Elvis Presley is buried under so many layers of myth — the jumpsuit, the Vegas shows, the sightings — that the actual human being has nearly disappeared. Before he was the King, he was a desperately poor kid from Tupelo who sang at church, adored his mother, and stumbled into a recording studio to make a record as a gift. The real Elvis is more interesting than the legend, and considerably more tragic.

This episode strips away the mythology to find the person, tracing Elvis from his twin brother's stillbirth through the Sun Records sessions that invented rock and roll, the army years, the Hollywood decline, the comeback, and the pharmaceutical fog that killed him at forty-two.

• Elvis's poverty in Tupelo, the death of his twin brother, and the gospel roots of his sound
• The Sun Records sessions with Sam Phillips that fused b ...