Elvis Dies at 42: The King of Rock Is Gone

Elvis Aaron Presley was found face-down on the bathroom floor of his Graceland mansion in Memphis on the afternoon of August 16, 1977. His girlfriend Ginger Alden discovered his body. Attempts at resuscitation failed, and the 42-year-old was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital. The official cause was listed as cardiac arrhythmia, though the autopsy later revealed the presence of fourteen drugs in his system, including codeine, morphine, Demerol, and several barbiturates. The death shocked a world that still remembered the young man from Tupelo, Mississippi, who had detonated rock and roll on national television in 1956. Elvis had been a force of nature: handsome, charismatic, and possessed of a voice that could pivot from gospel tenderness to raw sexual energy within a single phrase. His fusion of Black rhythm and blues with white country music created a new genre and made him the most commercially successful solo artist of the 20th century. He sold over one billion records worldwide. By 1977, that young man was barely recognizable. Years of prescription drug abuse, a diet built around fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and the isolation of fame had bloated his frame and dulled his performances. His final concert, in Indianapolis on June 26, 1977, was by many accounts a painful spectacle. Colonel Tom Parker, his longtime manager, kept him on a relentless touring schedule because Parker's own gambling debts required constant income. The machinery of celebrity had consumed the artist who powered it. The reaction to his death was immediate and immense. Roughly 80,000 people lined the streets of Memphis for his funeral procession. Fans collapsed at the gates of Graceland. Record stores sold out of his catalogue within hours. In death, Elvis became an even larger cultural phenomenon than he had been in life. Graceland opened as a museum in 1982 and draws over 600,000 visitors annually, making it the second most-visited private home in America after the White House.