More than two decades have passed since the (alleged) death of Elvis Presley, yet the (reportedly) deceased singer, still widely acclaimed as "The King" of rock and roll, continues to sell records, inspire legions of worshiping fans, and preside over quickie weddings in Vegas. How does one become the King? Well, for starters, it helps to have a distinctive style. Elvis won the madly thumping hearts of teenage girls everywhere by packaging his smoky-voiced singing with some scandalously sensual hip-swinging. It never hurts to crank out some hit singles, as well. Elvis is the fella who gave us everything from "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Hound Dog" to "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Love Me Tender". A high-profile career in Hollywood is certainly a plus. Over the course of his career, Elvis appeared in 31 movies, each one a smashing financial, if not critical, success. Perhaps most importantly, however, if you want to be the King, you've got to live like the King. No celebrity before or since has done as much to redefine the notion of living large as Presley. Ever in the company of his rowdy entourage, the so-called "Memphis Mafia", Elvis partied hearty: He wrecked hotel rooms; blasted holes in TV sets; popped pills; dated some of the most glamorous women in the country; consumed mountains of deep-fried food; and traveled between his swanky Bel Air digs and his sprawling Memphis mansion, Graceland. Is it any wonder that the tabloids are still trying to get all the details straight?

Irish-descended Elvis Aron Presley, son of Vernon and Gladys Presley of Tupelo, Mississippi, was born (or, as some maintain, arrived) on January 8, 1935. His identical-twin brother, Jesse Garon, died at birth; consequently, Elvis's parents were fiercely protective of their surviving son and raised him up to be a God-fearing, right-thinking young man. Singing came naturally to Elvis, and he seasoned his vocal gifts in the choir at the local Assembly of God meetinghouse and later performed at revivals and camp meetings. At the tender age of 10, Elvis took second prize for his soulful rendition of the deep-South ditty "Old Sheep" in a talent contest sponsored by radio station WELO at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. Pleased that their son had discovered a respectable hobby, his proud parents bought him an acoustic guitar for his next birthday; he taught himself to strum chords by listening to blues tunes and old spirituals. The family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1949, shortly before Elvis entered high school. Following graduation, he found work driving a truck for the Crown Electric Company (for a whopping $1.25 an hour), and started evening classes with the aim of becoming an electrical repairman.

But Elvis's career path was eventually sidetracked by a dip into the recording studio at Sun Records, where he coughed up four dollars to cut a two-song disc containing covers of the Ink Spots ballads "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin." Ostensibly made as a birthday present for his doting mother, a copy of the record found its way into the hands of Sun president Sam Phillips, who had an epiphany: Phillips had been looking to find "a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel," and he believed he had unearthed just such a wonder in young Elvis Aron Presley. And how! After Elvis laid down his first two-song recording for Sun, Memphis-area stores sold 6,000 copies in one week. A star had been born. Under the management of illegal Dutch immigrant Andreas van Kuijk, who called himself "Colonel" Thomas A. Parker, the young Memphis sensation toured across the South as "The Hillbilly Cat" and produced four more records.

In 1955, Parker orchestrated for his promising young client a $35,000 recording contract with RCA Victor, which set about the business of making regional sensation Elvis Presley a star at the national level. A string of television appearances culminated in a performance of "Heartbreak Hotel" on The Milton Berle Show that ignited a nationwide Elvis craze. For the next seven years, Elvis simultaneously ruled the pop-music charts and the box office. In 1956 alone, he scored five No. 1 hits that spent a combined 36 weeks at the top of the chart. His energetic singing, combined with his brazenly rebellious gyrating, sold millions of records; his runaway success helped establish rock and roll as a wildly lucrative musical genre and paved the way for an entire generation of recording artists.

In 1957, at the height of his newfound success, Uncle Sam gave Elvis a new job: serving as a jeep and truck driver in the 3rd Armored Division, stationed in Germany. While overseas, he met and briefly wooed — with the permission of her father — fourteen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, who would later become his wife. Shortly after his return to the States in 1960, Elvis quit playing concerts and immersed himself almost entirely in making movies (his film debut in had come with Love Me Tender in 1956) and cutting soundtrack albums. His popularity remained at a fever pitch, although the Beatles, who were themselves Elvis fans, gradually displaced him as the biggest rock act in the world. As the sixties wore on and the sound of rock and roll altered radically, Elvis remained largely adrift in a sea of soulful ballads and Hollywood pap, and frequently fleshed out his albums with songs recorded during his fifties heyday. In 1967, he married Priscilla, and following the birth of their daughter, Lisa Marie, the next year, he returned to touring, beginning with a critically acclaimed Christmas special broadcast on NBC that reunited Elvis with his original band. This brief career renaissance peaked in 1972 with the release of his last top-ten single, "Burning Love". Following the breakup of his marriage the next year, Elvis began secluding himself for long periods at Graceland, the expansive Memphis estate he had originally commissioned to be built for his mother. He lived by night, as he had a paranoid, but probably justified, fear of being mobbed during daylight, and his heavy drug use left him in a narcotic haze much of the time. Elvis got stoned, got fat, got philosophical, and occasionally practiced karate, a hobby picked up during his stint in the military.

On August 16, 1977, at 2:30 p.m., Elvis Presley (or someone who greatly resembled him) was discovered passed-out on the seat of a Graceland toilet and was pronounced dead an hour later at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis. At the time of his (purported) death from a heart attack, the King was dressed in blue pajamas and had been thumbing through a copy of The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus. Autopsies performed on the body turned up traces of 10 different "recreational pharmaceuticals" in his bloodstream.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors reflect on the splendor of Graceland (now a prosperous tourist attraction) each year, and the King remains alive in the hearts of those who knew him, in the minds of those who still buy his albums (a commemorative, four-CD box set hit stores in July of 1997), and perhaps — just perhaps — in a posh beachfront bungalow on a remote Pacific isle.