Elvis` fans mark 75th b`day at his beginning

The simple white shotgun shack where Elvis Presley was born is too tiny!

Tupelo: The simple white shotgun shack where Elvis Presley was born is so tiny it could easily fit inside a single room in the opulent Graceland mansion where he spent his final years - may be in the Jungle Room with its green-carpeted ceiling.

Yesterday, Elvis` 75th birthday, much of the focus was on Graceland, the international tourist attraction in Memphis that has become synonymous with the legend since his death in 1977. About three thousand people commemorated the event with his former wife, Priscilla Presley. But hundreds of fans converged on his birthplace in northeastern Mississippi for a different perspective on the man who reshaped popular music by blending elements of black and white, blues and bluegrass, gospel and rockabilly to become arguably its most popular figure, the King of Rock `n` Roll. The 15-by-30-foot home in Tupelo, built in 1934 by Presley`s father, grandfather and uncle, was on the poor side of town, and his family only stayed in the home until Presley was 2 1/2 because they couldn`t afford the payments. "We are presenting the unknown Elvis, the little boy Elvis," says Dick Guyton, director of the foundation that runs the Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, a city of 36,000 that sits 160 kilometers southeast of Memphis. Bureau Report