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Presley purchased Graceland in early 1957 after moving out of a Memphis house located at 1034 Audubon Drive because of privacy and security concerns, . He lived there for some time together with his father Vernon Presley and his mother Gladys. After his mother died in 1958, and Vernon married Dee Stanley in 1960, the couple lived there for a time. Wife-to-be Priscilla Beaulieu also lived at Graceland for five years before she and Elvis married. Presley had brought Priscilla, then a teen who had stayed for some time in Germany as the stepdaughter of a United States Air Force officer, back to the United States to live at Graceland, "ostensibly under the chaperoning protection of his father Vernon and his new wife Dee."^[1] After their marriage in Las Vegas on February 1, 1967, Priscilla lived in Graceland five more years until she separated from Elvis in late 1972.

According to Mark Crispin Miller, Graceland became for Elvis "the home of the organization that was himself, was tended by a large vague clan of Presleys and deputy Presleys, each squandering the vast gratuities which Elvis used to keep his whole world smiling." The author adds that Presley's father Vernon "had a swimming pool in his bedroom", that there "was a jukebox next to the swimming pool, containing Elvis's favorite records" and that the singer himself "would spend hours in his bedroom, watching his property on a closed-circuit television."^[2]

There was some discord between Elvis and his stepmother Dee at Graceland, however, and Elaine Dundy said "that Vernon had settled down with Dee where Gladys had once reigned, while Dee herself - when Elvis was away - had taken over the role of mistress of Graceland so thoroughly as to rearrange the furniture and replace the very curtains that Gladys had approved of." This was too much for the singer who still loved his deceased mother. One afternoon, "a van arrived ... and all Dee's household's goods, clothes, 'improvements,' and her own menagerie of pets, were loaded on ... while Vernon, Dee and her three children went by car to a nearby house on Hermitage until they finally settled into a house on Dolan Drive which ran alongside Elvis's estate."^[3]

After initially being buried at Forrest Hill Cemetery, and following an attempt to rob his grave, Presley´s remains were moved to Graceland. The estate has become a pilgrimage for Elvis fans across the world.