“When I got out of high school I was driving truck. I was just a poor boy from Memphis, Memphis,” Elvis Presley was quoted as saying.
Elvis also worked doing lawn work, operating a spindle drill press at Precision Tool (at $27 per week), a theater usher, at an upholsery company (making $109 for the one month he worked there), doing assembly at a furniture manufacturer called MARL Metal Products.
These were all while he was in high school.
Then he worked more doing assembly at M.B. Parker ($36 per week), then returned to Precision Tool, then at Crown Electric as a truck driver until he recorded his first album with Sun Records. During that time, he played some local gigs and auditioned as a vocalist, but the band-man turned Presley down, saying he should stick to truck driving “because you’re never going to make it as a singer.”
That year, 1955, he reported $25K, and the next year just under $300K. In 1958 he was making over a million a year.
