Dallas Does Graceland

A huge Elvis Presley fan got the tour of her dreams earlier this week.

Annette Dallas, of Mesa, Ariz., and her husband were given a special look around Graceland, Elvis Presley's Memphis, Tenn., mansion.

Dallas won the grand prize in the "Discover Elvis Sweepstakes" held by The Early Show and TV Guide.

On Thursday, viewers of The Early Show got to see highlights of Dallas' tour.

"I love everything about Elvis," Dallas said as she entered The King's famous home. "I grew up with my dad singing karaoke to Elvis. We came about two years ago with our sons, and all we got to do was stand outside in front of the gate, 'cause it was closed."

But Dallas and her husband, Leonard, got inside the gate this time.

"As Elvis would say, I'm all shook up," Annette said to Kevin Kern, a Graceland staffer who showed Annette and Leonard around in the special access tour few visitors ever get.

The living room has a 15-foot couch. "This is the way it was during much of Elvis' life here at Graceland," Kern told Annette and Leonard. Elvis bought Graceland in 1957.

"To me," Annette said, "it's like I can feel Elvis being here. It's awesome."

But Graceland isn't just a museum, notes The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler. When family members, such as Lisa Marie Presley, are in town, they still use the house to entertain.

"To this day," Kern says, "they still come here on a fairly regular basis to have dinner with other family members who live here in Memphis. So they come back and hang out."It took a crew of three about 10 days to cover Elvis' "poolroom," complete with a pool table, in fabric, Kern says. It actually took them four days just to do the pleats on the ceiling," he adds.

Annette and Leonard also saw Elvis' "jungle room," which Kern says was "part of Elvis' wild side."

The tour included a rare treat, riding a golf cart around Graceland just as Elvis used to, with Elvis' cousin, Jimmy Gambill.

"Elvis always had golf carts here, quite a few," Gambill told Annette and Leonard. "And he just liked them so he could get out and travel around the property on them. We had a great time. We're going to go ride around on the lawn. …It was hard to keep grass here when Elvis was living, because he rode all over the property with everything."

Kern took Annette and Leonard to a building in an undisclosed location. "Nobody knows where it is," Kern said. "It remains secret because we have about 90,000 items in here that are rare artifacts."

They include the actual leather wristband Elvis wore in a 1968 TV special. "You'll notice," Kern pointed out, "these are so 'in' today. Elvis did it in '68, and they're doing it today in 2005."

Another item: Elvis' Army helmet. He was in the Army from 1958 to 1960.

But for many, Syler notes, the most poignant moment of a visit to Graceland happens near the end of the tour: "That was a touching thing, to be able to go there and see 'The King's' grave. As long as there's his music, he'll live," Annette reflected.

On the set of The Early Show Thursday, Annette said one of the things that stands ut in her mind from the tour is, of all things, Elvis' kitchen.

"It was a normal kitchen. To know that he was real, like everyone else," Annette remarked to Syler.

She added that she "had goose bumps" throughout the tour.

The sweepstakes coincided with the release of a TV Guide collector edition.

The magazine's senior editor, Lisa Chambers, told Syler, "We have four collector's covers. Each issue has a CD of a never-before released version of the song "Young and Beautiful," which Elvis sang to Judy Tyler in "Jailhouse Rock."