Just mention to the King that your birthday was coming up, he’d gift you a Cadillac!
When you look at Elvis Presley in his final years, it's immediately clear that his worst habits had taken a toll on him. His prescription drug problem, eating disorder, and sideburns had all gotten dangerously out of hand.
However, there's one seldom-discussed dependency that Elvis suffered with almost as much intensity: His addiction to giving people scores and scores of Cadillacs! It all started when Elvis had his first modest hit in 1955, and immediately bought a Cadillac for his mother. Elvis' mother, by the way, couldn't drive.
In 1975, Elvis gave a Cadillac to one of his backup singers ... and that's when things started to get out of control. Soon after, his dentist received one. Then his jeweler, his hairstylist, and his valet (the latter presumably because Elvis didn't want him driving his Cadillac).
At one point that year, Elvis had entered the showroom at Madison Cadillac in Memphis and just bought 13 Cadillacs each to be distributed to any of the people who worked for him. During his time at the showroom, a black bank teller named Mennie Person was admiring his Cadillac limousine out front, so Elvis approached her and asked, "Like it? I'll buy you one."
He had the salesman add it to the list, which brought the grand total of his day of car shopping to $140,000 (that’s roughly 7 million Pesos in 1970s money).
There was also a story that involved a person casually mentioning to Elvis her birthday was coming up in two days, so Elvis had one of his guys cut her a check, and gifted her with a Cadillac!
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In January of the next year, Elvis paid a visit to a Denver car lot and casually bought a few Cadillacs for three policemen, a doctor, and two more people. When a local news station briefly mentioned him on the air, Elvis immediately called anchor Don Kinney to offer him a Cadillac -- Kinney thought it was a joke and hung up, but Elvis refused to take no for an answer and kept calling over and over until the guy accepted the goddamn car!
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