That’s When Your Heart Aches Begin
(Originally published on www.ExtraCrispy.Com as ‘How Elvis Presley Did Breakfast’ – 8/16/16)
On the night of August 16th, 1977 Elvis Presley was pronounced dead at the age of 42. The singer was found unresponsive at his Graceland mansion and taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The official cause of death was ruled as a heart attack but it doesn’t take a medical degree to figure out there were other factors involved with his untimely demise. Prescription pill addiction aside, Elvis was eating his way to an early grave.
In a 2009 interview, Dr. Edward Chorette who was a house staff member at Baptist Memorial that fateful night recalled, “He was obviously dead. He was obese. There was marked swelling in his face.” Thirty-nine years after Elvis’ passing, old and new fans alike make the August pilgrimage to Graceland in the humid southern heat to see the King’s palace and check out the gallery of rhinestone-covered jumpsuits. During the audio-guided tour of the house, there’s a point where visitors pass the 1970’s stylized kitchen with its wood paneling and speckled Formica countertop and one can’t help but think about the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches that Big E made famous and if we were led to believe everything tabloids and bloggers have reiterated over the years, is solely what Elvis lived on. But what did Elvis eat for breakfast?
Nancy Rooks was a maid and cook at Graceland for the Presley family and has published at least two books on the recipes that they liked best. According to Rooks, Elvis would eat breakfast around five in the evening. She would take diced honeydew, cantaloupe, and watermelon up to his bedroom during the day and took a lot of meals in bed. Relaxed days in bed eating fruit sounds absolutely delightful!
Mary Jenkins Langston, another longtime cook for Elvis, served up indulgent meals for up to 14 years and even stayed on twelve years after Elvis died to cook for the family. In a 2000 obituary in the New York Times, Jenkins was quoted as saying,
“Note for his future wife: Elvis loves enormous breakfasts complete with sausage, bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, home-baked rolls, and coffee. He has a tremendous appetite at breakfast. His wife should never develop elegant or
''For
breakfast, he'd have homemade biscuits fried in butter, sausage patties, four scrambled
eggs and sometimes fried bacon. I'd bring the tray up to his room, he'd say, “This is
good, Mary.” He'd have butter running down his arms.''
This can be somewhat corroborated by a 1960 Elvis biography by James Gregory, aptly
titled The Elvis Presley Story. Appealing to the sensible dreams of young girls (and
boys) everywhere in a chapter titled, An Elvis Presley Date Diary, the book tells all the
important information a future love interest of the King will need to know such as his
favorite color (blue), why his romances end (the answer is simply, “ Elvis, it must be
remembered, is more than a man, he is a commodity.”), and of course they didn’t
neglect the most important meal of the day. Gregory states:expensive tastes. Even though Elvis is a top money-earner, he’s still a small town boy in tastes. Outside of his fleet of fancy cars, and doing all he can for his family’s comfort, he doesn’t like to spend money freely. Because Elvis is so devoted to his family, when, as and if he marries he’ll undoubtedly make a devoted and loving husband.”
It would be unfair to say that the writer was speaking for Elvis when he says that a suitable wife shouldn’t have elegant or expensive tastes while the man himself has “a fleet of fancy cars.” This was written before Priscilla entered the picture and rocked foot-high stacked hair and diamonds that complemented Elvis’ own custom TCB pinky rings. But it does make a point that first and foremost; this hypothetical wife should know that Elvis needs a big breakfast. And if one were to judge by this account, it isn’t completely unreasonable. Jenkins own story of Elvis’ buttery arms is undoubtedly written several years after this particular biography was published. It seems that bacon and biscuits, and lots of it, buffered the pressures of performing, recording, and making several movies a year.
In the end Elvis was a down to Earth guy. He had a modest mansion in Memphis, two personal planes, three cooks, and a whole entourage of friends that didn’t ever seem to go home. He would rent out Memphis’ now defunct local amusement park, Libertyland, and have it closed to the public just so he and his friends could ride the rollercoaster all night- a week before his death, it’s said he rode the Zippin’ Pippin’ endlessly from 1 to 7 am- and he ate biscuits, eggs, sausage, bacon and fruit just like many Americans do everyday, only a lot more of it.
