouldn’t stick up for Scotty and Bill, who
had been with him from the start and helped him earn a great fortune.
He treated them like hangers-on, “Like we were some of his relatives
asking for a handout,” as Scotty told me.
But it wasn’t Scotty or Bill who invited me to Graceland. It was
Vernon Presley, and it happened back when I was in high school, a year
or so after Elvis got out of the Army.
Vernon, a widower, was courting the woman who would become his second
wife. Dee was a nurse in Huntsville, Alabama, where I lived and played
in a band with my friend Burt Hanvey. Burt’s mom had invited Dee
and Vernon to supper and told Burt he could ask one of his friends to
join the group.
It was a casual affair on a quiet street in the Five Points area, at the
foot of Monte Sano. Vernon arrived in a white shirt and slacks, driving
a Ford. He looked like my cousin, John Sparkman.We ate at a round table
in the pleasant room where Burt and I had often hovered over a turntable,
studying records by Buddy Holly (Burt’s favorite), Gene Vincent (mine)
and Elvis. Both Dee and Vernon expressed polite interest in Burt and me.
Mrs. Hanvey appeared to have been cast somewhat in the role of chaperone
as well as hostess. I feel certain that a wonderful “so what did
you think of him?” conversation took place at a later time.
After dinner, we repaired to the parlor, where there was an upright piano.
Burt played a song for Vernon on guitar, and I may have played “Red
Sails in the Sunset” on the piano.
Then, to my astonishment, Vernon asked for the guitar. After holding it
up to admire it, he gestured for me to accompany him and launched into
a rousing version of “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy,” which he sang as
well as played – in the key of G, as I recall. He had a passable,
country-bluesy-sounding voice, and he sang on key and kept good time. I
thumped along with him as best I could. He even gave me a little solo.
As the evening drew to a close, Vernon told us we’d have to come
up to Graceland and play with Elvis. “He’d like that,”
he said, adding, “Elvis loves music!”
I am convinced that neither Vernon nor Dee, at this point, anticipated
the intensely negative reaction their wedding plans would elicit from
Elvis, who would refuse to have “that woman in my mother’s house.”
Had I later gone to Graceland, I would not have found Vernon there. He
and Dee lived in another house, “off the grounds.”
I ran into Vernon by accident the next day on my way home from school,
in Dunavant’s department store. He had to attend a function and needed
a tie. I remember that a woman recognized him and sent her little girl
to ask for an autograph. Mr. Presley borrowed a pencil stub from the man
who was helping him, wet the point in his mouth, and leaned down to write
his name, bracing the piece of brown paper against his thigh, writing
slowly and laboriously, as though his name were the only thing he knew
how to write.
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rebelangel columns
by David Vest
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