TUMBLING SHOALS — Elvis Presley would have been 81 on Jan. 8. Many fans worldwide likely thought of him and paid respects in their own ways, including Joyce Hightower of Tumbling Shoals.
Hightower has been a fan since she met Elvis backstage in 1956 at Robinson Auditorium in Little Rock and had her photograph made with the future King of Rock ’n’ Roll, who was 19 at the time.
Hightower has been president of the “I Met Elvis Fan Club” for 20 years, and the ground floor of her home is a tribute and a sanctuary for “The Boy From Tupelo.”
On Elvis’ recent birthday, she spoke once again at the Waychoff Senior Center in Heber Springs and recounted how her connection with Elvis began when she was 16. The event at the center featured Elvis burgers —“Hunka Hunka burgers” and banana pudding. A special table was set up with Elvis mementos.
People have told Hightower they think of her when they see things pertaining to Elvis, she said, and they buy items at garage sales, flea markets and antique shops for her to add to her collection.
Thus, a portion of her home is packed with Elvis’ impact. Walls are covered, and shelves overflow.
“There’s not a lot of room left to stand or hang anything,” Hightower said.
“I doubt I could find a space for another nail,” said her husband, Eddie.
When asked how he puts up with her being such an Elvis aficionado, he replied, “I am married to her; she is my wife.” On June 25, the couple will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
What is Hightower’s favorite song? She named “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” and “I Will Remember You,” then added, “All of them I love!”
There are Elvis cutouts, an Elvis clock that plays an Elvis hit every hour, a guitar-shaped purse, an Elvis cookie jar, movie posters, books, photographs and boxes of CDs.
Once a friend of Eddie’s called Hightower and said he had found her an Elvis memento. She told him she had no room, but he brought it to her anyway. So she found a plant stand Eddie’s dad had made and placed the Elvis lamp on it. She said there is nothing she won’t accept.
A favorite gift is a miniature replica of Graceland highlighted with Elvis singing Christmas carols.
Hightower said she doesn’t know how many T-shirts she has. When attending fan-club annual meetings, presidents are recipients of the T-shirt geared to that year’s theme, and she estimates there are about 100 Elvis fan clubs in all.
Her 78s — Elvis’ first recordings, which are Sun albums that she keeps in a safe — are treasures, she said. She recently took them for appraisal in Little Rock when PBS’ Antiques Roadshow television series filmed an episode in the city.
She often gets letters from other fans, she said, showing a recent one from a man in Michigan who said he is a “very, very, very big fan of Elvis.” He told her he has leukemia, and he asked if she had any autographed photos of Elvis she could share. She soon put a copy of one in the mail to the man.
“It thrills my soul when some young person loves Elvis that much,” Hightower said. “It is a connection — unreal — when you find an Elvis fan.”
Oftentimes, meetings with Elvis fans are spur of the moment or unplanned, like with the young couple who began coming to her church and asked her, “Are you an Elvis fan?” Now a real bond exists, with the young couple “adopting” Joyce and Eddie, Hightower said. The couple at church had a wooden plaque made denoting the Hightowers’ upcoming anniversary.
Hightower met another man at a Lions Club function who was active in the American Red Cross. He learned of her fascination with Elvis and told her he had a Red Cross pin with Elvis’ likeness. Then he offered it to her if she and Eddie would come get it at his house.
The associations go on and on.
Hightower said she is a staunch defender of Elvis.
“I get upset when people say he was into drugs, … that he was into this and that. … He was not healthy,” she said.
And as for critics talking of his “hunching” when he performed, “He was not hunching! It was his rhythm,” Hightower said.
“If anybody ever watched him [singing gospel], they could see his spirituality,” she said, adding that after a performance, Elvis was known to sit at the piano and start singing gospel songs. “He had a hard life, thrown into all of that.”
Hightower also likes to recount the good things Elvis did and the good things that are being done in his name, like the fact that Elvis made donations to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis regularly, and Priscilla and Lisa Marie oversee the Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation, which helps many people each year.
Hightower told the story of when she went backstage to meet Elvis in 1956 — she still has the gold crocheted dress her mom made that she wore that day — but it was at the Barnyard Frolics a year earlier that she first saw him. She said manager Bob Neele came up to her and asked her “to get some girls to sit on the front row and scream and yell.”
Hightower’s mother was not an Elvis fan but always went with Hightower to the Barnyard Frolics. Elvis and his mom were there, too, and Hightower said her mom and his sat together. Elvis and his mom were poor, she recalled, and it was hinted that “someone” take them home for a meal. Joyce begged her mom to take them, but her mom said no, stating that she wasn’t going to bring home someone they did not know.
Hightower is a founding member of the “Insiders Club,” which gets discounts on visits to Graceland and Heartbreak Hotel, and, over the years, Hightower has visited Graceland many times.
“It is Elvis — gaudy and all,” she said. Fan-club presidents are asked to give a poinsettia each year, and these line a stairway, she said, showing a photograph of this display of remembrance.
One thing she has not been able to do is take place in the candlelight vigil each year commemorating Elvis’ death, which occurred on Aug. 16, 1977. Once she and her sister got as far as in line at the vigil, but a huge thunderstorm broke, with her holding an umbrella, and she told her sister, “I love Elvis, but I do not want to be electrocuted!” So they left. She still hopes circumstances will work out so she can attend the vigil and take part as a fan-club president.
What makes her heart happiest is knowing that so many young people remember and love Elvis, Hightower said, and that the young, as well as the old, relate to him and his music.
“That’s why he will live on,” she said.