Postby wsmitty » August 7th, 2008, 4:41 am
Just read this in a Southern Gospel Newsletter:
VISIT ELVIS PRESLEY'S CHURCH
WHERE HE DISCOVERED GOD AND GOSPEL MUSIC
Elvis Presley's boyhood church will reopen its doors to the world.. on August 9th in Tupelo, Mississippi. A news report in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette says,.. when Presley was a boy, his family attended a small, simple, First Assembly of God chapel in East Tupelo. Reporter Frank Lockwood adds: "Closed to the public for more than a half-century, the building was restored this year by the Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation." As part of its restoration, the Foundation moved the church to the Elvis Presley birthplace site."
According to the newspaper arrticle,.. Pastor Frank Smith, who died last year at the age of 80, is credited with teaching Presley to play a few basic chords on a guitar. Gospel music historian, Professor Jim Goff, said, "The congregation had a lifelong impact on young Elvis. In many ways, I think his musical tastes and his understanding of religion and worship, those things had already been formed at the Assembly of God Church in Tupelo before he set off for Memphis and worldwide fame."
Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation director Dick Guyton noted: "[We want] to allow the visitor, as he sits in the pew.. to become part of a worship service from an old Assembly of God church back in the 1930's and '40's."