King Reader: Inside Graceland

By Gary Wells on August 9, 2024

Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers

by Nancy Rooks as told to Jim Cox (2005)

It was one of those online shopping miracles. My friend ordered this book from a website and it was late in arriving. She reached out to the site to inquire and they sent her a replacement. Then, of course, they both showed up at her door. She was nice enough to give me her second copy.

Few artists have been written about more than Elvis Presley. There is so much depth to his story that people have found no end of material in the life and career of the king and scores of books have been written on numerous topics and from varied perspectives. There have been grandiose Guralnick-level books written and there have been much smaller stories offered from people who are not even writers. It's the latter we're looking at today.

All this is not to say that a book like this has no place on your King Reader shelf. It does and it is all down to what we mentioned before - perspective. Nancy Rooks (1938-2022) - who also co-authored with Uncle Vester Presley The Presley Family Cookbook (1980) - went to work at Graceland as a maid in the spring of 1967 and stayed on after Presley's death, finally leaving her job at the mansion when it opened up for tours in 1982. The perspective that Nancy provides the reader is one of the every day life inside the house. It is interesting to consider that Graceland was indeed a family home, a large one that required a staff. Through the years, whether Elvis was there or not and after he passed away, others lived in the home, namely Elvis' father, Vernon, Vernon's mother, Minnie Mae Presley or "Dodger" and Elvis' Aunt Delta. And the family had a staff, people who worked there. This in and of itself is somewhat fascinating. For some like Nancy Rooks, it was just a job. Cleaning the jungle room. Think about it.

Cooking for the King; Nancy at the stove at Graceland, 1973. This pot sold at auction for $460 USD.

In Inside Graceland, Nancy tells a story of a friendly family who gave her a free hand to keep the mansion clean with everything in its place. She mentions Elvis' unpredictability when it came to sleeping patterns and meal times and of the fact that she and Elvis had met before. About twenty years previous to Rooks going to work at the house, she had lived on Alabama Street in Memphis across from the Presleys. She recalled this fact only when she was dusting a picture of Elvis as a child and recognized the boy. She also recounts the day she became a cook at Graceland as well as a maid. A previous maid was deemed to be taking too much time off so - as Nancy stood watching - Priscilla fired her and told Nancy she'd now need to help out in the kitchen, as well.

"(Fans) just want to touch me, because he touched me. I would put his clothes out for him. I would put his socks out for him. I'd put his hairbrush out for him. I'd put his hair comb. I would clean his toothbrushes for him. I'd make his bed for him. I'd put the pillow on his head for him. Sometimes I'd turn the TVs on for him. I'd set up the pool, if he wanted to go to the pool. I would take him a towel, a radio, some cotton for him to put over his eyes, sunglasses, probably a Pepsi and a Shasta drink".

- from Nancy's interview with ClassicBands.com, 2023

Nancy lists her duties such as cleaning the trophy room, collecting eggs from the henhouse, sweeping the sun porch, answering the telephone, taking clothes to the cleaners, hemming Elvis' pants - sometimes while he was still wearing them - babysitting Lisa Marie and taking a break from cleaning Elvis' office when he needed someone to talk to. Rooks offers a different viewpoint in her book, one that perhaps has less to do with Elvis himself and more with his home, his grandmother and his aunt. Rooks would spend countless hours sitting with Dodger while she recounted many Presley family stories. She provides a bit of insight on Graceland pivoting from being a private home to a tourist attraction. She speaks of Aunt Delta's severe discomfort at having strangers traipsing through "her" home and tells of how the original tours did not include the kitchen as that and the bedroom off of it was Aunt Delta's living space. Delta comes off as being crotchety but it is interesting to note that she was Graceland's last official occupant.

Nancy in the kitchen with Linda Thompson, mid 70s. This is a page from a photo album filled with shots from inside Graceland that sold at auction for $1840 USD.

The fact that Nancy Rooks was present at Graceland the day Elvis died does certainly add significance to her remembrances. She says that Elvis was nervous about starting a new tour as it would be the first one since the publication of the unflattering book Elvis: What Happened? and also that Elvis had been arguing lately with his current girlfriend, Ginger Alden. Nancy relates the chaos of August 16th including taking the phone call for help from Ginger upstairs; "something is terribly wrong with Elvis!" It was Nancy Rooks, alone in the house at the time, who was the first to go upstairs in response to Ginger's distress call. Nancy saw Elvis on the floor. Regarding Alden, Nancy says she had lunch with the girl some months after Elvis' death and came away with a sympathetic view of her. Interestingly, she tells of Aunt Delta calling her into action after the ambulance left to rush Presley to the hospital the day he died. The two women scoured Elvis' bedroom and bathroom for pharmaceuticals and paraphernalia and discarded all they could before investigators arrived. This fits in with Nancy's first day on the job when she was told that one of the cardinal rules when working with Elvis was not to tell anybody anything about him.

This may be perceived as a real knock on the book but I have to mention. Among the pictures in the book is one captioned "Elvis in his bedroom on his couch, 1968". The picture though is Elvis as Glenn Tyler from Wild in the Country released in 1961. I noticed this same picture among Nancy's photo album that is referenced in the auction above. Rooks describes the funeral and her chance to be briefly alone with Presley as he lay in his casket and then wraps her tale with the death of Elvis' Aunt Delta. This gives the reader and interesting perspective of Graceland changing from being a private family dwelling to becoming a public museum. This brief book - more a booklet actually or a long pamphlet, even - is worth reading perhaps only because it causes the reader to consider this change from home where a family lived to being the heart of a multi-million dollar business. Nancy Rooks died during Elvis Week, August 15, 2022, a day before the 45th anniversary of her old boss's death.