Rocking with the King: Jerry Schilling on his friendship with Elvis Presley

Jerry Schilling well remembers his first meeting with Elvis Presley. It was on a football field in Memphis on July 11, 1954.

Schilling had been invited along by Red West, a friend of his cousin. The young rock ’n’ roll fan soon discovered one of his team mates was a local singer who was starting to make a name for himself.

“There were five older guys and Red said, ‘Jerry, do you want to play with us?’ I though, ‘Wow, I get to play with the big guys and Red West’. We chose up sides and went into the huddle to make a play. Dewey Phillips, the DJ [on the radio station that Schilling listened to], announced Elvis as a boy from Humes High and I realised that my quarter back was the boy from Humes High. They distinguished that to say he was not black, he was white, because all our schools were then segregated, unfortunately.”

Schilling first saw Presley perform at Ellis Auditorium on his 13th. He recalls the singer being “so unconventional” for the time. “We, as young teenagers, had never seen anything like that.” Combining the influences of black rhythm and blues artists from Beale Street with gospel performers such as the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen Quartet, Presley would challenge musical and social conventions. “It was like watching a tiger be released from a cage. He dragged the microphone across the stage. It was so wild, but he was so brilliant, though. He would know just when to play with it and do a smile and then he would go back to being extremely sexual or extremely exciting. It was great to see.

“As Bruce Springsteen said, when you see for the first time something that you weren’t expecting to see it is the greatest moment.”

Schilling started “hanging out with the guys” from what would become known as the Memphis Mafia, Presley’s close associates, “right after the first football game”. After a couple of weeks he thought Presley would probably move on to different company – “Everybody in Memphis knew who Elvis was at that point, so he had plenty of people to choose from” – however, Schilling says: “I think he remembered I thought he was cool before he was popular, so he would always throw me a jersey.”

Within a few months Presley was out on the road touring. “When he would back to Memphis he started renting the amusement park after it closed at night, so people wouldn’t crowd around. I would go to the amusement park at midnight and ride the rollercoasters. Then he would rent the Rainbow skating rink and we would choose up sides like football. Then within a year was the all-night movies – after the movie theatre had closed Elvis would have three or four films that he would choose. So for ten years, from ’54 to ’64, when Elvis was in town [they hung out].