He spoke of his friend with a faraway look in his eyes.

“So many memories …,” he began.

John Deen grew up in Memphis, Tenn., with two brothers and a sister in Lauderdale Courts, a low-income housing project they simply called “The Courts.” He attended Humes High School. John’s mother was a housewife, his father a physical therapist at a veterans hospital.

One day a new family from Tupelo, Miss., moved into The Courts, and their 16-year-old son, Elvis, enrolled at Humes.

“You couldn’t help but notice him,” John smiled. “He was different than most white males in the early ’50s. Oh, he had a crew cut like the rest of us guys, but Elvis had long sideburns. While we wore jeans and white shirts, he wore colorful shirts that he purchased at Lansky Brothers on Beal Street — where mostly black guys bought their clothes. Elvis popularized the colors pink and black.”

Gladys Presley was a housewife, and Vernon Presley didn’t work, so their son picked up odd jobs wherever he could. His first job as an usher at Loews State Theater, along with John’s older brother, Robert. Elvis, however, soon found himself fired from that job for accepting free popcorn and candy from a girl who worked at the concession stand. He later began driving a pickup for an electric company.

Whenever young Presley wasn’t working, he would sit outside with his cheap guitar, playing country and gospel songs. “Elvis was reluctant to sing alone,” Deen remembers, “so my brothers, sister and I, along with other Court kids, would sit there with him and have a sing-along.”

“It was one day in 1954 while a few of us friends were at the theater watching a movie that the manager opened the curtains and yelled out that Elvis’ mom had called and that he needed to get to the radio station as fast as he could!”

Unbeknownst to Gladys Presley, her son had gone to Sun Records to make a demo of a couple of songs as a gift to her. The studio owner, Sam Phillips, was not impressed, but a woman who worked at the studio was. She convinced Phillips to send Elvis’ demo to Dewey Phillips, a disc jockey at WHBQ, an AM radio station in Memphis. Upon playing the demo, Dewey received so many phone calls that he insisted on meeting Elvis.

“You’re not going to believe this,” an ecstatic Elvis related to his friends when back at home. “Sam Phillips has signed me to a contract!”

“Because Elvis had won just a few musical competitions and mainly performed at high school dances, Phillips sent him out on a circuit of venues,” Deen recalled. “Elvis thought it was great if he got even $50 for a show!”

In that same time period, Sam Phillips signed a few other performers who also became successful. Among them were Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Phillips later sold Elvis’ contract for less than $25,000 to “Colonel” Tom Parker, who had the up-and-coming singer cut more songs — then signed him with RCA. Parker, who took 50 percent of Elvis’ earnings, told Presley that if he stayed with him, Parker would make him “the biggest star in the country!”

In 1956, Elvis was presented with a movie contract but hated making movies. He told Deen, “These movies have no plot; they just want me to sing.”

In 1958 Elvis was drafted into the Army and stationed in Germany.

“Early on, Elvis was a generous man,” John remembers. “He gave Cadillacs to many of his friends.” (The cost of a Cadillac in those days was about $8,500.)

Along the way, Deen became friends with Wink Martindale who started out as a disc jockey at WHBQ Radio. When Martindale went on to Hollywood, another friend (and president of the 1953 Humes’ graduating class), George Klein, took over as disc jockey. George, who worked closely with Elvis throughout his life, has now completed a book about Elvis that will be released on Jan. 5, 2010, entitled “Elvis, My Best Man.”

“It is the most authoritative book ever written on Elvis Presley,” John smiled.

Because of spending so much time with Elvis, John found himself on a path of meeting famous people — including Eddie Fischer and Sonny and Cher.

“I remember Sonny performing in his sheepherder’s jacket and Cher before plastic surgery when she still had her big nose.”

John was working in a nightclub in Las Vegas when one night Elvis walked in and said if I ever got tired of Vegas I should move to Hollywood to be near him.

Deen eventually did move to Hollywood Hills and worked several years as a screen extra in the movies, also attending many a party at Elvis’ home.

Upon visits back to Memphis in the ’60s, Presley would rent an entire movie theater, invite his old friends and, after the last show, they’d all watch Bruce Lee karate movies until 5 a.m. Elvis would even rent the fairgrounds so he and his friends could ride all night long.

“Elvis especially liked the bumper cars!”

But it’s memories of those early days with his friend that brings a smile to John’s face.

“Besides holding sing-alongs, one of our favorite games was cork ball,” he said. “We’d wrap a cork over and over again with hospital tape and use it as our ball. Old broom handles were our bats.”

“One day while playing cork ball, Elvis felt a piece of glass in one of his loafers. Hobbling up to his family’s apartment, his mother set the loafer on top of the radiator while she tended to her son’s foot. When it came time for Elvis to put his shoe back on, it had turned hard as a rock from the heat.”

John spoke of another incident in young Elvis’ life.

“We were swimming and playing in the local pool, blocks away from home — the pool a popular place when the 98-degree temperature matched the 98 percent humidity.”

“Elvis didn’t swim well and was soon thrashing about in the deep end of the pool. While we all thought he was just playing around, my brother, Billy, recognized his flailing hands as those of a swimmer in trouble. Billy, a great swimmer and diver, jumped into the pool and saved Elvis’ life but, as was his modest nature, never spoke of the incident again and took no credit for his heroic act.”

“Those years were busy ones in Memphis, as I watched Elvis transform from a tall, gangly kid to a national figure,” John said.

By the time the ’70s came around, Elvis had become somewhat of a recluse, and it was in 1975 while visiting Elvis at his home that John last saw his friend alive. “I could plainly see the years of deterioration in the lines under his eyes.”

John’s smiling blue eyes looked off into the distance. “Elvis was only in his ’40s when he died. Knowing so little of life, he was thrust into fame at such an early age.”

Deen and his wife, Pat, moved to Northwood in 2006 and manage Northwood’s Gathering Place. Stop in and ask John to tell you some of his other Elvis stories. He has more.