(Credits: Far Out / MGM)
Tue 17 February 2026 23:00, UK
If there’s one thing outside music that Elvis Presley is associated with, it’s fast food. During his later years, at least. No one can take away his iconic pop cultural lightning bolt across the 1950s.
While he indeed ‘borrowed’ the Black artists’ music, and many of his peers from Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis were infinitely more gripping as live acts, ‘The King’ wielded a God-given talent for melting hearts with his soulful baritone-tenor and stirring teens into a frenzy with his suggestive hip swings, marking himself as a towering icon of American 20th century pop culture.
Fans will debate among themselves when the magic ebbed. Some will point to Presley’s joining the US forces in 1958, neutering his former rebellious edge. Others, the long, exhaustive litany of tired Hollywood vehicle movies, or Beatlemania’s global hysteria, casting aside any cultural relevancy amid the ensuing British Invasion and looming counterculture.
There’s little debate that 1973 spelt the beginning of his washed-up era, and curiously, a never-ending impersonation industry to this day. Drugged to the eyeballs, piling on the pounds, and playing kitsch Las Vegas residences a million miles away from his old ‘50s thunder or even NBC’s ’68 Comeback Special, the lasting impression of Presley’s sad end is his gaudy jumpsuits and bottomless gullet that defined ‘The King’ right up until his death in 1977.
He’d always had a taste for fast food, however. Back when Presley was a chiselled young buck hungry for his big break in the summer of 1954, Sun Records honcho Sam Phillips handed out a freshly cut acetate of ‘That’s All Right’, a cover of Arthur Crudup’s old R&B number and Presley’s debut single. Landing in the hands of Memphis’ WHBQ disc jockey Dewey Phillips, a spin on his Red, Hot & Blue show triggered an intense response from listeners, allegedly receiving over 40 phone calls enquiring as to just who the ‘That’s All Right’ crooner was.
It was a modest but crucial step toward fame, with ‘That’s All Right’ selling a humble 20,000 copies and nowhere near national attention, but Presley’s debut cut sailed to number four on the local Memphis charts.
Without realising it, but Philips kickstarted a culinary tradition in the Graceland camp, Presley developed a taste for the Krystal chain’s square burgers, or ‘sliders’, to give its franchise parlance, routinely treating family and friends to mass Krystal feasts. It turns out, Philips had ordered as many as 100 sliders to feed hungry fans who’d surrounded the station during Presley’s debut single spin.
According to Presley’s cousin Danny Smith, ‘The King’s entourage was often sent on late-night orders to retrieve mountainous supplies of Krystal burgers, an appetite shaped by that moment when fame first came knocking, pulling the dirt-poor Tupelo kid to one of the biggest-selling artists of all time.
To this day, the Krystal burger chain continues to celebrate the Elvis connection, marking the first order served alongside Presley’s ‘That’s All Right’ debut as a proud moment for the long-running slider company.