December 20:

1957 : Elvis Presley is drafted

On this day in 1957, while spending the Christmas
holidays at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee
mansion, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley receives his
draft notice for the United States Army.

With a suggestive style--one writer called him "Elvis
the Pelvis"--a hit movie, Love Me Tender, and a string
of gold records including "Heartbreak Hotel," "Blue
Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel,"
Presley had become a national icon, and the world's
first bona fide rock-and-roll star, by the end of
1956. As the Beatles' John Lennon once famously
remarked: "Before Elvis, there was nothing." The
following year, at the peak of his career, Presley
received his draft notice for a two-year stint in the
army. Fans sent tens of thousands of letters to the
army asking for him to be spared, but Elvis would have
none of it. He received one deferment--during which he
finished working on his movie King Creole--before
being sworn in as an army private in Memphis on March
24, 1958.

After six months of basic training--including an
emergency leave to see his beloved mother, Gladys,
before she died in August 1958--Presley sailed to
Europe on the USS General Randall. For the next 18
months, he served in Company D, 32nd Tank Battalion,
3rd Armor Corps in Friedberg, Germany, where he
attained the rank of sergeant. For the rest of his
service, he shared an off-base residence with his
father, grandmother and some Memphis friends. After
working during the day, Presley returned home at night
to host frequent parties and impromptu jam sessions.
At one of these, an army buddy of Presley's introduced
him to 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, whom Elvis
would marry some years later. Meanwhile, Presley's
manager, Colonel Tom Parker, continued to release
singles recorded before his departure, keeping the
money rolling in and his most famous client fresh in
the public's mind. Widely praised for not seeking to
avoid the draft or serve domestically, Presley was
seen as a model for all young Americans. After he got
his polio shot from an army doctor on national TV,
vaccine rates among the American population shot from
2 percent to 85 percent by the time of his discharge
on March 2, 1960.

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