CONTAINS

 1948-1952 MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
 
For Elvis Presley's Biography (See: The Sun Biographies)
Most Elvis' Sun tracks can be heard on the playlist from 706 Union Avenue Sessions on YouTube < click
"The coloured folks", asserted Elvis Presley, "been singing it and playing it just like I'm doin' now, man,  for more years than I know. They played it like that in the shanties and in their juke joints and nobody  paid it no mind 'til I goosed it up. I got it from them". "Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear Arthur  Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old  Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw". "Yep, some of the music is lowdown. There are  low-down people and high-up people, but all of them get the kind of feeling that rock and roll music tells  about". "When I sang hymns back home with my Mom and Pop I stood still and I looked like you feel  when you sing a hymn. When I sing rock and roll, my eyes won't stay open and my legs won't stand still. I  don't care what they say, it ain't nasty.
 
Elvis Presley, Charlotte Observer 1956
1948
 
John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" and Muddy Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfied" were recorded. The   longplaying record (LP) is introduced.
 
Seeking an entree into the music business, Dewey Phillips got a job hawking recorded at W.T. Grant's,   five-and-dime near, a department store near the Gayoso Hotel at Gayoso and Main Street in downtown   Memphis, where WHBQ radio was then located. His job description was counter clerk, but Dewey  Phillips as usual defied description. Dewey immediately began blasting rhythm and blues through   loudspeakers onto Main Street, then plugged a microphone onto the record player and started blasting   himself. He soon had the hottest record department in the 500-store chain and had become his own brand   of disc jockey. All he needed was a radio station.
 
APRIL 3, 1948 SATURDAY
 
On this day, the Louisiana Hayride first went on the air. The Saturday night show was initiated by Henry  Clay and Dean Upson, who belonged to the management of the radio station KWKH in Shreveport.  From 1948, the program was broadcast weekly. The reception was initially limited to Louisiana and the  surrounding states. From 1954, a 30-minute excerpt was transferred overseas via the AFN network. And over  the CBS network the show reached entire North-America.
 
Horace Logan played an important role in the development of the most influential radio show in the country.  Horace Logan’s career in radio began when he was 16 years old and won a contest as an announcer for  KWKH. After his military service, he opened a gun shop, but was persuaded to come back to the radio.  Along with Station Manager Henry Clay and the commercial Director, Dan Upson, he set out to establish the  single Jamboree, which was a serious rival to Nashville's famous Grand Ole Opry. The name "Louisiana  Hayride" was chosen because it suggested and also localized country music. Logan was the author of the  slogan "Elvis has left the building".
 
The Louisiana Hayride is one of the most popular country music radio shows in the United States. Since  1948 it is transferred from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana, and was surpassed in the  1950s only by the "Grand Ole Opry" in popularity. The epithet of Hayrides is "Cradle Of The Stars" because  the show was known for many musicians as a springboard to a career and for his musical innovation.
 
The Municipal Auditorium was a modern building with good acoustics, a capacity of 3800 seats and much  larger than the Grand Ole Opry's Ryman Auditorium. It had a large balcony that curved around on either side  of the stage, and giving the room a natural echo. The balustrade was decorated all around with a small wrap  of velvet, and the main room had folding chairs that could be taken up for dances and basketball exhibitions.  Behind the stage were spacious dressing rooms and a large, common dressing room on the second floor were set up as a meeting place for artists. Admission to the Hayride cost 60 cents for adults and 30 cents for  children.
 
The Hayride-audience was a noisy and enthusiastic crowd, the balconies packed to the rafters. There were  various colleges and universities around Shreveport and also the Barksdale Air Force Base. From there, the  young people came - just like the fans of the enthusiastic East Texas music scene. Microphones placed in the  middle of the audience took on the enthusiasm of the crowd for the radio transmission.
 
Hayride impresario Horace Logan gave the performances a dramatic touch when he took the stage with a  fancy, wide-margined cowboy hat and six guns. The emcee Ray Bartlett spiced his appearances with  somersaults and back flips.
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE LOUISIANA HAYRIDE
 
One of the first stars was Hank Williams and Kitty Wells. But other stars like Faron Young, Slim Whitman,  Web Pierce, Jim Reeves, The Carlisle's, David Houston, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley were among those  who made their debut on the Hayride. Elvis Presley was a member of the ensemble for 18 months after he  had failed at the Grand Ole Opry.
 
The Louisiana Hayride was mostly in the shadow of the Grand Ole Opry.  "The Cradle Of The Stars" - as the Hayride was called - was especially emerging talent as a springboard, but  offered also established musicians who the strict regime of the Grand Ole Opry did not want to undergo,  opportunity to gigs.
 
After the leaving of Elvis Presley, the show experienced a gradual decline. Only temporarily tape recordings  of old shows were played. The station KWKH-retired and in 1969 the shipments were definitively set. David  Kent took over the naming rights in 1975 and revived the Hayride 1973-1987 again. The show was  performed in a different building with a reduced array of stars on. From 1984 the show was transferred  additionally on television. Three years later they moved back to the Municipal Auditorium. The successes of  the times from 1948 to 1960 could no longer be tied and the show was stopped again. There were plans to restore the Municipal Auditorium and be held the Louisiana Hayride there again. Meanwhile, the restoration  was carried out successfully under new owners.
 
The current owner of the Louisiana Hayride is Maggie and Alton Warwick, which not only revived the  Municipal Auditorium and its surroundings, but also the Hayride with its tradition of voice and supporter of  local and regional talent. In many respects the Louisiana Hayride supplanted the Grand Ole Opry in two  ways. Both programs were focus on country music and oriented with its 50,000 watt signals on the same  area. At the Louisiana Hayride new artists and new musical innovations were welcome - in a way which  never pulled the strictly traditional Grand Ole Opry into consideration. While the Opry very rarely, if ever, an  artist who had taken no hit, did occur, the Hayride did the opposite and let aspiring performers, so that they  could find an audience. And while at the Opry electric guitars were banned, it was welcome on the Hayride -  an instrument that helped to transform the "hillbilly music" to the new hybrid form of music was the rock  and roll.
UNKNOWN DATE SUMMER 1948
 
After possibly two years in the Service, bluesman Howlin' Wolf returned to farming in Mississippi but  started playing in West Memphis, Arkansas around 1948. He probably continued to work on the farm for  a while at least because people recall seeing him show up for radio station work in his farm overalls. At  that time, West Memphis had longer drinking hours than Memphis, more gambling joints and a city  administration willing to turn a blind eye. On Friday and Saturday nights, school buses brought  sharecroppers in from the surrounding Delta country. The Wolf and his small group plied their craft as the  country folk boozed, whored and gambled away their meagre earnings. Pat Hare, who later played guitar  with James Cotton and Muddy Waters, recalled that his first paying job was working with Howlin' Wolf in  a West Memphis whorehouse in 1948 or 1949.
 
UNKNOWN DATE 1948
 
Jack Clement signed up for a four year stint in the U.S. Marines. The Marine base where Clement was  stationed was just outside Washington, D.C., and here late in 1948 he was first exposed to bluegrass  music. "That was when I fell in love with the five-string banjo", he recalls, "and I just had to get one and  practise on it straight away".
 
Soon, he was proficient enough to play duets with Roy Clark, now a country superstar but then a resident  artist at a Washington club called "The Famous". On Saturday nights, he would travel down to Maryland  with Scotty Stoneman's band. Scotty was the mainstay of the popular Stonemans. He played fiddle, with  mandolin, banjo and bass support from Jack Clement, Buzz Busby and Jimmy Stoneman. The group was  completed by Ralph Jones on dobro and Clement recalls Jones being one of the finest oldtime country  musicians he ever knew.
(Above) Looking north on North Gloster Street, Tupelo, Mississippi on September 1, 1948. This was Highway 45 and 78. The hill at the top is where Gloster and McCullough cross today. This is the same road the Presley family traveled when they left Tupelo for Memphis in 1948. Tom's Peanuts is in the same spot today. 
 
SEPTEMBER 6, 1948 MONDAY
 
The Presley's loaded their green 1939 Plymouth coupe and left Tupelo for good. Elvis Presley, thirteen  years old, puzzled by the sudden departure, nonetheless accepted the change. The imperative behind the  Presley's move to Memphis was actually made somewhat more smooth by the same factor that really caused it, however: the moonshine whiskey business.  "We were broke, man. We just left overnight.   Things had to be better", Elvis Presley on poverty.
 
The majority of moonshiners were in it for strictly  personal consumption, and the local authorities usually turned blind eye in that case. But their sight  suddenly improved if you attempted to turn it into a business, like Vernon Presley. 
 
Tupelo had a mayor and a prosecutor, but the sheriff ran things and was free to make certain decisions. He  decided to give Vernon Presley a choice, either go back to jail for several months or leave Tupelo for  good. He told Vernon he was a disgrace to the town, just the rest of his relations. He told Vernon to get the  hell out and never come back. If he does come back, the sheriff promised to put Vernon in jail without a  second thought, so what choice there got?
 
After moving to Memphis, via Highway 78, Elvis Presley returned frequently to visit his many close  friends and relatives in Tupelo. John Grower, manager of Tupelo's Lyric Theater, later recalled that Elvis  Presley participated in the theater's Saturday morning talent shows. One song that Elvis Presley reportedly  performed was Hank Williams' 1949 hit, "My Bucket's Got A Hole In It". By 1949, the Presley's were  residents of Memphis, where Elvis' musical education would soon move into high gear. Elvis Presley  strummed his guitar and watched the landscape change from rural to urban the closer they got to their  destination. Cotton fields gave way to industrial smokestacks spewing bad-smelling fumes, and the road  became crowded with cars. Elvis felt his heart sink as the crowded city came into view, the life he had  known was over forever. (Howard DeWitt says in his book they left September 12, 1948, Peter Guralnick  argues for November 6 and that Elvis knew ahead of time).
 
SEPTEMBER 1948
 
The Presley's made their permanent move to Memphis in the weekend on September 12, 1948. Elvis'  initial school enrolent the eith-grade, was at Christine School, an Catholic institution on Third Street.  Vernon Presley later recalls that shortly after walking Elvis to school on his first day, the boy reappeared  at home "so nervous he was bug-eyed". The Presley's waited nearly two months to send Elvis to Humes  High School, apparently in order to make sure they got settled first, because Memphis school system  records indicate that Elvis' first class was November 8, 1948.
 
Their determination to see Elvis Presley educated was for Vernon and Gladys Presley one shared passion,  and it had set them apart from most of other sharecroppers who thought kids only needed to know the  basics of readin' writin', and rithmetic before going to work in the fields full time. Vernon sat with Elvis  through the whole registration process, then left when classes were about to start. No sooner had he  returned home than Elvis returned home, too.
 
UNKNOWN DATE SUMMER 1948
 
Vernon and Gladys Presley had debated their future. It was difficult for Vernon Presley to find work, and  they had moved from one small house to another for more than a decade. Although Vernon Presley made  small sums of money selling moonshine whiskey, it was just not adequate - by itself - to support the  family. Having had at least some success working in Memphis during World War II, Vernon Presley ultimately came to view it as the promised land.
 
As the Presley's drove into Memphis in 1948, there were also indications of a social and economic  renaissance. The black and white stores and the local cress' had lunch counters open to blacks, and there  were signs of progress in employment, education, and entertainment. Blacks were key consumers in  Memphis, and it was just good business to appeal to their needs. The Memphis Commercial Appeal  covered black events with dignity and grace, and there was little evidence of media discrimination.
 
The newly arrived Presley's were initially unaware of the full scope of Memphis' musical underpinnings -  Beale Street, rockabilly, WDIA radio. It was natural for them to gravitate to the part of Memphis that  locals called "Little Mississippi", which was filled with people who had migrated from small northern  Mississippi towns. It was also not long afterwards that Elvis Presley discovered Beale Street and WDIA  radio.
 
The year 1948 also marked the radio debut of Dewey Phillips, whose radio style virtually defied  categorization. He was a white disc jockey from rural Tennessee who later hosted the show "Red Hot and  Blue".
 
During this same time period, Colonel Tom Parker has become one of the top managers in the country  music field, with his sole client, Eddy Arnold, enjoying five number-one hits in 1948 alone. Parker  persuades Arnold at this point to quit the Grand Ole Opry for more lucrative show-business opportunities,  including - in the next year - television exposure, a Las Vegas booking, and motion pictures. Parker  himself receives an honorary colonel's commission in October from Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, a  noted country singer in his own right, and henceforth will employ the title, first as a kind of joke, later as  if it were his legitimate due.
 
SEPTEMBER 12, 1948 SUNDAY
 
Having no specific destination, Vernon Presley drove to downtown Memphis. In the heart of the city,  prosperity and enthusiasm surrounded them. Every other car they passed was shiny and new. Clean,  shoplined streets were filled. Unlike, sharecroppers who trudge their way through life, these city folk  walked with a spring in their step. Even breathing was easier, the air free of choking dust. As he watched  the purposeful movement and felt the energy, the pain in Elvis Presley's chest temporarily eased. Maybe  his mother was right. Maybe Memphis was a promised land of opportunity.
 
After on a lunch of cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes, Vernon Presley set out to find his family a place  to live. At first they were awestruck at the stylish house nestled on neatly manicured streets; the thought  of living in such splendor made them dizzy. But their high hopes were rudely snatched away by harsh  financial realities. The neighborhoods that most appealed to them were way beyond their means and out  of reach. By nightfall, they were fighting crushing discouragement, and a shroud of despair settled on  Elvis Presley. The neighborhood had a rough, city feel to it and wasn't a safe place to walk around alone  at night.
 
On this early morning, the Presley family resumed their search and with each passing hour, the weary  family moved on to increasingly dingier neighborhoods until they finally found an apartment, they newly  arrived Presley's rented a room in a boarding house located at 370 Washington Avenue, and Vernon  Presley quickly walked down to one of the seven beer bars on nearby Poplar Avenue, along with Gladys'  brothers, Johnny and Travis Smith. The Smiths had also moved their families - along with Grandma  Minnie Mae Presley - to Memphis, and were working at Precision Tool Company on Kansas Street in  South Memphis, where Gladys' brothers Travis and Johnny are working, while looking for better housing.  The Presleys also joined the First Assembly of God church at 1085 McLemore Avenue. In October of  1948, Gladys began working as a seamstress for Fashion Curtains. While this improved the family's  finances, the work was hard and stressed Gladys physically and emotionally.
 
Elvis Presley spent the next days in a daze, hoping the empty feeling would stop hurting. Nothing put him  at ease. While it was true their new apartment was nicer than the shacks they'd lived in before, it didn't  feel like a home. In Tupelo, Elvis Presley had always been able to escape outdoors and feel free in the  open flatland, or clear his head with the sweet, heavy smell of a summer night. Now, instead of a front  yard, there was a concrete sidewalk and a busy street clouded by exhaust fumes and the acrid discharge of  nearby factories. No more lying on the grass watching the sun set over lazy farmland, they were  surrounded by the ugliness of city industry. But, the musically Sun of Memphis, waiting for him.
370 WASHINGTON STREET - A Humes High School registration document records this as the address  the Presley's lived prior to moving to Poplar Avenue. It is unclear how long or under what circumstances  the family stayed here, than lived at Poplar Avenue, but it may have been only during the summer of 1949  while they waited for an apartment to vacate at Lauderdale Courts. The building was demolished some  years ago. The little apartment on Washington Street, for $11 a week, was dark and depressing, with  small, dirty windows that barely opened wide enough to let the air in.
 
There was a communal bathroom  on their floor that they would share with several families. "I don' wanna live here, let's go home. I don'  like it here", said Elvis. "I don' wanna get settled here, I wanna go home", he begged to his mother.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1948 MONDAY
 
Elvis Presley started attending for a number of weeks to (in 1920 built as Market Street School) the Christine School on 264 Third Street.  The school was re-named for a beloved teacher-principal and was closed and demolished in 1964.  A  few months later, in February 1949, Vernon found full-time employment at the United Paint Company. It  was back-breaking work, loading and unloading cases of paint, but Vernon was determined to keep it to  prove he could support his family. Shortly thereafter he applied for public housing assistance.Christine School, 264 Third Street, Memphis, Tennessee, early 1950 >
 
No history of education in Memphis would be complete without a reference to the old Market Street  School (Christine School). In 1870, a lot was purchased at the north west corner of Market Street and  Third Street and the first "real school" in Memphis was erected at a cost of $80,000. The 3-store brick  building opened in 1872. On the first floor were 4 classrooms for the elementary grades. Part of the  second floor was used for the secondary grades. The third floor was for lecture halls and exhibition space.  The basement was for the 4 furnaces and storage. From the opening date, the teachers and principals of  this historic school read like a Who's Who of Memphis education.
 
In 1877, the newly created Memphis High School, consisting of the combined Male High School and  Female High School, joined the high school section of the Market Street School and moved to the top  floor of the Market Street School building. During this same year, the Market Street School name was  changed to Smith School in honor of the first principal. The Memphis High School would stay at this  location until 1892. Because there were now two schools with different names, in the same building at  Market and Third, and because the newspapers frequently referred to both schools as "The High School"  or "The Market Street School", it's really difficult to sort out the complete, early history of either school. To add to this confusion, at one time there were 4 other schools on Market Street - also referred to as "The  Market Street School". In addition, even though the Smith School was the new name for Market Street  School in 1877, the Memphis directories continued to list it as Market Street School until 1883.  Additional confusion resulted even from the graduates of Memphis High School at this time. Because  their school is located in the Market Street building, they often listed their high school (Memphis High  School) as "The Market Street School". During the period 1877-92, the two names were almost interchangeable.  By 1884 the Memphis High School had grown so rapidly that more space was desperately  needed. To accommodate them, the Smith School on the lower floors moved across the street to the north  east corner of Market and Third. When the Memphis High School moved to new quarters in 1892 (and  was renamed Leath High School), the Smith School moved back to their old Market Street School  building. In 1920 the Market Street School (now Smith School) name was changed a second time to  Christine School for a beloved teacher-principal. Throughout all these name changes, newspapers and  others continued to refer to the school as "the old Market Street School". The school was closed and  demolished in 1964.
 
SEPTEMBER 1948
 
Elvis also attended Pentecostal gospel services at the Reverend J.J. Denson's Poplar Street Mission,  located at 552 Poplar Avenue. His sons Jimmy and Jesse Lee were among young Elvis' closest friends.  Jim Denson, who claims to have first seen Elvis Presley late in 1947 - again, when the family had not yet  moved to Memphis. Elvis was immediately attracted to Jim, the older Denson brother. He was not only a  Golden Gloves boxer but a fisticuffs legend around the Lauderdale Courts. Jesse Lee Denson, a talented  country musician with a pop style, was eager to teach others his guitar licks, and Elvis Presley was one of  his earliest students. The Denson brothers recall Elvis as a shy boy who was often reticent to mix with the  other kids, something that may have been due partially to the Presley's perpetual housing problems.  "He showed up, he had a little itty-bitty, Gene Autry-type guitar that he really couldn't play. He couldn't  press the strings down on it they was set to high, so I let him practise on mine - I had a little Martin. I just  tried to show him basic chords. I would take his fingers and place them, say, 'You're pressing the wrong  strings with the wrong fingers', trying to straighten him out. He couldn't really complete a song for a long  time, couldn't move his fingers and go with the flow of the music, but once I straightened him out he  started to learn to do it right", recalled Jesse Lee Denson.
LEE ''JESSE JAMES'' DENSON – is a guy who was there when the rockabilly and rock and roll   avalanche started and who made some cracking good records, classic in fact. His patch crissed  crossed with many of those whose music is so revered by all of us to this very day. Born Jesse Lee   Denson on August 25, 1932 in Rienzi, Mississippi, he was the eighth (out of a total of ten) from the  loins of Jesse James Denson and his wife.  During the depression years, life was not easy in the little Mississippi town and so in December   1932 the Denson family took their car and headed for the nearest big city, Memphis. Just before   they reached the old Mississippi bridge the engine of their car, a Buick "Peace Arrow", failed. 
 
It was   so cold that the mighty Mississippi River had frozen over, something which has not occurred again,   and so Jesse Lee´s mother picked him up and carried him whilst dad gathered up the two 2 year old   twins and the family walked into Memphis. Lee almost died that day in his mother's arms due to the   intense cold. The Densons' finally settled in a housing project at Lauderdale Courts in Memphis. 
 
Lee, as he became known, always had his own way of doing things that landed him in trouble   several times. For instance, he ran away from home (for the first time) at the age of nine. Hanging   around in the streets turned him into a pretty sharp fighter with the end result that he entered a   Golden Globe amateur boxing contest in 1952. The same happened to two of his school buddies   with whom he knocked around with, namely Johnny and Dorsey Burnette. As a bantam weight   boxer, Lee sang songs with his guitar before starting Golden Glove bouts in the arenas of Memphis.
Lee remembers: ''When my brother, Jim and me got out of the backdoor to go to Humes High   School one day, we saw Gladys and this young skinny guy who was taller than her. It was Elvis. We   had not met him before but knew Gladys as she was around the mission and the house quite often.   But the strange thing to see was that Elvis had his head on his mothers shoulder while walking hand  in hand to the school.
 
A couple of days later my mother said to me in the kitchen "Jesse Lee Gladys   has begged me if you would show Elvis how to play the guitar". I said "Mama, I'm not teaching that   little chicken nothing, he's so fragile and so afraid of everything''.
 
''If I would start to teach him how   to sing and play, the other kids would tease me. It´s hard enough already, but after that I would be in   a fight every day". My Mother did not accept that and looked right into my eyes and told me:   "Whatsoever you do, Jesse Lee, to these the least of my brothers that you will do on to me, and   that's exactly what Jesus said". That really got me and I replied "Okay mama send him over". That   afternoon I started teaching Elvis. He was 13 years old and he was slow, but he was better than most  people thought. That's how it begun. We then got to his place, or in the basement to practice because   there was a nice echo there. We lived there for about four years with the Presleys'. This building still   stands, but the neighbourhood has deteriorated''.
 
Over the next two or three years Lee gave Elvis, who was about two years younger, informal guitar   lessons. He also introduced him to some of his friends, like the Burnettes and brother Jimmy, but   Elvis does not seem to have made a lasting impression on these guys at that time. Lee later liked  what Elvis recorded but said: "I know by my heart that Bill Haley & The Comets started that all and   to me he was the King. Elvis had all the breaks in the world because of his manager (Colonel Tom   Parker)."
 
''I got into music when I was really small. My father played guitar in his mission but couldn't tune   the guitar which I could do already at the age of 6. That's when it started for me. I thought it´s better   to sing and play than to get into more trouble as some of my friends out on the streets did. In my   early days, I was country. I liked to sing smooth like Eddy Arnold''. In 1953 Lee moved to Key   West, Florida where he worked as a bellboy during the days. However at nights, he was singing in   local clubs, eventually ending up in a bar called Sloppy Joe's which was a regular hang out for   Ernest Hemingway. While living on the Florida Keys, Lee married and the couple had a son, Jesse   James Denson, in 1955.
 
As the Florida islands only had limited openings for a young eager musician, he often went out on   tours all over the USA. In mid 1956 he saw his old school buddies Johnny and Dorsey Burnette on   the television show The Ted Mack Amateur Hour, which they won three times, plus securing a   national tour with the programme as well as a recording contract with Coral Records. Lee thought  that he could easily replicate this and called the brothers for advice with the end result that he   moved to New York where he stayed for eight months. He also gained an appearance on The Ted   Mack Amateur Hour where he came out the clear winner. Brother Jimmy was with him by now and   it was he who took over promotion. Jimmy contacted people at RCA and got them to watch Lee on   the show. Eventually Lee gained a recording contract with the Vik label, which was an RCA   subsidiary company, and so he started searching for new material to record.
 
Whilst on tour on in California he met Ray Stanley who had connections with Eddie Cochran and   his manager Jerry Capehart. On April 4, 1956 Jerry Capehart went to the Goldstar Studio to cut a   demo of a song called "Heart Of A Fool" with The Cochran Brothers, Eddie and Hank. While Jerry   Capehart handles the vocal, instrumentally Eddie gives one of his finest performances on record by   providing devastating rockabilly guitar accompaniment. By the time they met up with Lee, Jerry,   Eddie and Hank had not done anything with the song and so they gave their new buddy the chance   to take the song to New York for his upcoming session.
 
On December 12, 1956 Lee went into the RCA's New York studio to cut his first four songs. He was   accompanied by in the studio by top session men such as Panama Francis and Sam "The Man"   Taylor. The output was "Heart Of A Fool" coupled with Lee´s own composition "The Pied Piper"   which was the plug side. VIK´s press office issued the following release: This rugged, earthy singer with a rough-and-ready beat has a style which he calls a "tremolo yodel", adapted to the rhythm so   popular today. He tells of the "Pied Piper" who charms all the "chicks" with his songs. Lee´s   serenading rings out strong and true.
 
The RCA distributor arranged for three appearances by Lee on Dick Clark's Philadelphia based   regional "Bandstand" television show - it did not become "American Bandstand" until August 1957   when the show went national. However this promotion failed to make the record a hit. Two other   songs recorded at the same session, "Love Twister" and "It Took Too Long", remained unissued.   Lee returned to California in May 1957 and rekindled his connections with Eddie Cochran and Ray   Stanley. Whilst Lee stayed with his wife and son, Jerry Capehart got Jimmy an apartment on the   third floor at 8608 Holloway Drive and which just happened to be next door to another of his then   protégées, singers and composers Johnny Burnette and his brother Dorsey. Also living in the same   apartment at the time was another Jerry Capehart artist, John Ashley, the movie actor and singer.   Ashley frequently called upon Jimmy Denson's services to get the "mean-assed Dorsey Burnette" off of his back as Jimmy knew how to handle Dorsey from their earlier boxing days back in   Memphis. The same building also housed other then young hopefuls such as actor (and occasional   singer) Vince Edwards who later became famous as television's "Ben Casey". Eddie Cochran often   dropped by, using the place as a hang out to party and generally chill out.
 
Ray Stanley believed in the talents of Lee and duly arranged a session for him at the Goldstar   Studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. As Lee usually played solo or utlised the services of local bands   such as The 3 Hearts, he did not carry regular musicians which meant he did not have a band to   record with. Accordingly, Ray arranged some of his musician friends to play on the session. Eddie   Cochran was on lead guitar along with Eddie's bass player Connie "Guybo" Smith and Jerry   Capehart who banged away on some cardboard boxes to fill in for the drums. It took the group an   hour, at a cost of $10 plus $2 for the tape, to record the songs. One was the ballad "Climb Love   Mountain" with another being "New Shoes", a Ray Stanley rockin' composition which was laid down in a style not dissimilar to that of Gene Vincent. There have been rumours that two more   songs were recorded at the session but confirmation has stubbornly failed to materialise. Lee took   the two aforementioned songs back to New York for his next release on Vik Records in July 1957.   Again, the second release failed to chart with the result that Vik did not renew Lee's contract.   Denson decided to return to California but on route he dropped in to Memphis to visit his parents.   This stop over has lead to further rumours that he recorded several acoustic demos for Lester Bihari   ´s Meteor label but Lee cannot recall this happening. Being ever restless, Lee and brother Jimmy moved on back to Los Angeles where he secured a recording contract with Kent Records in   February 1958. The first session for his new label was on March 3rd 1958 and produced the two   self composed numbers "High School Hop" and "Devil Doll". With Jimmy handling the promotion,   Lee obtained plenty of local bookings and magazine write-ups. Whilst Jimmy was not a musician,   he was a capable composer with the result that he and Lee started to write songs together.
 
Come the time for the next Kent recording session, Lee recognised his brother's help and ability by   recording some of the songs that they had co-written. Also sensing that a name change might help   the next record release, the bothers pooled their christian names together and came up (yes you have guessed it) Jesse James. This release was the legendary slab of blasting rock 'n' roll "The South's   Gonna Rise Again" coupled with 'Red Hot Rockin' Blues" which was released as Kent 314. The top   side was composed by the two brothers from memories of what they had leant at school. (If only we   had such history lessons in Europe to be able to create such sparkling rock 'n' roll). This cult  favourite has been reissued several times since the first release, both legally and illegally. The   reason for its popularity is not hard to determine, it is classic rock 'n' roll music. Actually when   these tracks were laid down, it was a split session with singer Artie Wilson and boy the musicians   such as Earl Palmer (who played on many hit recordings by the likes of Eddie Cochran, Little   Richard, Fats Domino, Bobby Day and Ritchie Valens) were cooking that day. Wilson's release   from this session "Jerry Jerry" and "That's My Baby" (Kent 313) were two Larry Williams styled   pounders, again first rate rock 'n' roll. Some of the songs cut by Denson as Jesse James have not   been released as they were basically only demo recordings.
 
In late 1959, Denson pacted with Merri Records and laid down four songs. Two of the titles, "A   Tree In The Meadow" and "Twang" were issued in 1960. The first mentioned of these songs became   a significant hit several years ago. The other two songs from this session, with an updated sound,   were released two years later.
 
Coming from a very religious family, Lee always kept his faith with God and so it was a natural   thing for him to write gospel music. In 1960 he wrote an English version of Avai Maria titled   "Miracle Of The Rosary". Denson attempted to get publishers interested in the song but as it was of   a religious nature, enthusiasm was not forthcoming.. When Lee heard that Elvis was in Hollywood to film a movie, he visited with him at his Bel Air residence. Knowing that Elvis had retained his   passion for gospel music, Denson was determined that Presley should hear this composition. At the   house, Denson was warmly welcomed and had the opportunity to perform the song to Elvis and his  Memphis Mafia. Lee remembered: ''After I finished this little girl stand up and said "It´s the most  gorgeous song I ever heard in my life" and it was Priscilla''.
This was the last time Lee saw Elvis in person. He later received a telephone call from one of   Presley's sidekicks who inquired about the publishing for the song. The guy was told that the rights   had been assigned to Dorsey Burnette's publishing company. Dorsey later sold his catalogue to   Acuff-Rose and where it still resides. Seemingly, nothing was happening with Elvis on the song and   so Denson recorded a version for the Enterprise label in the sixties.
 
This is the same Enterprise label   for which Detroit rocker Jamie Coe recorded for and is not the same as the Stax subsidiary.   Unfortunately from a commercial viewpoint, this release was stillborn.
 
One of the other artists on the Merri label was Lee's old buddy, Dorsey Burnette who by this time   had decided to go into the record production side of the business. Dorsey teamed up with Ricky   Nelson´s bass player Joe Osborne and together the pair launched started the Magic Lamp label. 
 
Brother Johnny Burnette had one release on the label in 1964 before he was accidentally killed in a   boating accident. Joe Osborne run the label and produced several artists including Lee who was   signed as a result of his connections with the Burnettes. Two country oriented songs "Sixteen   States" and "Mississippi Bridge" were issued but the label did not have a good distribution and so   rather quickly it went belly up. Incidentally the backing vocals on these recordings were by Richard   and Karen Carpenter who of course went on to secure international success as The Carpenters. A   little known fact is that the very first release by The Carpenters was on Magic Lamp Records.
 
Lee finally tired of the west coast scene and returned to Memphis in 1972 whereupon he signed   with Stax Records. One evening that year, Lee got a call from his old school mate Red West who   was then based in Nashville. Lee remembers the telephone conversation vividly: 'I have not heard   from Red in quite a while. He told me to sit down which I did and he started telling me that day   Elvis has recorded my song "The Miracle Of The Rosary" that day. I was glad he told me to sit   down. I couldn't believe it after all those years. The version by Elvis has been on several of his   albums and I still get royalties from airplay and records. I have been very fortunate and this money   helped me doing what I wanted to do.' In recent times, the song has been included on Presley's   "Amazing Grace" album and it is still selling to this very day.
 
Lee has, in subsequent years, recorded and produced four religious albums for his own Eternal   Rainbow label and still writes poems in an attempt to show people a way out of the darkness of life.   The last release was "God Bless America Again". All of these albums used large orchestras and,   indeed, one of them had no less than sixty-three violinists on the recordings. Another personal   favourite of Lee's is children's songs and he has been working on the "Legend Of The Snowprince"   for many years now. He still maintains his close relationship with brother James "Jimmy" Denson   and the two are involved on several projects together.
 
Jesse Lee Denson remains proud of his rockin' days and when he was close to some of the finest   musicians of that era but is also looking forward to the future. Lee: "God took care of me. He   helped me to do some of the things I wanted to do. I'm a happy man going from 1968 to 1969".
 
Lee Jesse James Denson died on November 6, 2007 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Above: (1) - A young Elvis Presley posing on his Firestone Pilot Classic bicycle in front of the S&S Drug Store in  1949 on Poplar Avenue in Memphis. (2) - Looking east down Poplar Avenue at High Street in Memphis  around 1955. The distinctive twin gable home on the right shows up in the background of the first photo.  (1)(3) - Then and now photo showing the spot where Elvis Presley posed for the snapshot in 1949. (4) -  S&S Drug Store building today(2015) at 548 Poplar Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. This was Elvis’ neighborhood for almost a year before moving to Lauderdale Courts in the fall of 1949.
 
OCTOBER 1948
 
A few weeks after they arrived in Memphis, they moved from 370 Washington Avenue (now demolished)  into a small, one-room apartment located at 572 Poplar Avenue. The family lived there until September 20, 1949.  The $35-a-month rent for the small apartment in the large, multi-storied building was within Vernon's budget, and there were a number of  other important reasons for renting it. The ground-floor efficiency was only a brisk walk from Beale  Street, and it was close to the growing downtown business section. The once luxurious house, though,  was in a sad state of disrepair, and the owner neglected to maintain it. The Presley family had to share a  bathroom with other tenants. It was a depressing home in a neighborhood that reeked of white poverty.  Elvis Presley never forgot the toilets, the stench from the kitchen facilities, or the degrading appearance of  the makeshift rooms. The sixteen-unit building, which was owned by Clifton and Mallie Johnson, had  previously been a large single-family house. To alleviate the pressures surrounding the sudden move to  Memphis, the Presley's joined the First Assembly of God church located at 1084 McLemore Street at the  South Main section. They found people much like themselves there - a group of recently displaced, rural  Southern migrants attempting to cope with the rigors of big city life.
 
In January 2014, Vanity Fair magazine published an article showing a photo of Elvis Presley presumably  taken in downtown Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1947. The article traces the origin of the photo to a woman who  was walking into a drugstore to drop off some film that had one exposure left on the roll. According to the story, she noticed a young Elvis on his bike and asked him to pose, snapping her last frame of him. The  woman later gave the photo to Presley family friend Janelle McComb of Tupelo, who passed along the  photo and the story of how she obtained it to Elvis fan and memorabilia collector Wade Jones shortly  before her death.
 
The story behind the photo may have been correct, but the city was wrong.
 
The Presleys moved to Memphis in November 1948 and lived at 370 Washington before moving just  around the corner to a large rooming house at 572 Poplar Avenue (below) in June 1949. They briefly lived  there until September, when they moved to Lauderdale Courts. Elvis' grandmother, Minnie Mae Presley,  continued living at the Poplar address, according to the 1950 Memphis City Directory.
 
The 1950 directory also shows the S&S Drug Store, Lando Marossi restaurant and Milo’s liquor store that  appear in the Vanity Fair photo. John Sampietro, whose father operated the S&S Drug Store at the corner of  Poplar and High Street, remembered his father talking about how a young Elvis would come into the store  to play pinball.
 
Milo Solomito operated the liquor store just across the street from the drug store and his son, Milo Jr.,  identified the store in the photo as the one his father ran for many years. To the right of the liquor store was  the Marossi restaurant, which was also located across the street from the drug store before moving to a  nearby location in 1954, according to Jerry Marossi.
 
Posted by Elvis Presley's Graceland on October 12, 2015
572 POPLAR AVENUE - This is one of the many apartments for the Presley's in Memphis. Living in this   sixteen room boarding house, and sharing a bathroom and kitchen with fifteen other families, was   difficult for the family. Times were hard. Minnie May Presley was living with the family, and Elvis  Presley had to begin at a new school.  The Presley's lived in a ground level apartment in this once-grand mansion. The lack of privacy was bad  enough, but it was the filth that was most unbearable. Cockroaches were so plentiful they boldly climbed the walls, even in daylight. 
 
Plaster was knocked loose in place, exposing gaping holes and  ancient lathe work, and aside from the ornate but neglected woodwork, little remained of the once fine  house.  Given the condition of the house when the Presley's lived there, it is not surprising that the property was eventually razed.
 
The site is now a vacant lot. A neighbouring house that survived until the early 1990s    has been mistakenly identified as the house where the Presley's lived; however, the city directories last    listed the 572 Poplar Avenue address in 1970. 
 
While this vacant lot, nestled among pawn shops and    tenements, is all that remains of Elvis Presley's first year in Memphis, the site still speaks loudly of the    trials of his childhood and the wonder of his rise to stardom.
FIRST ASSEMBLY OF GOD CHURCH - The Presley's would attend the First Assembly Of God Church  located at 1084 East McLemore Avenue, about two blocks east of the later built Stax Records studio in  Memphis, where Elvis Presley later would sometimes record. 
 
Elvis Presley attended Sunday School, as  did Cecil Blackwood, the younger brother of R.W. Blackwood of the Blackwood Brothers gospel group.  Elvis Presley's girlfriend Dixie Locke Emmons also attended services there, and works as a secretary.
 
The Assembly of God in Memphis had started out in a tent and later moved to a storefront location on  South Third and finally into a church on McLemore in 1948.  In the early 1950s Pastor James E. Hamill, a  well-educated, fire-and-brimstone preacher who denounced movies and dancing from the pulpit and encouraged ecstatic demonstrations of faith in his church, had been minister for ten years. It was at this  church that Dixie Locke first saw Elvis Presley.  James Blackwood, leader of the Blackwood Brothers recalls: "Elvis' love of gospel music is wellchronicled.  When Elvis was living in Lauderdale Courts and we had those big gospel conventions at the  Ellis Auditorium, I would take Elvis backstage with me and he would visit with all the groups and the  singers. One time I didn't see him and he went to the front door to try to get backstage with us. The people  at the door didn't know who he was, so he had to buy a ticket. Later, when I learned about this, I wrote  him a letter and enclosed a check, I think it was for $1.25, and sent it to him to refund his money. I knew  he didn't have much money in those days. I have heard they still have that letter and check down at  Graceland.
 
Elvis and Cecil Blackwood were in the Sunday School class at First Assembly of God Church. Cecil,  young James Hamill and a couple of others had a gospel group, the Songfellows. Elvis would sing a lot in  rehearsal with them. One of the guys was set to leave and Elvis was all set to take his place, but the guy  changed his mind, so Elvis just kept patiently waiting. Then, when Cecil left to join the Blackwood Brothers, Elvis wanted to take his place. He auditioned for the group, but it was about that time Sun Records called him in to start recording. I have seen stories that said Elvis tried out for the Songfellows  and the Blackwood Brothers and didn't make it. That's just not the way it happened.
 
Even after Elvis got his break at Sun Records, he continued his deep love of gospel music. He still  continued to come to the gospel conventions, at least in his early days at Sun, and when Bob Neal was his  manager, we would introduce him and he would come on stage and sing a couple of gospel songs. We and  The Statesmen, featured Jake Hess, would sing harmony behind him.
 
Then, after Colonel Tom Parker took over, he put a stop to Elvis' singing on stage. Still he would come,  but we could only introduce him. Once, in 1955, still during the Neal days, we were both booked on July  4 at DeLeon, Texas, where each year they had a country gospel sing. It was Elvis and us. He drove in his  Cadillac and we were there in our bus. He stayed with us all day in our bus and when we went on stage,  he announced he was not going to sing anything but gospel, and that is what he did.
 
He was referring to the airplane crash in 1954 when my brother, R.W., and others were killed. He was  dating Dixie Locke at the time and he told me when he heard the news of the airplane crash, he and Dixie  drove to a park along the river, probably Riverside Park, one of Elvis' favourites, and they cried for a long  time".
 
Eventually Elvis Presley stopped attending because he did not want his fame to disrupt the services, but  he would remain close to the congregation and especially the Blackwood. When Gladys Presley died, the  family called Reverend Hamill to preach at her funeral Although Elvis Presley voraciously read books on a number of religious and philosophical topics in his  later years, he never forgot his roots in the Assembly of God Church. In 1962, the First Assembly of God  Church moved to 255 North Highland Street. Today Dixie Locke Emmons is the church secretary.  The church building is now occupied by the Alpha Church Congregation Of  The Temples Of The Living God.
UNKNOWN DATE OCTOBER 1948
 
Gladys Presley and her sister-in-law, Lorene Presley, found work as seamstresses with Fashion Curtain  Company. Located at 284 Monroe Avenue, it was tough work sewing small curtains from early in the  morning till six o'clock at night. Soon the long hours began to tell, and she deteriorated physically and
emotionally.
 
OCTOBER 19, 1948 TUESDAY
 
The Presley family was in need for money and Vernon Presley takes out a loan for $200, to be repaid in  twenty weekly installment of $10 each.
 
OCTOBER 25, 1948 MONDAY
 
Radio station WDIA made broadcasting history, when its financially strapped owners, figuring they had  little to lose, made the groundbreaking decision to hire Memphis' first black radio announcer; teacher,  author, black community leader Nat D. Williams. But breaking the broadcasting color line didn't mean  that radio became integrated. Instead, as had happened with the successful local black newspaper the  Tristate Defender, William's success inspired WDIA's white owners to turn it into the nation's first allblack- staffed radio station. With a license that limited broadcasting to daylight hours - a common  restriction for smaller stations - WDIA radio played blues, swing, gospel, pop, and the latest in rhythm  and blues.
 
WDIA RADIO - is the first radio station in America that was programmed entirely by African-Americans for African-Americans. It empowered a huge segment of the population that was, until the late 1940s, largely unrecognized. WDIA's monumental achievement was all the more extraordinary as it occurred during a time of institutionalized racism.
 
When WDIA became Memphis, Tennessee’s sixth station in June 1947, radio was still America's primary medium for entertainment and news. There were barely 30 television stations yet established in the country. Most all programming was geared toward the nation's white audience. Women were rarely on air, except as characters in dramas, and with very few exceptions - such as Jack Cooper in Chicago and Sonny Boy Williamson in Helena, Arkansas - blacks were not on the air. Even ''Amos and Andy'' a ''Negro'' comedy show, was performed by whites.
 
Initially, WDIA broadcast country and western music, classical, light pop - like the other stations in town. But the listening audience didn't need another station like the rest, and WDIA was a failing enterprise. In a final act of desperation before closing, station owners John Pepper and Bert Ferguson hired local high school teacher and nationally syndicated columnist Nathaniel Dowd Williams, an African-American, to host a show. Though Memphis' population was 40% African-American, no major media addressed them in the late 1940s. When Nat D.'s ''Tan Town Jamboree'' first aired on October 25, 1948, the response was overwhelmingly positive - except for the requisite bomb threats by the threatened white segregationists. WDIA bought some blues records, and a loyal listenership quickly grew.
 
Nat D. Williams was a prominent figure on Beale Street, and he brought the street to the station. Rufus Thomas, who co-hosted the Palace Theater Amateur Night with Nat, began hosting the 15-minute Sepia Swing Club and soon had a 2-hour nighttime show called ''Hoot and Holler''. B. B. King, who'd begun making his name at the Amateur Night, knocked on the station's door one day in 1949 and impressed station personnel with his audition. B. B. went on the air promoting Pepticon, the station's cure-all, and his career as a recording artist, and as a product spokesperson, took off. He recorded his first single in the station’s studio during off hours.
 
Station owner John Pepper learned in early 1949 that WDIA, with partial black programming, had become the number 2 station in the city. By the Fall of 1949, WDIA was programmed entirely for an African-American audience. A. C. ''Moohah'' Williams, a biology teacher at Manassas High School, became the station's first full-time African-American employee when he was hired as promotions consultant. A. C., in addition to hosting shows and generally running things, instituted the Teen Town Singers, a choral group that was as much about camaraderie, discipline, and leadership as it was about singing. Among the early Teen-Towners were STAX ''Queen of Soul'' Carla Thomas and long time station personality Mark Stansbury. Oscar winner Isaac Hayes was a regular on the station's Big Star Talent Show, and the former president of MLGW Herman Morris played on one of several station sponsored little league baseball teams.
 
The station’s public face was African-American, but the offices were a model for integration. In addition to the white owners, other whites were integral behind the scenes. David James Mattis was the program director. A former member of the Army Air Forces during World War II, he ran a tight ship, insisting on a professionalism that allowed the on-air personnel’s looseness to seem easy. He also established the Duke record label, which recorded much of the early talent that came through station; he later sold Duke to Don Robey in Houston. Chris Spindel facilitated programming, helping to organize shows like “Brown America Speaks,” which gave a political voice to the station.
 
The station’s first female African-American disc jockey was Willa Monroe, a society belle who hosted a program for homemakers. The advice program, for the lovelorn and mentally torn, was hosted by the matronly-voiced Aunt Carrie. The first gospel disc jockey was Reverend Dwight ''Gatemouth'' Moore, a former blues singer. ''My program was called ''Prayer Time'', Moore recollected, ''and my phone would ring and I've had white people to say, 'What is happening on that radio station? My maid is tearing up the house'''!
 
Such calls proved to the station that they were penetrating the black market. Advertisers, unaccustomed to reaching African-American shoppers, had to be coaxed, but the response was strong enough that those who bought ads quickly renewed. Society was still so segregated that WDIA had to alert their advertisers that they’d be getting visits from black shoppers - lots and lots of black shoppers.
 
With novice disc jockeys breaking all the broadcast rules - there were no dulcet toned jocks on WDIA, and very little restraint on the effusive personalities - the station assumed the mantle of top ranked in the city. It stayed there so solidly that other stations soon fought to be number 2 - because everyone knew the number 1 spot was taken. Martha Jean ''The Queen'' Steinberg became Princess Premium Stuff. Ernest Brazzell gave crop advice and Robert Thomas became a disc jockey named ''Honeyboy'' after he won a city-wide amateur competition. Among other notable personalities were Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert, Theo "Bless My Bones" Wade, and Ford Nelson, who remains an active gospel disc jockey on WDIA in 2003.
 
The station had been broadcasting with 250 watts at 730 on the AM dial, and in June 1954 they got permission to increase to 50,000 watts, which entailed a move to 1070 on the dial. With that strong signal beaming from Memphis down into the Mississippi Delta’s dense African-American population (the signal reached from the bootheel of Missouri to the Gulf coast), WDIA was able to reach 10% of the total African-American population in the United States. A boast like that brought a lot of advertising power, including many national clients.
 
WDIA hadn't set out to be the Goodwill Station, but community involvement was a natural outgrowth of its position in the city. Walking down the street in black neighborhoods, people could hear a song uninterrupted as WDIA emanated from each household. Early in the station's history, a woman came running into the offices saying she’d lost her child. She asked that the station announce a description; the child was found, and soon WDIA was making all sorts of community announcements: missing persons, church events, even lost false teeth. The program ''Workers Wanted'' announced job openings; ''Call For Action'' put people in touch with agencies to solve problems. WDIA was like a community bulletin board. They sponsored a talent show, put on a spelling bee at Tri State Fair (where they bought the championship hog), and on summer nights they set up a movie projector in different low-income housing projects, bringing free entertainment to the kids.
 
With all this talent and energy, and the connections with the record labels, it was also natural for WDIA to put on a show. Around Christmastime, the Goodwill Revue brought in the best gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, and soul performers in the nation; the disc jockeys put on entertaining skits and many also performed. The Goodwill Revues were enormously successful (and spawned the Starlite Revue in the summer). None of the monies raised by these WDIA events went to the station's operating budget - it all went toward charitable causes. WDIA gave money and food to needy families, bought busses which transported disabled black children to school, set up the Goodwill Home for Black Children, and established a Little League for black children that grew to over 100 teams for 2000 kids.
 
WDIA's impact was enormous, not just in Memphis but in the whole USA. Radio stations from other cities sent representatives to study how WDIA worked, returning to establish African-American stations in their own cities. WDIA began to call itself ''the Mother Station of Negroes''. In Memphis, the second black station, WLOK, opened in 1954. WDIA was sold by its original owners in 1957, but for decades after that, its spirit has thrived. WDIA celebrated a people who’d known only insult, earning a prominent place in the history of American race relations - and entertainment. In May of 2013, WDIA will be inducted into the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame. 
 
© - Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame
NOVEMBER 8, 1948 MONDAY
 
Elvis Presley switched from Christine School to Humes High School, located at 659 North Mananas  Street, Memphis, Tennessee, a combination junior and senior High School. His first year at Humes, he is  present 165 days, absent fifteen, and never tardy. He receives an A in language; B's in spelling, history,  and phys ed; and C's in arithmetic, music, and science. Elvis Presley attended Humes High School until  he graduated in June 3, 1953. Many students and teachers remember Elvis Presley strolling through the  halls at Humes lugging his guitar.
HUMES HIGH SCHOOL (L.C. HUMES HIGH SCHOOL) – All-white, 1,700-student Memphis High  School, located in a three-story red brick building at 659 North Manassas Street, which Elvis attended  from late November 1948, until June 1953, when he graduated, while Thomas C. Brindley served as the  principal. In 1950, when he was fifteen, Elvis worked in the library at Humes. Singer Johnny Burnette  was also a student there. Elvis graduated from Humes High (Over on the other side of Memphis, Booker  T. Jones and Maurice White, future drummer for Ramsey Lewis and leader of Earth, Wind and  Fire, respectively, were classmates in the same grade school.
 
Booker T. would later attend Booker T.  Washington High, where his father taught myth and science. Both Johnny Ace and Rufus Thomas had  also previously attended Booker T. Washington High, on June 3, 1953, in Class 202.
 
The ceremonies were  held at Ellis Auditorium, located at 225 North Main Street. George Klein, Principal T.C. Brindley, and Memphis Superintendent of Schools Ernest C. Ball were speakers.  The school, which was named for Laurence Carl Humes, a past president of the Memphis Board of  Education (1918-1925), is presently used as a Humes Junior High, but back then it served grades seven  through twelve. The school had previously been named the North Side High School. Humes High fielded  the Tigers football team, which Elvis attempted to join. He went out for a few practices, but quit because  the coach, Rube Boyce Jr., gave him a hard time about his hair. On April 9, 1953, Elvis performed at the  school's annual Minstrel Show. He had been encouraged by teacher Mildred Scrivener. Singing John  Lair's "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Of Me", he got the loudest applause from the student audience,  which allowed him to sing an encore, his version of Teresa Brewer's "Till I Waltz Again With You".  (Some sources indicate the encore was "Old Shep"). The school program, which also featured Red West  playing trumpet, misspelled Elvis' name as Elvis Prestly. In 1955 Elvis would give a benefit show at  Humes High. In January 1973 the L.C. Humes High School Marching Band played "Happy Birthday To  You" in front of Graceland in honour of Elvis' thirty-eight birthday.
Humes today looks much as it did in the 1950s. In fact, it looks like most large brick school buildings of   its era. The auditorium where Elvis Presley performed has been renamed in his honour. Now, as then, the   hallways are filled with only black students who have hope in the future. During Elvis Presley Memorial Week, held every August to mark the anniversary of his death, pupils take visitors on guided tours of the   school, relating stories of Elvis Presley and classmates, Red and Sonny West.
 
After Elvis Presley became famous, he did not forget that moment at the variety show and the teacher   who encouraged him. He returned twice to be a guest star on the show. Both shows sold out, raising   money for the school. Miss Scrivener recalled the story of Elvis Presley's return to Memphis in 1956,  days before performing at the Tupelo Fair. Rather than act the movie star, Elvis chose to spend his time   with students at Humes High School, bringing along actor Nick Adams. Together they talked to students   in a class and answered their questions. 
 
At the end Elvis Presley went to his old homeroom and sat down  at his old desk.   During one of his visits to Humes High School, Elvis gave a teacher a television set to be used in the   classroom. Then he gave the ROTC department nine hundred dollars to buy new uniforms for a drill   team.
1949
 
Richard "Tuff" Green, Phineas Newborn, and Ben Branch were injured in a band bus crash outside  Memphis that killed three members of the band. Green quit touring after that, while Phineas senior, with  his two sons quickly coming on of age, decided to form a family band. Calvin played guitar, and the  brilliant but tragically unstable Phineas junior played piano. In the early fifties, the Newborn family band was one of the hottest acts on the Memphis club scene. Along with their regular gigs on Beale Street and  in West Memphis, the Newborn family band helped B.B. King make his first recordings in the studios of  WDIA radio, and the band make many early Sun Records recordings.
 
In Tupelo purchases the former home of Pvt. John Allen at corner of Madison and Jefferson streets and  converts it to use as the county's first freestanding library.
 
JANUARY 8, 1949 SATURDAY
 
Vernon Presley gives Elvis a paperback book of cartoons by George Price with the inscription: "May your  birthday be sprinkled through 'n through with joy and love and good times too. Daddy". The book  traveled with him to Germany in 1958 and was left behind in his rented house at 14 Goethestrasse.
 
FEBRUARY 17, 1949 THURSDAY
 
Vernon Presley found full-time employment at the United Paint Company, located at 446 Concord Avenue  in North Memphis, just a few blocks away from the rooming house on Poplar Avenue. It was a tough job  requiring him to handle hundreds of cases of paint each day. Vernon Presley's job was the hardest he'd  ever had, but he kept it to prove that he could work full-time. One person referred to the United Paint  Company as a place for "mule work". It required an extraordinary amount of physical stamina, and the  working conditions were primitive.
 
For the week of April 29, 1949, Vernon is paid $37.62 for forty-five hours's work. On the same day he  pays an $11.28 bill at Williams Grocery, 116 Poplar Avenue in Memphis. Vernon Presley's income was  $2,000 a year. According to Elaine Dundy, in her book "Elvis And Gladys", Vernon went to work there as  early as 1949 and received a $10-a-week raise in 1951, enough to get him and his family kicked out of the  Lauderdale Courts.
 
UNITED PAINT COMPANY - Located at 446 Concord Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, Vernon  Presley hopped from job to job. That may have been in Tupelo, but not in Memphis where he held onto  his job at United Paint Company for five years. Vernon was hired at the company on February 19, 1949.  Though the job was mundane - packing paint cans into cardboard boxes - the company's location was appealing since it was within walking distance of the boarding house on Poplar Avenue. United Paint only  paid a beginning wage of eighty-three cents an hour.
 
The site of the United Paint Company factory is nearly impossible of find because so many of the streets  have changed. Concord Street is now North Parkway. Danny Thomas Boulevard and Interstate 40 have  drastically changed the neighborhoods in this part of Memphis. Going back to the 1950s addresses, there  are two listings for the United Paint Company factory, one at 446 Concord Avenue and one at 345  Jackson Avenue, depending on whether you look in the phone book or in the city directory. Concord and  Jackson Avenues were parallel to each other so most likely these two addresses were part of the same  complex facing two different streets. Today there is no recognizable part of the complex.
 
MAY 5, 1949 THURSDAY
 
Vernon Presley pay with overtime comes to $51.88, and the next day he pays his $12.11 bill at Williams  Grocery.
 
JUNE 1949
 
Jerry Lee Lewis' first public performances at the Ferriday Ford dealership. He sang "Drinkin' Wine Spo- Dee-O-Dee", a song he must have picked up at Haney's, and the sweet rapture of the applause that  followed set Jerry Lee on his personal course - initially across the river to Natchez, Mississippi, and then  to Shreveport, Louisiana, to audition for a Hayride package show that was to be headlined by Slim Whiteman.
 
JUNE 17, 1949 FRIDAY
 
As a follow-up to Vernon's application for public housing, Jane Richardson, a home service adviser for  the Memphis Housing Authority, visits Gladys Presley and Elvis in the Presley family's rented room at  572 Poplar while Vernon is at work. She notes that they share a bathroom with the other residents and  cook on a hot plate. They pay $9.50 a week in rent. Miss Richardson's report indicates that their application has merit and that they could use housing, preferably near Mr. Presley's work. The son, she  notes, is a ''nice boy'', and bot Mrs. Presley and the boy seem ''very nice and deserving''. Vernon salary is  listed as $40.38 per week at 85 cents per hours.
 
AUGUST 1949
 
Eddie Hill started his session for Decca Records in Nashville, Tennessee, which was held at the same time  as Bob Price's session.
SEPTEMBER 20, 1949 TUESDAY
 
According to Jane Richardson, Elvis Presley and his family moved into Apartment 328 of the   Lauderdale Courts, a public housing project located at 185 Winchester Street. Interestingly, Guralnick says this move occurred first on September 20, after Elvis had already started his freshman year at Humes High.
 
All in all, it was a happy move: the apartment was not only much cleaner than the one on Poplar Street, but it   had a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a private bathroom. Rent was $35 a month; low enough that  Vernon could easily meet it. The day after the Presley's moved into the Lauderdale Courts, the telephone company installed a desk phone in the front room. Their telephone number was 37-4185. 
 
Elvis Presley quickly memorized the telephone number and urged everyone that he knew to call him. The Presleys lived in the Courts for   three and a half years. 
 
Soon after the move, however, Vernon's mother and Elvis' grandmother, Minnie Mae   Hood, came to live with the Presleys, having been granted a divorce from her husband Jessie D. in 1947.  This caused over-crowding in the apartment, leaving Vernon and Gladys with no privacy and creating   tensions within the family. Mrs. Presley was more popular than Mr. Presley in the Courts; everyone spoke of   her warmth and liveliness. Still, the Presleys kept mostly to themselves. They were like a family set apart,   almost sealed off from the people around them. And the absolute focus on Elvis, their only child, sometimes   led even family members to feel like outsiders.
Once in Memphis, young teenage Elvis underwent a number of transformations. At his old First Assembly of   God church in Tupelo, people were not allowed to see movies or to dance (although it's clear Elvis did both).   In Memphis, Elvis rejected these notions. Years later he remarked "I don't like a church where you can't   enjoy small pleasures''. He began to pursue his true passion: music. Beale Street in Memphis was the place to   hear it all, and Elvis did.
 
Early on, he was impressed by the guitar and piano accompaniments of the blues   acts he heard, because they packed such power. As a teenager, Elvis witnessed such blues greats as B.B King   and Arthur Cruddup. In addition to the blues, Memphis was a major center for hillbilly and country music, as   well as early rock and roll ("Rocket 88", considered to be the first rock and roll song, was recorded and   released by Sam Phillip's Sun Studio in 1951), all of which would combine in the 1950's into the kind of   music known as rockabilly.Elvis listened to a lot of this emerging music on the numerous Memphis radio  stations, including WHBQ, the home of Dewey Phillips' infamous "Red, Hot, and Blue" radio show.
 
The scene in Memphis reflected other new aspects of the music business as well, specifically the rise in small   local record labels. Sun Studios, which made Elvis famous, was only one of many such studios. These   studios allowed many performers to cut records who, without access to the great labels of the period such as   RCA, Decca, or Capitol, normally would have been unable to do so.
 
The summer after his freshman year, Vernon bought Elvis a push lawn mower, which Elvis used to solicit   jobs at $4 per yard. He and his friends also sold fruit discarded by supermarkets in order to earn money. Elvis   loved to work. But he also did the things other teenagers did, including playing football, going to movies,   and eating shakes and hamburgers. Elvis quickly discovered the Suzore #2 movie theater, which was near the   Courts. The Suzore featured Saturday afternoon bargain matinees at which Elvis, a long-time lover of movies, became a regular. Tony Curtis was one of the screen stars Elvis actively emulated- his senior photo   features Elvis with a home permanent, meant to imitate Curtis' curly black hair.
 
UNKNOWN DATE OCTOBER 1949
 
Sam Phillips signed the lease on a small storefront property at the junction of Union and Marshall  Avenues, near the heart of downtown Memphis. The rent at 706 Union Avenue was $150 a month. He  installed his recording and transcription equipment with the help of a two-year loan from Buck Turner, a  regular performer on radio station WREC.  Working with the slogan "We Record Anything-Anywhere- Anytime", Sam Phillips opened the doors of the Memphis Recording Service in January 1950. Becky  Phillips took a photo of her husband standing outside the studio and pasted it into the scrapbook with her  caption, "A Man's Dream Fulfilled-What Next?".
 
When Sam Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Service in 1950, he was literally taking a chance on a  new area of business in Memphis. There just had not been any successful attempts to set up a commercial  recording venture. There were no record labels currently operating in Memphis. Even a company called  Royal Recording, set up in 1948 to record private functions and the like, had folded during 1949. "It was  because of the closure of the Royal Studio downtown that my bosses at WREC radio warned me against trying to start my own recording business", Sam Phillips recalled.
 
Despite the legendary reputation the city now has for its recorded music, Sam Phillips could have stood in  his new studio and looked back over the short history of recorded sound seeing no local expertise upon  which to draw other than radio. The local radio engineers sometimes recorded music or advertising  material onto disc for subsequent radio broadcast. Occasionally radio studios would be used by an out of  town recording company. Other then this, and the booth in a local store where you could record a message  for your own private use, there were no recording facilities in Memphis.
 
Major national recording companies had occasionally made recordings in Memphis "on location" as part  of a field trip to find regional music forms, but there had been no concerted effort to document or market  Memphis music, be it popular, jazz, blues, gospel or hillbilly. In other regional centers, it sometimes  occurred to local furniture stores to make recordings to sell in their shop along with the phonographs.  Bullet Records of Nashville and Trumpet of Jackson, Mississippi started in this way, but there appears not  to have been a Memphis equivalent of these ventures. Similarly, there had been little interest shown by  local radio engineers or record distributors as sometimes occurred elsewhere. There were large record  pressing and distribution organisations in Memphis from the late 1940s - Plastic Products, and Music  Sales - but they were geared to the major labels and to west coast and north eastern independents.
 
Sam Phillips was a radio man. At heart, he still is. It was through his friend and contacts at radio station  WREC in Memphis that he acquired sufficient equipment to set up his studio in the first place. He bought  his first recording machines from WREC's country disc jockey Buck Turner.
 
OCTOBER 1949
 
Apprehensively, but aware of his success at Grant's the station gave Dewey Phillips a shot at hostling, and  in less than a year the show grew from 15 minutes to an hour; then two; then three. Broadcasting from the  magazine level (i.e. mezzanine) of the Chisca Hotel, his signature was a manic, machine-gun style of  speaking that made few concessions to proper English. "Deegaw", he would yelp, and no one cared what  it meant. If the jocks at WDIA radio talked over records to disguise lewd lyrics, Dewey Phillips did it just  because it was fun.
 
LATE 1949
 
Colonel Tom Parker's variety shows (All-Star Shows) in the late 1940s. He used a covered wagon on his  letterhead. Parker was still using the All-Star Shows name during the 1960s and 1970s.
 
1949
 
Leadbelly appears in France, becoming the first country bluesman to perform in Europe.
OCTOBER 15, 1949 SATURDAY
 
(Above) The edition of the Memphis Housing Appeal, the Housing Authority's newspaper, lists the Presleys as one of seventeen  new families who have recently moved into the Lauderdale Courts. Quietly, without going out of his way to call   attention to himself, Elvis Presley starts to make new friends, playing guitar with a group of older boys  under the leafty trees of Market Mall, the path that bisects the neatly kept housing development.
 
He   remains in the background for the most part, singing the gospel numbers and popular ballads that he loves   and learning all that he can from these more experienced teenage musicians.

Photo above: In 1935, Memphis became the second city in the nation to establish a Federal Housing Authority. The first project was to build two housing projects: Dixie Homes for blacks - and (construction circa 1937) Lauderdale Courts (above) for whites. Lauderdale Courts was Colonial Revival in style with brick exteriors and porches covered by metal roofs. It became famous because Elvis Presley and his parents lived at 185 Winchester Street and occupied apartment 328 from 1949 to 1953 (below). The complex closed in 2000 but was renovated and reopened in 2004 as Uptown Square.

UNKNOWN DATE DECEMBER 1949
 
Elvis Presley first met Billie Wardlaw Mooneyham at Lauderdale Courts. "One day someone knocked on  my door. I went to the door, and there was Elvis", recalled Billie Wardlaw, "I could see he was holding  something, it looked like some kind of package, behind his back. I knew his name was Elvis because I  had talked to him from my window. We were standing there in the doorway talking and finally he took  this package from behind his back and said, 'Here, I brought you something'. I opened the package and it was a pair of blue jeans. The first pair of blue jeans I ever had.
 
And Elvis said, 'Now you can come down and play with us. Now you have some clothes to wear'. So I  started going down and playing and talking with the gang. I guess it was early that December that one day  Elvis again knocked on my door. Again he had something for me. He handed me a bock of cherries. He  must have paid fifty cents for them. And he told me, 'These are for your Christmas. You can't eat them  until then'. After that, we started walking to school together. All of us walked together to school in those  days because it saved us a dime. I asked him once to teach me how to play the guitar, so he would bring  his guitar up and show me where to put my fingers. When I was working at Britling, lot of times when  my mother and I would walk home, Elvis would be outside picking his guitar in the dark. His mother and  dad would be sitting out there on quilts listening. We knew he could sing, but I don't think he ever thought  he was good as a singer. He was really embarrassed a lot about his singing. Once my mother told him,  'Elvis, you sing so good you ought to be singing on radio'", says Billie Wardlaw.
 
"Elvis was different from all the other kids in those days", says Billie, "that was probably his trait, but he  was never like anybody else. He was all the time combing his hair, but that wasn't because he was in love  with it so much as it was long. If his hair fell all the way down, it could reach his chin, so he was always  combing it to keep it from falling down across his face. He had real straight hair".
 
"After we broke up, one of his cousins came home from the military and wanted to take me out with him  to get something to eat. We were in the Presley's apartment at the time. I said, 'Elvis, why don't you come  along, too? You can go with Mary Elizabeth, my friend'. He didn't put up a fuss. He said, 'OK,' and we  drove over to Leonard's to get something to eat. When they took out order, I said, 'I want a milk shake and  a big hunk of ice cream'. Then I turned to Elvis and said, '...and Elvis, you can pay for this'. Elvis  exploded. He said, 'goddam it, Billie, you know I ain't ever got no money!'. He got out of the car and he  and his cousin began arguing. We tried quite a few times to get him back in that car, but he wouldn't get  back in, so we drove off and left him there at Leonard's. The next day he told me four girls in a convertible came along and they gave him a ride home. I didn't believe it when he told me, but looking at  how his life turned out, maybe it did happen the way he told it".
 
Billie continued, "And then his first record came out and soon he was famous. He came to Memphis to  play a concert at the Ellis Auditorium and I went. After the concert, Elvis Presley gave me an autographed  picture. On it he had written, 'To Billie, My Little Ex-'. The only time I saw him after that was one day I  was riding a bus home from Britling. I looked out the window and there was Elvis driving alongside in a  convertible. I stuck my head out the window and yelled, 'Elvis! Elvis!'. He looked up and was he  surprised seeing me. He yelled at me to get off that bus, that he would drive me home, so I got off and got  in the convertible with him and he drove me home. And during that drive, Elvis told me, 'Billie, I have  changed. I am not like I used to be'. I could see that.
 
What with him now becoming famous and the women at Britling knowing I had dated Elvis before, they  started joking with me that I had made a mistake, that I should have stayed with him, adding, 'Look what  you would have now'. But Elvis never had anything when I dated him. He was as poor as I was. Had I  ended up staying with him and marrying him, who knows? He may have never had anything". "Even today, sometimes I will think about him and I really get mad at him and I say to myself, 'Elvis, you  were just a year older than me. You don't have to be dead".
UNKNOWN DATE LATE 1949
 
Gladys Presley worked parttime at the coffee urn at Britling Cafeteria, located at 74 Union Avenue,  downtown Memphis.
 
BRITLING CAFETERIA - was a chain of cafeteria-style restaurants, which originated in Memphis  during the 1920's. The company was owned by John H. Holcomb of Birmingham and a Memphis partner.  About 1930 the partners split but they agreed the Britling name be continued. Britling cafeterias were  local institutions.  Their motto was: Good food is good Health. Sunday afternoon lunch at Britling was a  tradition. One of the downtown Memphis locations is noteworthy for one of it's former employees was  Gladys Presley, mother of Elvis. Britling fell into decline in the 1970's as fast food restaurants became more popular, and they were never as successful in moving to the suburbs. The Britling on Madison  opened in 1921, the Britling on 74 Union Avenue opened in 1938 and featured murals by prominent  Memphis artist, Burton Callicott. This building was demolished along with the next door Loew's Palace  Theater for a parking garage.
UNKNOWN DATE LATE 1950
 
Sometimes Elvis slipped into the ghetto to listen to the black music. In these early Memphis years, Elvis avidly   pursued his musical interests, listening and learning all he could. He was already practicing his future hits "I   Need You So" and "Hound Dog", and had listened to Franklin McCormick's version of "Are You Lonesome   Tonight?" way back in 1953, in a record shop on Beale Street. 
 
He loved the group The Ink Spots, whose   songs "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" were the first he ever recorded. He often   hung out in record stores, finding new and old songs alike. Anyone who had a guitar became Elvis' friend. 
 
In   addition, Elvis loved gospel music of all kinds, and it was this music which brought him actively into the First Assembly of God church. As a sophomore, he discovered the Odd Fellows Hall at Columbia Mutual Tower, a place where country and gospel performers alike performed. This was the first place he saw Bill Black play. He also met up with   Doug Poindexter, whose group The Starlite Wranglers featured Scotty Moore on guitar.
 
At the Lauderdale Courts, Elvis befriended Evan "Buzzy" Forbess, and soon met Buzzy's friends Paul   Dougher, Farley Guy, and Jim Denson. Johnny and Dorsey Burnette lived there, Johnny Black also lived   there - his older brother Bill became Elvis' bass player. Elvis and his friends roamed around Memphis, exploring the many sights and sounds. Elvis also held many parties at his Lauderdale apartment, where he often played his guitar and sang (although he was so shy he usually would only do so with the lights out). Elvis often amazed his friends by knowing all the words to every song. Gladys supported Elvis in his musical   endeavors. At one point she asked Jim Denson's mother if Jim's older brother, Jesse Lee, known around town   for his guitar playing, would give Elvis guitar lessons, which Jesse, somewhat reluctantly, agreed to. Every   Saturday and Sunday Elvis showed up for his lessons - often they went down into the basement below the   Courts to play, so as not to disturb others.
 
Fist fights were as common as weather changes, for in the projects it was be macho or not survive. Fights   would start suddenly, even among best friends, and many times as soon as they were over, the two   antagonists shook hands and were again best friends. There was no room for sissies. People in today's world   look down on those living in federal housing projects. They see them as people who will always remain poor.   But from this two square block area of Lauderdale Courts, during the time Elvis Presley lived there, more   success stories had their beginnings than in probably any other neighborhood in America. Escaping from the   Lauderdale Courts, Johnny Avgeris and Stanley Myers became doctors; George Blancett became a judge;   Hugh and Paul Hathcock became outstanding educators; Jerry May and Charles and John Bramlett would   become star football players in college, with John playing many years in the National Football League;   Maury Joe Smith became a Catholic priest; and Gigi Poston became dean of music at Arkansas State University. And then, of course, Elvis Presley became... Elvis! It was here, during these formative,   impressionable years that young Elvis Presley attended Humes High School, and one day escaping the   project.
His first girlfriend in the Courts was Betty McMahan, whom he is sitting next to in one of the more famous   photos of the young King. He often took her to the Suzore. Billie Wardlaw, Betty's friend, became Elvis'   girlfriend after Betty started dating someone else. Billie said of Elvis, "Elvis was a great kisser, and since we   were always playing spin the bottle in the dark, he didn't let his shyness get in the way''.
 
Elvis liked being   around girls - even though he may not have admitted it, he felt more comfortable around them. And the   women liked him, too: he exuded a kind of aching vulnerability which made them want to care for him.
 
In November, 1950, Elvis was hired as a part-time usher at Loew's Theater. A few months later, in January of   1951, Vernon was laid off from work due to back problems. 
 
Elvis therefore worked 35 hours a week for   almost a year, despite school, using his earnings to help his family. He was fired from Loew's after getting in   a fight with another boy, but soon started working at the Malco Theater. As a student, Elvis went rather   unnoticed his first two years at Humes High. Although he played for his friends in the Courts, Elvis didn't reveal his musical interests to very many people at Humes until eleventh grade, when he once again began   toting his guitar to school. Like others, he listened to Dewey Phillips on WHBQ. Elvis also listened to lots of   other Memphis stations and was exposed to a large variety of music, everything from the blues to country to   gospel to rhythm and blues.
 
As a sophomore, Elvis joined the ROTC. Although he loved it and especially enjoyed wearing his uniform,   he quit after a year due to lack of time. He also liked reading history and literature books, and became a   library volunteer worker. Elvis read voraciously. Comic books were among his favorite, because of their   images of power and success, and he long admired Captain Marvel. Many people believe the lightning bolt   Elvis used as his 1970's trademark came from Marvel's costume. In high school, however, his friends didn't understand his enthusiasm for books, and so he turned to reading in private. Elvis hid his great love for   reading for the rest of his life - he often brought trunks of books with him on tour, something which only a   few knew about.
 
In the summer of 1951, the summer before his junior year, Elvis went to work for Precision Tool. He was   eventually fired after his employers discovered he was not yet 18. Elvis kept his badge, badge #78, even   though he wasn't supposed to: he'd liked the job. As a senior, Elvis started working part-time in September,   1952, for Marl Metal Products, a furniture-assembling plant. He worked from 3:00 to 11:30 p.m. every day, a   heavy work load for a high school student.
(Above photo left) Jim Cannon (left), Jean Jennings (middle left), Johnny Black's wife Carolyn (middle right) and Elvis Presley (right) mingle at a party at Cannon's mother's house on Colby Street (Lauderdale Courts), before Jim Cannon left for Korea, August 1952
 
(Above photo right) Jim Cannon (left) and Johnny Black (right) pick and sing at Cannon's mother's house (Lauderdale Courts) at party for Cannon before he left for Korea. Carolyn Black (right), Vivian Miller (middle), and Joseph Buck Cannon (left) watch and sing along behind them. Johnny, who is left handed, would flip his guitar and play it upside down. 
 
Because his work was causing his grades to slip, Gladys forced Elvis to quit so that he could focus on school.   She herself had gone back to work as a nurse's aide in November 1951 at Saint Joseph's Hospital.
 
One time,  after Gladys told Elvis about the rich patients at the hospital, one of whose husband drove a pink Cadillac, he   laughingly promised he'd buy her a new pink Caddy when he got rich, a promise he didn't forget. 
 
By eleventh grade, Elvis appeared to have gained some self-confidence. He brought his guitar to school   again. He changed his hair, wearing it long and somewhat greasy. He even tried out for football. Some of the   boys on the team ganged up on Elvis in the locker room, however, threatening to beat him up if he didn't cut   his hair.
 
The coach eventually kicked him off the team because he refused to do so, although others suggest   that at 6 feet and 150 pounds, Elvis was considered too small to play. In addition to his noticeably different   hair, Elvis began dressing in a more distinctive manner. Where others wore jeans, Elvis wore dress pants,   often in his favorite colors of pink and black. He often wore a black bolero jacket he had bought at Lanksy's  clothing store on Beale Street, one of his favorite haunts which featured the latest new hip styles. Elvis   seemed determined to be himself, to express his individuality through his wild clothes. Others thought he   was a freak, but Elvis was aiming for his own style.
 
One of the places Elvis and his friends visited was the Blues Shop, or sometimes called Charlie's, a record store. Customers could take a record from the inventory and listen to the music on phonograph players inside the store.  It was  at 281 North Main Street according to the 1954 Memphis telephone directory,  next door to the Suzore #2. It was a favorite hangout for   teens who were really into music. Henry's Record Shop was another hangout spot for Elvis, especially since   black musicians gathered there as well. From them Elvis acquired immense knowledge of urban Memphis   blues. Billy "The Kid" Emerson, Charlie Feathers, Little Junior Parker, and Malcolm Yelvington's Star   Rhythm Boys were among the many musicians who influenced young Elvis. He collected as many records as   possible, and spent a lot of time watching television. He was always studying the music scene, on whatever   medium available. At noon on any given free day, Elvis went down to the WMPS studio for the High Noon   Round Up, emceed by disc jockey Bob Neal, his future manager. He became a regular at the All Night  Gospel Singings, held in the Ellis Auditorium just up the street. It was here he first saw the Blackwood   Brothers perform. Elvis was very drawn to quartet music, an interest reflected years later in his choice of the   Jordanaires as his back-up group. He particularly liked the Ink Spots and the Statesmen. Music, more and   more, became the focus of his life.
 
Elvis performed in the December 1952 Humes High Christmas talent show, singing his favorite, "Old Shep".   He was the only act awarded an encore. This show increased his popularity at Humes, and in turn Elvis   gained more self-confidence. Although Elvis had made some friends at Humes, including George Klein and   Red West, many of his best friends in his high school years went to South Side High, including Ronald   Smith, Johnny Burnette, Kenneth Herman, and Barbara Hearn, whom Elvis dated for a while. Ron and Elvis   got along especially well because they were both very into music.
 
The Presleys had been notified in November of 1952 by the Memphis Housing Authority their income was   high enough (at $4,133 a year) that they no longer qualified for public housing. Vernon received an eviction   notice on November 17th, stating they had to be out by February of 1953.
 
In all the interviews with Humes High, Class of 1953, graduates, one and all pointed to Evan Buzzy Forbess  as Elvis Presley's best friend during his years at Humes, and not the other profiteers such as......! In fact, from  the tales told by a number of people who knew Elvis in those years, one might term the quartet of Elvis Presley, Buzzy Forbess, Paul Dougher and Farley Guy as ''the rat pack''. They were seemingly inseparable –  at times industrious, at times energetic, at times joking, at times fighting and making up, but at all times  together. 
Like many best friends everywhere, they slowly parted ways after leaving high school as each  began the pursuit of his own adulthood, his own career, his own family. And while their paths would cross  again from time to time in later years, it just wasn't the same anymore. Evan Buzzy Forbess found work at  the Memphis Light, Gas & Water Division and has spent his adult life there. Forbess lives comfortable north  Memphis home near Bartlett.
 
When Farley Guy's father, a railroad man, died in 1949, his mother moved into Lauderdale Courts. That  summer, Farley, who had stayed behind to finish his seventh grade school year in Macon, Tennessee, moved  in with her. They had a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor at 185 Winchester in the Courts. Below  them lived the Presley family; above them, the Doughers. Farley liked that because both families had sons  about his age. Even then, living in the city, Farley could not escape the country boy in him. He brought with  him his love for the farm, especially horses. It is a love that continues today. Farley, a slow talking, plain  talking dude, operated the stables at sprawling Shelby Farms in Memphis.
 
Paul Dougher, lived on the third floor at Lauderdale with his mother and brother who was a elevator  operator. Dougher who now owns a north Memphis liquor store, named by the name of ''Hollywood'' at  1994 Chelsea Avenue in Memphis wrote his book about his youth with Elvis, called ''Elvis: Before He Was  King'', a story told to author Gene Myracle.
 
''Elvis: Before He Was King'' offers a firsthand account of the life of a young Elvis Presley. The book begins  in 1949 when the Presley family moved into the Lauderdale Courts, a Memphis Housing Authority complex  in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis was fourteen years old at the time. On his second day in the Courts, Elvis met  Paul Dougher who lived in the same building. Paul and Elvis formed an immediate friendship that lasted  until Elvis’ death. In the book, Paul shares stories that reveal a unique portrait of Elvis during his teenage  years. He includes details of many boyhood experiences that formed the basis of their lifelong friendship.  The book also touches on the isolation Elvis felt once he reached a level of success that would be unmatched  by any other entertainer. It offers insight into the despair and loneliness surrounding Elvis toward the end of  his life. In the final few chapters, Paul offers his personal thoughts on the events and actions that contributed  to the untimely death of his friend, a man with one of the greatest voices the world has ever heard.
 
According to Paul Dougher, ''We stayed close friends, but later on it got to be such a hassle to try to see him,  I gave up. Used to, you could just call and get right through. I could almost always get him on the phone or  go out to the gate. They would let him know I was there and he'd say "Let him come up". But later, with so  many people trying to do that, I guess he wanted more seclusion. When I would call up there, Charlie Hodge  would get on the phone, or Joe Esposito. They would say, "He's busy with something''. They probably  wouldn't even let him know I was on the phone. I finally gave up and would only see him when he came to  see me. He would come by and I would say, "I tried to get hold of you". Just tell them who you are," he'd say.  "That doesn't always help'', "I explained''.
 
Very unfortunate, in a newspaper report in the Commercial Appeal from June 25, 2003, mentioned that, the  67-year old liquor store owner Paul Dougher robbed and wounded on his way to deposit store receipts at a  midtown bank may be the latest victim in a string of similar crimes, police said. Paul Samuel Dougher  longtime owner of Hollywood liquors, remained in critical condition Tuesday night at the Regional Medical  Center at Memphis. He was shot twice during a robbery Monday morning at the National Bank of  Commerce at 1985 Union Avenue and has undergone several surgeries. ''We are just praying'', said his wife,  Cherri Dougher. ''We just don't know''. Dougher appears to be the first person seriously injured in the series  of robberies over the past two months.
 
Dougher said her husband has been the proprietor of the liquor store for about 30 years and was dropping off  receipts from weekend sales. Police said that at about 11:30 a.m., Dougher got out of his Mercury Grand  Marguins with a drop bag in his hand, heading toward the bank. He was confronted by a gunman who  wrested the bag from his hand. Dougher chased after the suspect and was pistol-whipped and shot twice,  police said. Witnesses described a black Nissan Pathfinder that sped south on Barksdale from the bank  parking lot.
UNKNOWN DATES 1950-1951
 
Elvis Presley began to make new friends at Humes. George Klein, who eventually became the senior class president  at L.C. Humes High, befriended Elvis Presley during the ninth grade. Initially, it was not a close  relationship. Klein was a slick politician interested in maintaining his popularity. As a result, he was friendly to everyone. Red West and his cousin Sonny West had introduced Elvis Presley to George Klein  at Humes High, but Elvis Presley was initially nervous around the overly-aggressive and socially-mobile  Klein. Few people remember George Klein as one of Elvis' friends during Elvis Presley's years at Humes  High. Kenneth Herman, Eddie Bond, Ronald Smith, and Jim Denson all recalled that Klein was  personable and nice to everyone, but that he was simply not one of Elvis' closest High School friends.  Klein's lifelong friendship with Elvis Presley did not really begin until 1956. Elvis Presley took a class in  music in the eighth grade. Mrs. Elsie Marmann, the school's music teacher, later recalled that Elvis sang  in 1953 "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Of Me" and "Old Shep" for her class. Elvis Presley would later  joke about getting an "F" in music class. However, the fact is he received a "C" from Mrs. Marmann.
 
Evan "Buzzy" Forbess one of Presley's new friends who remembered how nervous Elvis Presley was  during the songfest. "He was shy", Forbess remarked, "but we loved to hear him sing". The reason that  Mrs. Marmann asked Elvis Presley to sing was because he often carried his guitar to school. Jane  Lazenby, a student in the music class, recalled that Elvis Presley often walked through the Humes High School halls, his collar turned up, plunking away at his guitar. After the short singing session, Mrs.  Marmann was critical of Elvis' singing. The incident apparently had no effect, as Elvis Presley and his  guitar remained inseparable.
 
"We were in the eighth grade", said George Klein, "and it was coincidental that Elvis and I were thrown  into the same class together, and we went all the way through together - same class. I wanted to be a disc  jockey, he wanted to be a singer. I remember in the eight grade one year we had a music class, the teacher  was Miss Morman, and Elvis brought his guitar to school at Christmas time and she let him get up in front  of the class and sing". "I was in a class that didn't know anything about..., I mean we were studying basic  stuff, Bach, Beethoven, what sharps and flats were and all that", said George Klein. "But Elvis got up and  he stood not behind a podium but behind a table and he sang "Cold, Cold Icy Fingers". I think he might  have done "Old Shep", I'm not sure. He got some applause from his classmates. From then on I would see  him around school and we would chat and talk. Now, we weren't by any stretch of the imagination what  you would call best friends, but we were good friends".
 
"That was the first time I'd ever heard him sing and I was very impressed. I liked him, but singing wasn't  something you did at school at that time, really... Everyone was into sports and that kind of thing. Then  we went on, there were other talent shows and then the senior class show which he won. I remember that,  I was on the front row that night".
 
"The way I found out he could play the guitar, I never remember seeing him have it in school", remarked  Red West, "but one of the projects we had in wood shop was to bring an article from home that needed to  be repaired, and our wood shop instructor, Mr. Widdop, would look at it and evaluate what had to be  done, and that would be our project for a six-week time period. Anyway, I brought something from home,  and Elvis brought a guitar. And he fooled around with in, sanded it, used some rosin glue and fixed a  crack in it, stained it, varnished it, then he took this real fine seel wool to get all the bubbles out of the  lacquer and bring it down to a satin finish so it looked really good. Then he put the strings back on it and  was tuning it just before the period ended. So, naturally, somebody came up and said, 'Hey, man, can you  play that thing? And he said, 'No, not really. I just know a few chords. My uncle's taught me a few  chords'. So they said, 'Why don't you play something for us'. He said, 'Naw, I can't do that', and he kept  tuning it. Well, somebody grabbed him from behind and locked his arms behind him, and another guy got  his car keys out of his pocket, and they said,'If you play something, you'll get your car keys back'. He  said, "well, okay, I'll try, but I really don't know that much". And he started picking out the melody to a  song that most people today probably wouldn't even know called "Under The Double Eagle", and he did it  very expertly. And it just blew me away. I didn't even know he could play that guitar - I just thought he  was fixing it for somebody else".
1949-1953 
 
MARKET MALL / LAUDERDALE COURTS - Lauderdale Courts covered such a large expanse that  it was much like a small community, complete with its own facilities, parks, and recreation  areas. In 1949 the twenty-six-acre project included sixty-six three- and two-story apartment  buildings, with 449 apartments in all.  The complex included a steam power plant at 243  Winchester Avenue and the headquarters of the Memphis Housing Authority at 264 North  Lauderdale Street. Not surprisingly, the Courts' residents adopted their own areas to socialize.
 
Market Mall was one such place. Before the construction of Lauderdale Courts, this was  actually part of Market Street. Renamed Market Mall when the street was blocked off, it is  the east-to-west pedestrian walkway that begins at Third Avenue and ends at Lauderdale  Street. On either side of Market Mall, apartments were built, with entrance doors facing the  mall and a row of steps leading on to each door. The Market Mall and the doorsteps became  informal gathering places for the young Lauderdale Courts residents. Many of these residents  remember Elvis Presley entertaining on Market Mall. Johnny Black, brother of Bill Black said, "It was just whoever would come, whoever showed  up. We'd have a mandolin maybe, three or four guitars, and the people would gather. We  weren't trying to impress the world, we were just playing to have a good time".
1949-1953
 
RECREATION HALL (TEEN CANTEEN) LAUDERDALE COURTS  -  Located at 243 Winchester Avenue, near the boiler house, was the maintenance building of the Courts.  This is the former recreation hall for the Lauderdale Courts housing project. Elvis Presley attended teen  dances here, and sometimes performed. Paul Burlison used to say that he, and his friends Johnny and Dorsey  Burnette played the same dances here.  They would not let Elvis perform with them. They were older and  among the toughest kids in the city. 
 
The Burnette brothers and Paul Burlison became the Rock And Roll Trio. The Burnette brothers were Golden Glove boxers with a combative disposition to match. The Rock And Roll Trio would later record some of the most distinctive rockabilly of the era. Johnny and Dorsey both wrote songs and recorded as solo acts before their untimely deaths. Paul Burlison chose to give up life on the road and raise his family.
 
Buzzy Forbess, a friend of Elvis, remembers being teased by Elvis at one of these dances. Elvis asked the crowd to be quiet so that he could make an announcement. When he had everyone's attention, he declared that everyone except Buzzy had paid a quarter for admission. What Elvis neglected to say was that that afternoon, while horsing around, Elvis had talked Buzzy out of his quarter (his last quarter that he was saving for the dance) and lost it in a pinball machine. Of course, Buzzy was embarrassed.
 
When Elvis's friends organized these events, Elvis would often sing. However, other residents of the Courts also held parties in the hall, and Elvis wasn't always allowed to perform. An older, thougher group of aspiring musicians performed at many of these gatherings.
 
Today this building is a health club for the Uptown Square residents. 
 
1950
 
The Weaver's version of Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" sells over 2 million copies. Across the river in  West Memphis, Arkansas, radio station KWEM was developing a reputation for country music. In the  1950s, their top disc jockey’s were Bill Strength and Dick Stuart, supported by live acts including Clyde  Leopard's band, Charlie Feathers and Jack Earls.
 
The competition for Bob Neal in the country disc jockey stakes came from Dick Stuart on KWEM and  Sleepy Eyed John Lepley on WHHM. Other forms of specialised music programming included some  blues and gospel on most stations, particularly KWEM and, of course, the black radio station WDIA in  Memphis.  As to recording actually made in Memphis in the immediate post-War years, very little activity has been  uncovered before the establishment of Sun, Duke and Meteor in 1952 and Starmaker in 1953. Ike Turner recorded some blues in makeshift studios for Modern Records of Hollywood in 1951 and 1952, and Rufus  Thomas and others recorded for Star Talent at Johnny Curry's Club in Memphis. There were some very  short-lived labels operating in 1953, including one-issue blues labels like Wasco (Professor Longhair) and  Back Alley (Tippo Lit). The only vaguely substantial recording enterprise to predate Sun appears to have  been the Buster label formed in the late 1940s by Buster Williams started in 1949. However, the evidence  suggest that the Buster releases were in fact reissues of material from west coast record labels and that  Buster was primarily a manufacturing and sales exercise rather than a recording enterprise related to local  musicians.
 
In Tupelo, at the North Mississippi Community Hospital, a three-story wing that increases the bed  capacity to 95 is constructed and joined to the south side of the original building.
 
UNKNOWN DATE JANUARY 1950
 
Further research may reveal other Memphis recordings and labels. There are still some puzzles to be  solved. Someone called Dreamy Joe recorded "Hardin's Bread Boogie" on a promotional 78rpm for  Action Promotions. There will have been other promotional discs made, and possibly some of these saw  limited commercial releases.
 
MARCH/APRIL 1950
 
Sam Phillips organises a deal with Bill McCall of 4-Star and Gilt-Edge Records in California, whereby  Sam Phillips will record country and blues musicians from the Memphis area and sell the recordings to  McCall for commercial release. Phillips records blues musicians Lost John Hunter (for release on 4-Star)  and Charlie Burse (unissued). He also records gospel music with the Gospel Travellers, whose songs he  pitches to Modern Records in Hollywood.
 
MARCH/APRIL 1950
 
The first time Ronald Smith met Elvis Presley, he attended on a birthday party for Patti Philpot in the  Cummings area of South Memphis. It was Patti Philpot who introduced Ron to Elvis and they quickly  became close friends. Jesse Lee Denson from Lauderdale Courts was at the party, and they all played  together and sang into the night.
 
"I first met Elvis Presley in 1950 at a birthday party", Ronald Smith remarked. "He was singing an Eddy  Arnold song, "Please Mommy Please Stay Home With Me". Elvis Presley sang some Hank Snow songs,  and he really liked Lefty Frizzell's music. I was impressed", Smith remarked. "I had never seen a guy with
that much knowledge".
 
"I had gone there with Jimmy Wright and we had brought our guitars along to the party", said Smith, who  was attending nearby South Side High School at the time. "Elvis walked in the door and I mean, hey, this  guy was too cool. We didn't know how to treat him until he picked up Jimmy's guitar and got to singing.  Man, I was sitting there thinking he was as good as Marty Robbins!".
 
"Elvis was seeing Patti at the time", said Ronald Smith. "He was also seeing Dixie Locke. Sometimes he  would go see Dixie first, then he would drop by and see Patti. And sometimes, when he didn't have  enough time to see Patti, he would ask me how she was doing and I would tell him, 'Man, you're causing  Patti to put on a lot of lipstick".
 
"Patti's mom was always having to go out there and chase Elvis off the porch. Patti wasn't but fourteen at  that birthday party, but she was mature, like Barbara Pittman was when I first started dropping by Hurt  Village and picking her up so we could go play at the Eagle's Nest. When I learned Barbara was only  twelve, I almost fainted".
 
Following their initial meeting, Ronald Smith began calling Elvis Presley whenever someone was looking  for a band to play here and there - little gigs where they might each take home a buck or two after playing  all night.
UNKNOWN DATE APRIL 1950
 
One of Elvis' favourite songs was Ivory Joe Hunter's "I Need You So". In April 1950 Hunter's tune was  played on Southern rhythm and blues radio stations, and Elvis Presley identified with the slow, soulful  direction in Hunter's music. Another 1950 song that influenced Elvis Presley was Bob Wills and the Texas  Playboys' "Faded Love". The close friendship that Elvis Presley had with Ronald Smith and Johnny  Burnette further helped to develop Presley's music. Lonzo Green, another Memphis musician, remembers  an attentive Elvis Presley following his chord progression on guitar. Green says that he sat with Elvis,  tuned his guitar, and then sang several songs and taught him several chords. Black musicians in Memphis  remained a strong influence upon Presley. He prided himself as a person who could search out new songs.  "Elvis loved the record stores", Ronald Smith remembered. "He loved to find obscure tunes. We were all  searching for a sound", Smith remarked. "No one knew what type of sound, so we looked for new  records. When we went to Ruben Cherry's store, he was nervous about us, a younger guy let us listen to  records", Smith maintained.
 
Many of the songs that Elvis Presley listened to were discovered at Ruben Cherry's Record Store, named  "The Home Of The Blues" on Beale Street across from Main Street. Cherry's store was a second home to  Elvis Presley, who frequently wandered down to listen to the new records. A slight, kind man, Cherry  Ruby often reminded Elvis Presley that a purchase was required, and this prompted Elvis Presley to begin  collecting rhythm and blues records.
HOME OF THE BLUES RECORD COMPANY AND AFFILIATED PUBLISHING COMPANIES -  Originally founded in 1960 by Ruben Cherry owner/operator of the Home Of The Blues Record Shop at  105-107 Beale Street (billed as ''The South's Largest Record Store'') in Memphis (occupied by the Elvis Presley statue), the small regional label  (and its affiliated publishing companies) were only active for a few years, but recorded many wonderful examples of post-Sun blues and rockabilly and pre-Stax and Hi soul. 
 
With the financial backing of Cherry's aunt, Mrs. Celia G. Camp, who derived her wealth from the oil  business, the companies began as an outgrowth of the Home of the Blues record shop at 107 Beale Street. 
 
Later, the record store moved around the corner to Main Street and continues to thrive. However, despite  the continuing success of the store and the engagement of another Camp nephew Wolf Lebovitz, who  diversified the label with affiliates such as 1st, Zab, Rufus and Six-O-Six Records, the label ceased  operations by the end of 1962. 
 
Nevertheless, for a short time both before and after that, it did lease  existing, as well as new productions to other labels. Following Cherry's death and prior to her own, Mrs.  Camp left the assets of the label to Lebovitz.
 
When the Rock And Roll Trio, made up of Johnny and Dorsey Burnette and Paul Burlison, stopped in  Memphis before a Nashville recording session, the newspaper reported that they were going to the Home  Of The Blues Record Shop to pick out songs to record. "If you liked it you could always change it into  rockabilly if it just had good words and a melody", Paul Burlison said. "You could always put a beat to it  if you wanted to. You could take an old country song and put a beat to it like Elvis did with "Blue Moon  Of Kentucky". Johnny Burnette once told an interviewer that after school he used to hang out in the Home  Of The Blues. He used to run into Elvis quite frequently there, he said. When "That's All Right" was  released, Ruben Cherry was the first to stock it. In fact, many Memphians remember buying their first  Elvis Presley records at Home Of The Blues. Ruben was such a strong supporter of Elvis Presley that he  even loaned Elvis money to get to his early concerts.
 
The name of the store may have inspired Johnny Cash, Lily McAlpin, and Glan Douglas to compose the  1957 Johnny Cash recording of "Home Of The Blues" (SUN 279). In 1976, upon learning that his old  friend was ill, Elvis Presley wrote a letter to Ruben thanking him for his early support. The letter was read  at Ruben's burial service.
 
HOTB's early roster contained fine period original recordings by rhythm and blues vocal stylists Roy  Brown, The 5 Royales., Larry Birdsong, Dave Dixon and Jimmy Dotson, in audition to a hit by Willie  Cobb that it leased from a local rival. In addition, HOTB recorded a good deal of instrumental music by  the likes of trumpeter Bowlegs Gabe. Topping the list of instrumentalists, however, are the initial recordings and productions by a future star of 1970s soul music, Willie Mitchell. It was while at HOTB  that the trumpeter honed his skills to become the great band-leader and record producer of so many fine  recordings to come from the Hi label, especially those by the now-notorious Reverend, Al Green.  Talent of varying stripes found its way to the HOTB label, where the down-home blues man Woodrow Adams also found release, but highly-revered Chicago guitarist Sammy Lawhorn did not. HOTB gave a  chance to numerous local unknown and amateur vocalists (soloists and groups, both black and white),  but, with the exception of James Austin (aka Charles James), none created much of a stir and many  remained unreleased.
 
One fine white vocalist who did see release on the label was rockabilly star Billy Riley, but rockabilly  legend, Harmonica Frank Floyd, was only among the possibilities for release when the label folded.  (Frank's recordings may yet see the light of day, as the original session tapes were found intact when the  label and its publishing affiliates were acquired by Delta Haze Corporation some years back).  Another couple of white artists, both vocalists/instrumentalists, were recorded at the end of HOTB's  lifetime and did see release – one on Home of the Blues and the other on subsidiary 1st Records. They are  Billy Adams and Bill Yates. Both are examples of the influence that black music had on young white  singers and musicians in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
 
All told, the Home of the Blues label temporarily filled the void in the recording of Memphis blues,  rhythm and blues and soul music until Stax and then Hi Records would come along and do it up brown...

RUBEN CHERRY - Owner of Ruben Cherry and his Home Of The Blues record shop at 105-107 Beale  Street, billed as ''The South's Largest Record Store''. Cherry had bought the premises in the late 1940s  after he came out of wartime military service. He had been born in Memphis on January 30, 1922 and his  parents, Harry Cherry, a naturalized Russian, and Ida Goldstein, ran a grocery business, Rosen's  Delicatessen at 606 South Lauderdale just south of Beale Street. In the family tradition, Ruben Cherry  was a good but cautious businessman. He advertised his store as being '' on the street where the blues was  born'' but he stocked the full range of music - pop, jazz, and country as well as blues - and he prided  himself that he kept in stock one copy of every disc in print at any time.

His shop was frequented by black and white customers including disc jockey Dewey Phillips, Elvis  Presley, and Johnny Cash. Cash recorded a song confirming ''you'll find me at the home of the blues'', and  Cherry stood behind his old wooden counter with photographs of himself – as president of the local  Variety Club - with Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Wilson and other entertainers. Not that Cherry was  universally liked. Some described him as ''peculiar'' and writer Robert Gordon quotes Milton Pond from a  rival record dealership, Poplar Tunes, saying: ''Lots of people didn't like Ruben. They thought he was  pushy and too obnoxious. The main thing I remember about him, up by the cash register he had a nickel  glued on the glass counter. He'd wait for somebody to try to pick it up, and when it wouldn't move he'd  get the biggest kick out of that''. According to musician Jim Dickinson, ''Ruben kept this rubber  rattlesnake behind the counter which he used to scare off would-be stickup men. When he held it, it really  liked real. When it was not there one day, Cherry said ''that goddamn Elvis Presley, he came in here and  stole my rubber snake and ran down Beale Street shaking it''. Guitarist Ronald Smith remembers, ''Ruben  Cherry used to sell me records back when I was a kid, 1949 or so. He'd special order in guitar records for  me by Chet Atkins. Ruben was kinda eccentric, a bit unusual. He'd chase people out of the shop, us kids.  He jumped all over me one day for no reasons and I figured he'd confused me with Reggie Young who'd  ordered a disc and not collected it''.
 
Ruben Cherry apparently had a deep interest in black music and many connections in Memphis and  nationally. Eventually he decided to channel this interest into his own label, which was bankrolled by his  mother's sister, Cella Goldstein, who had also started out in the delicatessen business before marrying  Clarence Camp, owner of Southern Amusements a 628 Madison Avenue in Memphis. The path from  jukebox and record dealing into label ownership was a familiar one in most US cities. In their edition of  August 13, 1960 the Cash Box ran a story below a photograph of Cherry with rhythm and blues star Roy  Brown: ''Memphis, Ten – Newly formed label, Home Of The Blues Co. has signed two artists to wax exclusively for it. HOTB execs Ruben Cherry, president, and Mrs. C.A. Camp, sectreasurer, are shown  inking the contract with Roy Brown''. Brown opened the label with release number 107, after the address  of Cherry's store, Cherry and Camp recorded a mix of established black performers, such as Brown and  the Five Royales, and local singers associated with the Memphis club scene, like Willie Mitchell and  Bowlegs Miller. The latter was a regular at the Flamingo Room, a club upstairs above Cherry's store.  Willie Mitchell provided the studio band and from accounts by Mitchell and Jim Dickinson (who  recorded there as Little Muddy) it seems that most of the earliest HOTB sessions were made at the Fernwood Records studio at 415 North Main Street. Roy Brown told John Broven: ''I did a few things for  Home Of The Blues in Memphis in 1960. It was Willie Mitchell's band, he was quite a guy. It was just a  small studio... near to radio WDIA... but the guy we had on my session was Scotty Moore who handled  the session. And I had two things that went well, as a matter of fact we sold forty four thousand copies of  ''Oh So Wonderful'' in Memphis alone, but the company didn't have (good) distribution outside of  Memphis''.
 
Ruben Cherry and Celia Camp diversified in mid 1961 by setting up subsidiary labels to issue music  produced and bankrolled by independent producers. The Zab, Rufus, Six-O-Six (named after the store  address where Cherry lived as a child), and 1st Records labels were an effort to ring the changes. Mrs.  Cam was wheeling and dealing in more than records: Billboard reported on May 22, 1961: ''Memphis:  Mrs. Celia G. Camp has purchased the majority of the stock in Southern Amusement Company from her  ex-husband... the largest phonograph and game operation in the mid-South... Camp began his coin  machine empire in 1938, with Mrs. Camp's help. They founded Southern Distributing Company with Kenneth Wilson. Wilson has long since left the field and is now a multi-millionaire builder and president  of Holiday Inns Inc... Mrs. Camp owns Music Systems Inc, 407 Madison Avenue, where her office is, a  background music operation. Mrs. Camp also owns oil wells in Kentucky, Illinois, and Arkansas. A year  ago she helped found HOTB record company and is secretary-treasurer of it. She has put up the money  for its operation. They are hoping to become a hit-producing record company, have great hopes for the  Five Royales they are recording''. These hopes soon met the reality of average sales figures, and Camp brought in her nephew, Wolf Lebowitz, a Memphis-born journalist and photographer, who hawked the  label around the northern record business. By November 1961 Billboard was reporting: ''Chicago – Vee  Jay president Ewart Abner has worked out an agreement with Ruben Cherry's label HOTB to distribute  the latter's records. Future HOTB releases will be issued on Vee Jay with an additional emblem of  HOTB''. Soon, the label would transfer this arrangement to ABC-Paramount Records and their Apt  subsidiary.
 
Ruben Cherry's dream of a successful rhythm and blues label had collapsed through weight of  competition from Hi, Stax and others, and his Home Of The Blues label closed. The record store  continued to trade through the 1960s but Cherry died in January 1976, aged just 53, after 27 years in the  record business.
MAY 1950
 
Elvis Presley visited and saw, the famous stripper, Gypsie Rose Lee at the Cotton Carnival down by the  Mississippi River and rode the rides on the Cotton Carnival midway, and went to the street dances in  Court Square. "That was a good place to be, one of our favorite places during Carnival", recalled Buzzy  Forbess, "we would watch people drink and dance. 
 
Once, during carnival, they had a woman playing  piano and she asked Elvis, 'What's your name?', and Elvis said, 'Charlie'. So she started singing a funny  song about a guy named Charlie. Don't ask me why Elvis said his name was Charlie. That was just Elvis. That was the way he was, even then". 
UNKNOWN DATE MID-1950
 
Elvis Presley bought his hair oil "Triple Active Success Hair Oil" at A. Schwab's Dry Goods store, located  at 163 Beale Street.
 
ABRAHAM SCHWAB DRY GOOD STORE - Ca. 1865 was built. Located at 163-165 Beale Street,  Memphis, Tennessee, tel, 901/523-9782, between Second and Third Street, their long-time motto "If you  can't find it at A. Schwab's, you are better off without it!". Those doors first opened in 1876 and have  remained open throughout urban renewal efforts, making Abraham Schwab the oldest continuous business on Beale Street.
 
Abraham Schwab sells jars of "Money Drawing Oil", bottles of "Most Powerful Helping Hand Bath And  Floor Wash", tins of "Come To Me Love Drawing Incense", or a jar, bottle or tin of something made to  satisfy whatever you need or desire can be purchased here.
 
Elvis Presley purchased "Triple Active Success Hair Oil" at Abraham Schwab in the early 1950s. Take a  look at some John The Conqueror root - a mandrake named for the mythical figure who tore off the  Devil's arm and whipped his butt with it. Virtually unchanged in appearance since the opening, the oldest  store on Beale claims "If you can't find it at Schwab's, you're better off without it", but that assumes you  do feel a need for 99 cent Mississippi Slim Jim ties, grossly oversize clothes, and a specialty line of  voodoo powders.
 
In 1912 Abraham Schwab moved his dry good business from 149 into larger quarters at 163 Beale Street.  The family business had been on Beale Street since 1876, first as grocers then as dry goods merchants. L.  Bauer and Sons (dry goods) and then a Piggly Wiggly grocery store occupied 164 Beale Street until  Schwab took over the building in 1924.
 
Schwab's is the only original business still in operation on the street. Inside and out, it is a remarkable  holdover from old Beale Street. The iron attic vents and architectural design is brought out by the deep  rich colour of the red brick. The interior has high ceilings, wooden floors, old style display bins, and a  variety of merchandise which suggests the old-time dry goods store. The original building shows the store  front with an overhang that extended to the curb to protect customers from bad weather, a common  feature during this period.
LATE MAY OR EARLY JUNE 1950
 
WHBQ radio program director, Gordon Lawhead, began a fifteen-minute segment that he called Red Hot  & Blue, taken the name from a patriotic musical film of that year starring Victor Mature, not exactly a  king of the blues himself, and twenty-four-year-old Dewey Phillips starts this WHBQ broadcasting from  the Gayoso Hotel, located at Gayoso Street. He is on air from 10:00 p.m. to midnight every weekday, and  until 1:00 a.m., on Saturday nights, while keeping his job in the record department at W.T. Grant's on  South Main Street. The music that he plays is some of the finest American vernacular music ever  recorded: in the course of one fifteen-minute segment, you might hear Muddy Waters' latest hit, a gospel  number by the Soul Stirrers, with the great singer, R.H. Harris, Larry Darnell's "For You, My Love", and  Wynomie Harris' "Good Rockin' Tonight" - "boogies, blues, and spirituals".
 
"Dewey was hawking records at Grant's just like those guys down on Beale Street were hawking people  to come into the pawnshops", recalls veteran disc jockey George Klein.  Gordon Lawhead did give Phillips a few pointers, showing him how to run the radio control board, a skill  Lawhead says Dewey never quite mastered. Phillips was later given his own studio so that on occasions  when he broke the equipment the station wouldn't be totally incapacitated. Lawhead also gave Phillips  some tips in reading advertising copy, and claims to have given him what would later become his catch  phrase. "I suggested that when he was reading a spot, to say, 'Co in and buy this and tell 'em Phillips sent  you".
 
To Lawhead's amazement, the response was immediate and overwhelming. "The day after, we got seven  postcards asking for specific rhythm and blues music. And the next day we got seventy; and the next day  we got seven hundred. It was a monsoon of mail".
 
Dewey Phillips' Red Hot & Blue show, was soon expanded to three hours, from nine to midnight, and  Phillips also began an afternoon show at 2 p.m. that mixed country records in with the rockabilly and  rhythm and blues. Dewey's salary rose from nothing to $125 and than to $250, a sizable sum in fifties  radio.  And of course those were the glory days of payola, a time when independent labels owners like Syd  Nathan of King Records paid so much money to disc jockeys to guarantee that his records got played that  he actually listed the bribes on King's ledger books as business expenses. Some Memphis music insiders  estimate Dewey Phillips pulled in as much as $100,000 annually from record companies.
 
JUNE 1950
 
Sam Phillips meets with disc jockey Dewey Phillips, whose Red, Hot, and Blue, a melange of "boogies,  blues, and spirituals", is the hottest thing on Memphis radio, attracting a huge black and white audience  with its idiosyncratic style. Sam Phillips recognizes a kindred spirit in Dewey, and while the partnership  that they form later this summer, known as "The Phillips" label, doesn't last more than a month or two,  they remain the closest of ideological allies.
 
JUNE 1950
 
Elvis Presley finished the ninth grade. One of Humes High School's teachers, Susan Johnson, remarked,  "When one of our boys or girls does something special, like Elvis Presley, they should put an extra gold  star after his name, because our children have farther to go than most. Elvis Presley liked to sing songs to  a few friends during lunch or at a school assembly at Overton Park".
 
Among those who became caught up in the different sound was a thirteen year old living in a public  housing development in Memphis. Elvis Presley began collecting the records of such bluesmen as Arthur  Crudup and Big Bill Broonzy. Later, still in Humes High School, he started going down on Beale Street  and emulating its musicians, not only in what they sang but in the way they sang it (and also in what they  wore). He became acquainted not only with Nathaniel Dowd Williams, but with Robert Henry, who  introduced him to many of Beale Street's entertainers. "I taken him to the Hotel Improvement Club  with me, and he would watch the coloured singers, understand me, and then he got to doing it the same  way as them", Henry said. "He got that shaking, that wiggle, from Charlie Burse, Ukulele Ike we called  him, right there at the Gray Mule on Beale, Elvis, he wasn't doing nothing but what the coloured people  had been doing for the last hundred years. But people... people went wild over him".
 
Interview with Robert Henry, October 19, 1973 by Margaret McKee.
 
JUNE 1950
 
Sam Phillips starts The Phillips label with disc jockey Dewey Phillips. There is one release by bluesman  Joe Hill Louis "Gotta Let You Go"/"Boogie In The Park" (The Phillips 9001/2).
JULY 7, 1950 FRIDAY
 
At the works in the auto plants in Pontiac, Michigan, Johnny Cash returned home, although he made his  return somewhat sooner than most - after three weeks. Still determined to get out of Dyess, Johnny Cash  joined the Air Force on July 7, 1950. By his own account, Cash's 'four long, miserable years' in the Air  Force were relieved only by playing music with fellow southerners.
 
AUGUST 21, 1950 MONDAY
 
In June 1950 Sam Phillips made his first tentative venture into the record business with WHBQ radio disc  jockey Dewey Phillips. Here, Sam is trying to pitch the record to his cousin, Jim Conolly, at WJLD. Note  the emphasis that he is placing on quality. The Phillips label didn't last out the year, though.
 
_________________________________________________________________
 
Mr. James Edward Connolly August 21, 1950
Station WJLD
Bessemer, Alabama
 
Dear Madam,
 
Under separate cover - a couple of quilts and four blankets - I am sending you the hottest thing in  country - the first official release of the newly organised PHILLIPS label.
 
I have written Bob, telling him of our artist, and I thought you might like to know of the deal, too.  Dewey Phillips and I are partners 50-50 on our new label, and we're going to do our best to make it roll in  the South.
 
Our first releases is by an ex Columbia recording artist, Joe Hill Louis, and the "Gotta Let You  Go" side is already getting hot here. I know umbach can put it over down there, too.
 
We're going to put nothing but the best race and spiritual artists obtainable on our label, and  though we may not have the number of artists that other companies have, we're going to do our durndest  to have the best. I'd appreciate your singing on the station and signing it off with our records from time to
time. In fact, I think it would make a good substitute for the Star Spangled Banner.
 
All kidding aside, do what you can to help us, and I might even buy you a couple of extra fish  hooks. If our records happen to get hot down there before we get a distributor and a retail outlet in  Birmingham, let me know, and we'll try to rush up the thing some. But its keeping me going night and day  getting this thing set up. Therefore, if you receive any inquiries about obtaining any of our records there,  please contact me, telephone collect.
 
Hope to get down to see y'll before too long, and give you the story on the deal. In the meantime,  if you an round up the hard and pick up ol' Dobbin and head NW we'd love seeing you,  Thanks, Jimbo Best wishes, I am
 
Yours sincerely
 
________________________________________________________________
 
AUGUST 30, 1950 WEDNESDAY
 
Buster Williams' Plastic Products pressed three hundred copies, and first released "Gotta Let You  Go"/"Boogie In The Park", recorded by Joe Hill Louis, on the Phillips label (The Phillips 9001/9002),  shipped them to Music Sales for distribution in Memphis, and billed Phillips fifty-one dollars. It turned  out to be the label's only release. The extreme scarcity of the record today suggests that there never was another pressing, and, as far as anyone, the label was DOA by September.
 
SEPTEMBER 1950
 
Elvis Presley enters his tenth-grade year at Humes High School, enrolling in ROTC, in which he receives  a grade of C for the first term and B for the second. Except for an A in English and an F in typing, his  grades are C's and B's. Elvis Aron Presley is issued a Social Security card, number 409-52-2002.
 
SEPTEMBER 20, 1950 WEDNESDAY
 
Gene Autry send Colonel Tom Parker an letter to thanking him for sending pictures taken at the  Knickerbocker Hotel. Autry also thanked the Colonel for suggestions he made about the Checkerboard  Jamboree. Autry sent his regards to "the gang". Autry explained in a handwritten note in blue ink at the  bottom of the page that the letter had been misdirected when it was sent to him to be signed. He redated  the letter November 1, 1950. Gene Autry, well-known country singer, knew Colonel Tom Parker from his  Nashville connections. The Colonel represented Eddy Arnold, and Autry often toured with Arnold for  various shows.
 
SEPTEMBER 24, 1950 SUNDAY
 
The first time Elvis Presley's voice was ever recorded was on September 24, 1950 at a birthday party.  "Everyone says that the first recording Elvis did was when he went down to Sun Records, but that isn't  true", says Doris Guy Wallace, three years younger than Elvis Presley while living in Lauderdale Courts,  Doris Guy was, nonetheless, right in there when all the boys in the Courts started doing things physical. "I  was a little thing, right at five feet tall all my life", she says. "Fact is, I didn't ever reach a hundred pounds  until I was pregnant the first time". Calling herself a tomboy during those years, she wasn't happy unless  she was mixing and mingling in sports with her brother, Farley Guy, and his three best friends, Buzzy  Forbess, Paul Dougher and the boy who lived below them in the Courts, Elvis Presley. "The first time  Elvis' voice was ever recorded was on my fourteenth birthday (September 24, 1950). My older sister  operated a cafeteria over on North Second and that night we had a birthday party there. For my birthday,  Elvis Presley made up a song and that night he sang it. They had a tape recorder there and recorded the  song. I really liked that song, not just because it was my birthday, but because it was a good song", said  Doris Guy Wallace. Mysteriously, she said, the tape recorded song, which today would surely be worth a  million dollars to any serious Elvis collector has disappeared. Today the mother of three and the  grandmother of seven, Doris Guy Wallace lives in central Arkansas.
 
OCTOBER 1950
 
The Gilt-Edge label is re-launched with a different distribution set-up from 4-Star. Slim Rhodes is among  the first releases.
 
Influential Memphis disc jockey and singer/musician, Eddie Hill, leaves WMPS and crosses town to  WMC radio. His "High Noon Roundup" show influences many young country artists, including Johnny  Cash, and includes Harmonica Frank in the regular cast.
 
UNKNOWN DATE NOVEMBER 1950
 
Arthur Groom, the Loew's Theater manager located at 152 South Main Street, hired Elvis Presley  to work as a part-time usher. The $12.75 that Elvis Presley made each week further supplemented the  family income. For almost a year, Elvis Presley worked five hours a night, seven days a week at Loew's  Theater. After work, he would walk down to the Grit-Iron Cafe to meet Ronald Smith and Curtis Lee Alderson. The restaurant, located across the street from the Peabody Hotel, on Union Avenue, was an allnight  hangout. His job at Loew's Theater ended when a concession candy-counter girl named Sue, not  only flirted openly with Elvis Presley but let him eat all the candy he wanted. Another usher told the boss  that Elvis Presley was eating free candy, a fight broke out, and Elvis Presley punched the boy in the nose.  Arthur Groom fired both boys, but Elvis Presley soon became an usher at the Malco Theater on South  Main Street.
 
There had been crushes before, but they'd been confined to stolen glances and wishful thinking. Sue's  blonde hair and sparkling green eyes consumed Elvis' thoughts and ignited his fantasies - not to mention  paralyzed him with fear. Most of them are shy and awkward at that age, but Elvis took it to new heights.  He was poor, living in the projects, and embarrassed about it. Plus, he considered his awkward body and  face ugly and assumed any girl thought him homely. But Sue stirred his dormant sexuality to such a  degree that he went out of his way to introduce himself and talk to her. Unfortunately, their potential  romance met an untimely demise after Elvis was fired for the fighting Elvis said to Earl Greenwood: "I  heard 'em tellin' Sue that nobody liked me 'cause I was weird and lived with coloreds. He only said that  'cause he wanted to take her out and was jealous 'cause she was talkin' to me so much. I didn't mean to hit  'em, but he made me mad. I did it 'fore I knew what I was doin". "What about Sue", asked Earl  Greenwood. "Aw, I'll never see her 'gain".
 
"We worked as ushers together at the Loew's State theater down of South Main", recalled Luther Nall.  "We double dated a lot. I was never a member of Elvis' "band", but we played together a lot in the  neighborhood at night. Many times we had what we called a "hootennanny", where everyone would join  in the music. He sang in some of the variety shows at school".
 
Elvis liked the money from Loew's, but the hours were taking their toll. His grades began falling, and his  teachers complained that he was sleeping through class, so he reluctantly quit. While working at Loew's  Theater, Elvis Presley dated Betty McMahan. She lived in a third-floor apartment at the Lauderdale  Courts, and they frequently went to the Suzore II Theater, a second-run house, on 279 North Main. She  continually pressured Elvis Presley to take her to the St. Mary's Dances. Consequently, they spent many  afternoons at the bargain matinees in the Suzore II. Elvis Presley liked to strum his guitar at home and  play it at parties. His second girlfriend, Billie Wardlow, remembers that Elvis Presley loved to sing  Eddy Arnold's "Won't You Tell Me Molly Darling". Betty McMahan died in 1986.
LOEW'S STATE THEATER - Memphis movie theater located at 152 South Main Street, where, in  1950, Elvis Presley worked as an usher at $12.75 a week, at the theater on two separate occasions,  beginning in November 1950. A sophomore in high school at the time, Elvis would arrive home after 5:00  to 10:00 on school nights. After a few months, his mother asked him to quit because his grades were  slipping. When school let out the following summer, Elvis was hired again.
 
On December 4, 1956, on the day of the Million Dollar Quartet at Sun Records, the movie "Love Me  Tender" was being shown at Loew's State Theater.
 
On October 17, 1957 Elvis Presley allowed his third MGM movie, "Jailhouse Rock", to premiere in that  same theater. Arthur Groom, still the manager, had a good sense of humour about this incredible change  of fortune.
 
Three weeks before the premier, Arthur posed with Elvis and an usher's uniform - presumably  the same uniform that Elvis Presley had worn - and told his story for the newspapers. Elvis was welcome to return to his job anytime, Groom said. With a grin Elvis replied, "Sir, I don't believe I'm ready to go  back to my old job yet". Even Mrs. Groom could not resist teasing her husband. "Well, all I can say,  Arthur Groom, is that you'll work a long while before we own a car as tremendous as that one Elvis has  out there", she chided. 
 
Built in 1920 for founder and manager Arthur Groom, no expense was spared in its construction, and it   was designed as an opulent retreat from everyday life. One could enter the ornate lobby - decorated with   grand columns, gold plating, and chandeliers - and experience a grandeur normally reserved for the upper  class. In the 1930s, the theater became one of the first air-conditioned buildings in Memphis.
 
The late   comedian Freddie Prize was himself an usher at New York City's Loew's State Theater (it no longer   exists). Other celebrities who have been employed as ushers: Frances Farmer, Carol Burnett (who was  fired), Sylvester Stallone (who was fired),   Linda Evans, and Johnny Carson. The theater was demolished some years ago. This neglected part of   downtown is now being transformed into the Peabody Place office and shopping development.   Downtown Memphis. From Union Avenue, turn south on the South Main Street Pedestrian Mall. The   Loew's State Theater was located between Gayoso Avenue and Peabody Place.
 
"Elvis allowed his third movie, Jailhouse Rock, to premiere in that same theatre. Arthur Groom, still the   manager, had a good sense of humor about this incredible change of fortune. Three weeks before the   premiere, he posed with Elvis and an usher's uniform-presumably the same uniform that Elvis had wornand   told his story for the newspapers. Elvis was welcome to return to his job anytime, Groom said. In   fact, he joked that he would especially like for Elvis to usher at the premiere. With a grin Elvis   replied,"Sir, I don't believe I'm ready to go back to my old job yet." Even Mrs. Groom could not resist  teasing her husband. "Well, all I can say, Arthur Groom, is that you'll work a long while before we own a   car as tremendous as that one Elvis has out there," she chided.
 
Micki Groom Creamer said, ''My Dad was the manager of the Loew's State from 1949 till the mid 1960s, not too sure. As many may know, my Dad did fire Elvis Presley when he was an usher scuffling with another usher in the early 1950s, but eventually hired him back. Truly amazing... a kid is an usher and about 5 years later, he is coming back to see himself up on the screen. That was quite a night. My Dad held a private screening for Elvis, his parents, and friends visiting from Hollywood, Nick Adams, and of course the Groom family was there in full force! I was a candy girl at the Loew's State during my high school years and met my future husband who was an usher at Loew's Palace''.
DECEMBER 1950
 
In the Lauderdale Courts, Elvis Presley with Evan "Buzzy" Forbess and Buzzy remembers  that Elvis Presley, persuaded to sing for his tenth-grade class Christmas party, purposely forgot his guitar.  During his sophomore year at Humes High, Elvis Presley discovered the Odd Fellows Hall.
 
An  assortment of country and gospel artists performed there, and Elvis Presley learned a great deal about  their music. He was initially hired to clear tables at the hall, but always managed to stay for the first  musical set. It was at the Odd Fellows Hall that Elvis Presley first saw his future bass player Bill Black,  perform.
 
"Many times we would invite Elvis and some of our other friends to go up there and shoot pool with us.  We spent a lot of time there, also, planning entertainment and dances for young people. 
 
The Rainbow  Girls also had their meetings there and we did a lot of things together, the Odd Fellows and the Rainbow  Girls. We never needed any money for entertainment there", recall Buzzy Forbess.
ODD FELLOWS HALL - Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a society, founded in 1859, with lodges  throughout the world. The Memphis Odd Fellow Fraternal Order was organized in 1843. Elvis Presley  belonged to an Odd Fellows group while attending L.C. Humes High School. The Odd Fellows had  meeting rooms on the third and fourth floors of the Columbia Mutual Tower building on North West  corner Main Street and Court Avenue. They had a pool table and Elvis Presley, Buzzy Forbess, and Paul  Dougher spent a lot of time up there shooting pool.
 
"We were conforming to the dances of the time", Buzzy Forbess said. "The bop was big, and slow dances.  Elvis, of course, had his own movements. At parties he was always playing and singing, so we learned to  dance before he did".
 
Although Elvis Presley never joined the Odd Fellows, he often accompanied his friends when they hung  out at the Odd Fellows Hall, shooting pool and occasionally playing ping-pong. The Odd Fellows  sponsored various charities, and Elvis Presley sometimes went with them on these charity outings. Elvis  played for patients at Kennedy Veterans Hospital located on 1030 Jefferson Avenue, and the Home for  Incurables during trips with the Odd Fellows. The Odd Fellows no longer maintain a club room at this  building, now called The Lincoln American Tower.
 
KENNEDY VETERANS HOSPITAL - Today named as Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.  Located on 1030 Jefferson Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee. Total staff of 1,874 and a total of 349 licensed  beds. The V.A. Medical Center provides medical care for veterans living in western Tennessee, northern  Mississippi, and eastern Arkansas, and serves this region as a referral center for spinal-cord injure and  prosthetic treatment. Other medical specialties include a hospital-based home-care unit, a rehabilitation  center, and a training center for health professionals in geriatrics. The hospital offers the only  comprehensive geriatrics evaluation unit in Memphis. The V.A. Medical Center was a winner of a Greater  Memphis Award for Quality in 1997.
 
1951
 
Libya is granted its independence, followed by twenty other new African nations over the next ten years -  a spur to black self determination in the United States.
 
1951
 
Dot Records founded in 1951, Randy Wood had run the operation out of his home. A smiling, auburnhaired,  easygoing young man, Randy Wood was an excellent businessman with a clear grasp of the record  industry. Like many small record label magnates, he realized that black music was crossing over into the  mainstream pop record buying market. In conversations with his artists, Randy Wood contended that  white musicians could better sell black music. In January and February 1969, Randy Wood played piano  on Elvis' Memphis sessions at American Sound Studios on Danny Thomas Boulevard.
 
JANUARY 5, 1951 FRIDAY
 
In Jackson, Mississippi, Lillian McMurray and Johnny Vincent's Trumpet label was also recording many  of the same artists that Sam Phillips employed, Lillian McMurray had supervised Sonny Boy Williamson  (Alex Miller), initial recordings, launching her Trumpet label from a furniture store and record shop in  Jackson. Not only was the music similar to that recorded by Sam Phillips, but the Trumpet label had great  success in Southern markets. As he scouted for new artists, Sam Phillips visited McMurray and they  talked at length about his legal and records problems. She told Sam Phillips that her own troubles came  from a lack of money and the inability to judge all types of music. It was McMurray who ultimately  convinced Sam Phillips to bring a partner into his record business, advice that sent Phillips to Nashville to  find one.
 
JANUARY 8, 1951 MONDAY
 
Elvis Presley took and passed the written and road tests for a Tennessee driver's license on his uncle  Travis' 1940 Buick. Elvis Presley loved to sit for hours parked at a local hamburger stand in the  ostentatious fifty-dollar green 1941 Lincoln. "My daddy was something wonderful to me", Elvis says four  years later of his father's purchase. With his collar up and his shoulder jammed against the car door, Elvis  Presley was the epitome of the angry young rebel, a pose not uncommon to many youths in the 1950s. "I  helped Elvis Presley push that green car around Memphis", Ronald Smith remarked. "Elvis loved that  car". A well-known Sun Records session musician", Marcus Van Story, also remembered "Elvis sitting in  the front seat looking unhappy. That dammed car never ran right, but he pushed it all over Memphis".
 
UNKNOWN DATE 1951
 
The lure of black music became increasingly important in Elvis Presley's life, and he wandering around  the section at Beale Street looking at the sights and listening to the music. Whenever possible, he listened  to Memphis' radio station, WDIA at 2074 Union Avenue in Memphis. One of Elvis Presley's early  musical favourites was B.B. King, who had started out on WDIA radio singing commercials for Pepicon,  a health tonic. It was during the 1951 Christmas season that Elvis Presley first heard King's records  "Three O'Clock Blues". As a result, B.B. King became the "Pepticon Boy". The word spread to Humes  High and South Side High Schools about a cat playing guitar down on Beale Street. Ronald Smith was  one of the first to recognize the power of B.B. King's guitar work, and he alerted Elvis Presley to the new  sound. "Elvis loved B.B. King", Smith remarked, "he couldn't get enough of his blues vocals". B.B. King  took over a prestigious radio show, the "Sepia Swing Club" and played records by local musicians as well  as national acts. King's show was rivalled by the musical sophistication of Nat D. Williams, "Tan Town  Jamboree". The latter program attracted as large a white audience as a black one. The music played during  the "Tan Town Jamboree" helped Elvis Presley to select records to buy. Soon, he was acquainted with the  music of Fats Waller, Ivory Joe Hunter, Roy Brown, Louis Jordan, and T-Bone Walker.
 
UNKNOWN DATE 1949-1951
 
Elvis Presley often slipped quietly into the black ghetto to listen to music. He was intrigued by the  language and mannerisms of the black Memphis subculture and, as there were no blacks at Humes High,  Elvis Presley made friends with them during pickup football games. In a time of personal and musical  growth for Elvis Presley, his experiences with blacks were educational ones. This time, Elvis Presley met blues singer Furry Lewis in the Beale Street area. "My older brother went to school with him", recalled  singer Barbara Pittman, "and he and some of the other boys used to hide behind buildings and throw  things at him, rotten fruit and stuff, because he was different".
 
It was not long before many country bluesmen migrated from western Tennessee, north-central  Mississippi, and the Delta in search of new performing venues in Memphis. Although segregation was  still prevalent, when the sun went down, white and black musicians played side by side in the small clubs.  Memphis' famed entertainment district, Beale Street, featured fledgling blues artists like B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Walter Horton, Joe Hill Louis, Little Milton, Lowell Fulson, Rosco Gordon, Johnny  London, Handy Jackson, Willie Nix, Rufus Thomas, D.A. Hunt, Big Memphis Marainey, Jimmy DeBerry,  Little Junior's Blue Flames, Bukka White, and Furry Lewis.
 
Before too long, these artists made records that found their way into Elvis Presley's life. It was therefore  no accident that performers like Elvis Presley copied the frenetic vocal style of local black blues artists,  characterized by rough vocals with an energetic personal flair. There were other influences from black  musicians. The guitar and piano accompaniments of many black blues acts could provide the rhythm and  power of what seemed like a whole orchestra. Early commercial recordings of Memphis blues artists of  the time often feature two-guitar teams. Yet, these were just two-piece backup bands, usually augmented  by the singer's guitar. It was just this blend of blues, hillbilly, and rockabilly music that later made Elvis  Presley so popular, and it was precisely this type of music that dominated the city when the Presley's  arrived.
 
MARCH 1951
 
"Memphis Bounce" (Gilt-Edge 5026) by Slim Rhodes is released and reviewed in Billboard. It is the  second of four discs to be culled from the two Sam Phillips' sessions.
 
As the bands and singers on Beale Street began making records, it was natural for everyone to get the idea  that they ought to record their own music. The growth of small local record labels provided the  opportunity for many of the performers. Memphis musicians all wanted the same thing - a hit record.  When there was a success, as occurred in 1951 when Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm hit the charts  with Jackie Brenston singing lead on "Rocket 88", everyone's enthusiasm was renewed. This song, with  the musical revolution on Beale Street as a backdrop, helped bring rock and roll to life. Memphis was not  only the cradle of this new black music, it was the central focus of an emerging white style.
 
UNKNOWN DATE MAY 1951
 
Elvis Presley attended Humes High School Wide Carnival to raise funds and each home room was  responsible for putting on its own carnival. It would cost five cents to get into each home room.  "We had concession stands in the school cafeteria and Coach Boyce and I, along with Stan Cooper, would  operate them", recalled Coach Malcolm Phillips. "The cafeteria was filled with people. It was located just below the school auditorium. About 9 p.m., everybody seemed to fade out of the cafeteria, headed for the  variety show upstairs. It wasn't long before we heard sounds like "be bop a lula" coming from upstairs. I  looked at Rube Boyce and asked; 'What's that?'. 'I don't know', he said. 'You count the money', I told  Coach Boyce. 'I'm going up there to see who's making all that noise'.
 
I climbed up the fire escape and entered the auditorium at the end of the stage. There was Red West  playing trumpet, Elvis playing guitar, and maybe two or three others in their band. Elvis was a sight,  believe me. His knees were a-knockin', he was singing and wiggling and wobbling all over the place. I  went back to the cafeteria and told Rube Boyce, "coach, that's Elvis and a couple of others up there singing'. And he said, 'They will never amount to anything'. But the people were packed in that  auditorium. They were sitting in the windows even, and when Elvis got through singing, they were  yelling 'Encore, encore!'. And he just kept singing. He must have sung every song he knew that night".
JUNE 3, 1951 SUNDAY
 
Elvis Presley walked over to the 1132 Kansas Avenue to take a look at the building. He then went home  and called Whitehall 8-1652, and asked if they were hiring.  A day later, on June 3, 1951, Elvis Presley  filled out an employment application and was hired to work from 7:00 a.m. to 3:20 p.m at Precision Tool  Corporation, located at 1132 Kansas Avenue, across McLemore Avenue. 
 
The Precision Tool Company manufactured ordnance shells for the U.S. Army. Working on the assembly  line was exacting work, and every shell was checked by government inspectors. Elvis Presley earned $27  a week. The employment application was a simple one; sixteen-year-old Elvis Presley put down that he  was eighteen. When one of his fellow workers mentioned that Elvis Presley was going to be a junior at  Humes High, Elvis Presley promptly fired. 
 
He was told to turn in his bag, number 78; a prized possession,  he instead told Precision Tool that he had lost it. Elvis Presley gave the badge to Ronald Smith. Although  Precision Tool were impressed with Elvis' work, the company demanded that its employees be eighteen  years old.
 
It was also a dangerous job. One woman was hurt in 1959 when a bomb simulator she was working on  exploded. At the end of that same year, the entire building was lost when another bomb exploded and set  off the ammunition in a chain reaction. The factory was rebuilt, along with its sister company, Dixie  Chemical, but in 1963 another blast injured fifteen workers. Six years later, Gene's Smith brother, Robert,  was killed when he slipped and fell into a vat of boiling chemicals. Precision Toll was housed in the  building now occupied by Vinkers Distribution and Transfer Company at the northeast corner of Kansas  Street and McLemore Avenue.
 
Elvis Presley listening to Daddy-O-Dewey on 56 WHBQ radio station, he have heard Rosco Gordon's  "Booted", Muddy Waters "She Moves Me", "Lonesome Christmas" by Lowell Fulson, and Elmore James'  "Dust My Broom". After joining the ROTC unit at Humes High School. "We were in the same ROTC  unit", said George Klein. "I didn't like ROTC, but Elvis did. He took two years. I just took one year. I think that was one of the things that helped him when he went into the real army. He knew about  marching and he could take that riffle apart. They teach you that in ROTC in high school. They teach you  some of the really basic stuff - how to wear the uniform, how to polish the brass, how to tie the tie - little  things you should know if you ever do go in the army...", announced George Klein. "Elvis had two years of ROTC. He didn't clown around about it because he was serious about it. He liked that uniform and  being a part of a group and stuff like that. He also knew how to march. There is a technique of how to  march and if you don't know, you can really look silly. He knew how to do some of the basic army things  and I think that really helped him when he got into real army. People probably said well here comes a rock and roll singer who doesn't know how to do anything and he probably really surprised a lot of  people", said Klein.
 
ROTC - In addition to the land-grant institutions, some of the older state universities and schools began to  offer military instruction after the Reserve Officers Training Corps Acts, formed on October 21, 1916 and  1920 extended ROTC to other than military institutes and land-grant colleges. ROTC programs continued  to be maintained on southern civilian college campuses as well. In the 1980s support for military  education has increased nationwide, but the South remains the region most committed to it. Elvis Presley  was a member of ROTC (two-year course) while a sophomore at Humes High School. In later years Elvis  Presley bought new uniforms for the school's ROTC drill team.
JUNE 18, 1951 MONDAY
 
Sam Phillips involvement with B.B. King ended after a session on this date. After that point Saul Bihari  from RPM/Modern Records came to Memphis and recorded King on a portable Magnecord at the YMCA  or Tuff Green's house.
 
JUNE 21, 1951 THURSDAY
 
The first commercial passenger plane, a Southern Airways flight, lands in Tupelo.
 
MID 1951
 
Elvis Presley saw the Richard Thorpe movie "The Great Caruso" starring Mario Lanza at Loew State  Theater in Memphis, a half-dozen times.
 
AUGUST 1951
 
Sam Phillips see his first country music recordings issued on Chess. Harmonica Frank's "Swamp  Root"/"Goin' Away Walkin'" (Chess 1475 A) is announced in Billboard on August 4. Only two weeks  later, Billboard carries the announcement of "Swamp Root"/"Step It Up And Go" (also Chess 1475 A).  The switch was perhaps made because Big Jeff and the Radio Playboys had successfully released "Step It  Up And Go" on the Dot label and Chess hoped to sell their version in competition. Alternatively, the very  bluesy "Goin' Away Walkin'" may not have been well received by country disc jockey’s.
 
Pee Wee Brad Suggs, guitarist with the Slim Rhodes Band but currently in the Army, records for 4-Star  while on furlough from Ford Ord. team.
UNKNOWN DATE AUGUST 1951
 
One of the earliest gospel concerts that Elvis Presley attended was held in August 1951. Just before  starting his junior year at Humes High, Elvis Presley went to an all-night gospel concert at Ellis  Auditorium, located at 225 North Main Street in Memphis.  
 
He was mesmerized by the style that gospel  singers employed to reach their audience; the singers used a personal plea, and he loved its impact. That  night, Elvis Presley saw here the Blackwood Brother for the first time perform, and for the next three  years he listened to records by the Blackwood's and their younger counterparts, the Songfellows. The  Blackwoods were also featured in a weekly radio show broadcast from the Peabody Hotel on Union  Avenue. It was J.D. Sumner who first noticed Elvis Presley hanging around Ellis Auditorium in 1951- 1952, and he spent a great deal of time answering young Elvis' questions about gospel music. Elvis  Presley here first learned to play piano on the Kanabe piano, he later bought the center a new piano and  had this instrument moved to Graceland.
 
The stars of these events included the Blackwoods, the Harmoneers (from Knoxville), and the Crusaders  (from Birmingham) Bobby Strickland, the lead singer with the Crusaders (formerly of the Statesmen),  especially impressed Elvis Presley. Other members of the quartet recall young Elvis Presley bringing his  guitar backstage and asking Bobby to listen to him sing and play. (Tragically, Strickland was killed in a  car accident in September 1953).
 
"I first met Elvis when he was a kid in Memphis living in the projects", recall J.D. Sumner. "In fact, I  used to sneak him in the back of Ellis Auditorium so he could see our show. Elvis really dug bass singers.  His favourites were Big Chief Jim Werherington of the Statesmen and me. I think if he had had a choice,  he would have been a base singer".
ELLIS AUDITORIUM / COOK CONVENTION CENTER - All-night gospel sings were held at Ellis   Auditorium, located at 225 North Main Street at Exchange Street, only a few blocks from Lauderdale   Courts. Elvis Presley attended these events as often as he could to raise his voice with the others to praise   the Lord. Here Elvis Presley learned to play the piano between sets and backstage.  The gospel singers   who performed at these events dressed the part, with flamboyant costumes designed to inspire weary   worshippers. Elvis Presley took note of their style, imitating it as soon and as much as he could afford to.
 
In June 3, 1953, Elvis Presley attended his high school graduation ceremony here, and becoming the first   in his family to complete high school. Ellis had two golden eras. It was used by Victor Records and other "field" recording units in the 1920s   and 1930s to record such luminaries as Memphis Minnie, Tommy Johnson, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John   Estes, and Frank Stokes. During the 1940s and 1950s, WDIA radio packed the auditorium for their annual Goodwill Revues. 
 
On May 15, 1956, Elvis Presley performed on the stage during the Memphis Cotton Carnival. Elvis   shared top billing with Hank Snow, but the crowd obviously came to see Elvis Presley. In an  unprecedented move, both sides of the auditorium were opened, forcing Elvis Presley to play to audience   at both his front and back. Uncomfortable with this arrangement, Elvis spent most of his time standing   sideway or turning to face both audiences.
 
On December 22, 1956, Elvis Presley attended the "WDIA Goodwill Review" at Ellis Auditorium.   WDIA, a Memphis rhythm and blues radio station, advertised itself as "America's Only 50,000-Watt   Negro Radio Station". A few earliers WDIA's program director, David James, told disc jockey not to play   Elvis' music, since WDIA was a black station. In a bold move against both the station's wishes and  society's standard, Rufus Thomas played Elvis' music. Thomas liked Elvis' sound regardless of his racial   background. Artists performing at The Goodwill Review included Little Junior Parker, Earl Malone, B.B.   King, and Bobby Bland. Elvis Presley did not perform, but he was welcomed to the stage for a walk-on   appearance, in addition to appearing in publicity photos. The audience, consisting primarily of black   people, applauded Elvis Presley, the young girls screaming wildly.
 
On February 25, 1961, marked Elvis Presley's return to this stage, and his first appearance in Memphis   after returning from the army. The occasion was a benefit for local charities. The two shows raised   $51,607, which was donated to thirty-seven Memphis organizations and the Elvis Presley Youth   Center in Tupelo.   Throughout the 1960s, the Blackwood Brothers sponsored a gospel convention in the city, the highlight of   which was the presentation of the prestigious Dove Award to a gospel quartet. Elvis Presley quietly   attended these events; his fame so distracted the crowd that he would silently enter after the ceremonies   began and leave before they ended.
 
In 1971, Elvis Presley was presented his dearest honour at the auditorium when he was awarded a trophy   for being named one of the "Ten Outstanding Young Men of America" by the Jaycees. Elvis Presley's   connection to Ellis Auditorium was renewed because the Elvis Reunion Concert was held there for years.   The concert, which was a tribute to Elvis' love of sacred music, was held annually during Elvis Week in   August every year. Many of the performers Elvis worked with sang a variety of his hits and favorite   gospel songs at the show. The headliner for the shows was J.D. Sumner, who was once a member of the   Blackwood Brothers and later sang as a background vocalist with Elvis Presley as a member of the   Stamps Quartet.
 
The original brick building is still impressive in size. A modern structure has been added at the entry way,   providing a shelter for patrons. In 1997 the city of Memphis plans to demolish Ellis Auditorium and   replace it with a more ultra-modern state-of-the-art performer arts center. Ellis Auditorium, part of the   Cook Convention Center, was at the southwest corner of Exchange Avenue and North Main Street. See it   while you can, because it is slated for demolition, making way for a new performing-arts center.
 
STATESMEN QUARTET - Gospel group founded in 1948 by Hovie Lister, with Jake Hess as the lead   singer. The Statesmen, who recorded for RCA Victor Records, were made up of Hovie Lister (piano);   Tommy Thompson (bass), Ed Hill (baritone); R.D. Rozell (tenor); and Budd Bunton (lead). At Elvis   Presleys funeral in 1977 the Statesmen sang "Sweet Spirit" and "Known Only To Him". Hovie Lister   played piano for Kathy Westmoreland when she sang "Heavenly Father".
 
ALL-DAY / ALL-NIGHT SINGINGS - All-day singing has long been one of the most cherished social   institutions of the rural South. The terms has been applied to a wide rage of musical affairs and even has   its counterpart in the all-night singings of modern gospel quartet music, but it is most closely associated   with the shape-note singing convention.
 
Singing conventions are events that feature the performance of shape-note music, of both the four-shape   and seven-shape varieties. The four-shape conventions have always been the more conservative in that   they adhere to the use of one songbook, usually the venerable Sacred Harp, first published by Benjamin F.   White in 1844, and they tend to resist newer songs and innovative styles of performing them (they instead   preserve the Fasola style of singing). In short, the four-shape people try to remain faithful to the music  and, in some respects, the way of life of their ancestors. The seven-shape conventions, which are by far   the most numerous of these events, were originally marked by their acceptance of the do-ro-mi system of   singing, and they have generally been receptive to innovations in songs and singing style. The singers at   such conventions sing not from one book but from a wide variety of paperback shape-note hymnals   generally published twice a year by such companies as Vaughan, Winsett, and Stamps-Baxter. The song   repertoire therefore includes both the older, familiar religious material and the newest songs "hot off the  press". Although everyone in attendance is encouraged to sing, performances are also made by soloists,   duets and trios, and often by visiting professional quartets. People clearly attend these conventions not   merely to sing but also to be entertained.
 
Whatever the style of singing, the singing conventions meet regularly throughout the rural and small-town   South, often on a monthly basis in the case of the seven-shape singers, but much more infrequently in the   case of the Fasola people. Singers gather at a church or at the county courthouse, renew old   acquaintances, sing for several hours under the guidance of experienced song leaders, and then sit down   at long tables for a sumptuous feast of fried chicken, ham, potato salad, assorted pastries, and other   delectables brought by the guests and participants. The practice of combining food and religious music   long ago gave rise to the term "all-day singing with dinner on the grounds", which describes one of the   most common events in the rural South.
 
J.D. SUMNER - (1924-1998) Bass singer, born John Daniel Sumner on November 19, 1924, in Lakeland,   Florida, as son of John and Leila Sumner. Begin working as a truckdriver, Sumner became in later years,   a great gospelsinger, started in the Sunny South Quartet from 1945 through 1949. From 1948 through   1954, Sumner was a member of the Sunshine Boys Quartet, and in 1954 through 1965, he was a member   of the famous Blackwood Brothers Quartet.
 
Nicknamed as "Jim Dandy", who had been a friend of Elvis Presley since Elvis was sixteen years old.   Sumner would often let Elvis Presley in through the back door so that he could attend the gospel   group concerts in Memphis in the early 1950s. Sumner has sung with the Sunshine Boys and, from 1954   to 1965, with the Blackwood Brothers. His vocal group, the Stamps, started in 1965, backed Elvis Presley   in many recording sessions and concerts from 1972 to 1977. Elvis gave Sumner a new white Lincoln   automobile in October 1976, a $4,000 silver watch, and a $40,000 diamond ring.   Deep voice, the six-foot-five-inch-tall entertainer often sang along with Elvis Presley on "Why Me Lord"   and "Help Me" in concert. In 1977 J.D. Sumner recorded the tribute record (Elvis Has Left The Building"  (OQA 461), and with the Stamps recorded two tribute albums, "Elvis' Favorite Gospel Songs" (OQA 362)   in 1977 and "Memories Of Our Friend" (Blue Mark 373) in 1978.
 
In 1971 J.D. Sumner wrote his autobiography, Gospel Music In My Life. Three days for his birthday, on   November 16, 1998, John Daniel Sumner died at a stroke while he was asleep in a small hotel in Myrtle   Beach, South Carolina, of the age of 73. After Elvis death, J.D. Sumner perform on many appearances for  the Elvis Presley Estate each year, for the Elvis Presley Tribute Week in Memphis, Tennessee.
 
On his funeral on November 19, 1998, his family and his musical friends included, James Burton, Glen   Hardin, Charlie Hodge, Joe Guercio, Donnie Sumner, James Blackwood, Jake Hess, Hovie Lister, Ed   Enoch, and Tony Brown, attended the funeral.
UNKNOWN DATE AUGUST 1951
 
Elvis Presley tries out for the football team the Tigers, but is cut by the coach when he won't trim his  ducktail and sideburns. When Elvis went to sign up during the week of school, the coach was standing  nearby and called Elvis Presley over. After saying hello and finding out Elvis' name, the coach gave him a  long look. "If you want to even try out for the team, son, that hair's gotta go". "How come?", Elvis voice was unsteady. "Its a school rule. Athletes have to keep their hair short. Promotes cleanliness. "But my hair  is clean". "Rules are rules. If you don't get it cut, you won't be able to try out. I'm sorry". Several other  boys heard this exchange, and when Elvis turned around, he could see the smirks on their faces. "One of  'em offered to cut my hair for me if I wanna play so bad",Elvis told later. With football out of the  question, Elvis switched his attention to other activities. Elvis Presley to hang around local blues joints on  Beale Street in Memphis.
 
SEPTEMBER 1951
 
Elvis Presley enters his junior year at Humes High School. He receives C's and is reported tardy three  times. During this year at school, friends and teachers notice a change in Elvis, as he begins to gain selfconfidence,  attempts to grow sideburns, and grooms his hair meticulously (some would say obsessively)  with Rose Oil hair tonic and Vaseline. His clothes, too, become more flamboyant, and without calling  attention to himself in any other way, he becomes a kind of visual focal point. His attempt to join the  football team practices at Humes High School, would seem to have been thwarted by his appearance, his  size, and his mother's opposition.
 
UNKNOWN DATE NOVEMBER 1951
 
Gladys Presley Begins work as a nurse's aide at Saint Joseph's Hospital, located at 264 Jackson Street near  1-40, at a salary of $4 a day, six days a week. She has worked at Britlings Cafeteria downtown in the  past, but this is the best job she has ever had, and she is very proud of it. Saint Joseph was just a couple of  blocks from the Lauderdale Courts.
SAINT JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL - Located at 264 Jackson Street 1-40, Memphis, Tennessee. (Now vacant on  220 Overton Avenue. Phone 901-577-2700. Today, a total staff of 800, and a total of 410 licensed beds.  Saint Joseph Hospital is a full-service hospital, specializing in geriatrics, rehabilitation, mental health, and occupational health, and offers a state-of-the-art cardiology services unit.
 
Saint Joseph, which is owned by  Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation, also provides a 24-hour health and information hotline staffed  by registered nurses; the number is 901-577-3000. The hospital's geriatric program offers a transportation  service for needy elderly and disabled patients to and from the hospital for appointments, and it recently  opened its Geriatric Specialty Clinic, where seniors can receive various health screenings and nutritional  counselling. In addition the hospital has opened a new primary-care center for seniors called Med-Wise,  located at Poplar and Evergreen Avenues.
 
Gladys Presley worked at Saint Joseph's from 1951 to 1952 as a nurse's aide. Her earnings helped the family  financially, and the job offered Gladys' a distinct sense of accomplishment as Gladys was an excellent  aide. Co-workers encouraged Gladys to pursue a nursing career, but she chose not do.
 
Gladys Presley always tried to shelter Elvis Presley, so it distressed her when he began working at MARL  Metal Company in 1952, while he was still attending high school. She thought his school work was more  important. "It got so hard on him, he was so beat all the time, we made him quit and I went to work at St.  Joseph's Hospital", she told an interviewer four years later.
 
Neither job suited her as well as her position at Saint Joseph's Hospital, where she found her niche. She was  a natural caregiver, and her patients adored her gentle manner. However, the job was too tenuous for  Gladys, and she could only handle the work for a couple of years. Her health was never robust, and the  long hours on her feet took their toll.
 
Mrs. Bramlett, who lived on Alabama Street and whose sons, John and Charlie, played football with Elvis  Presley, remembers that Elvis would meet his mother at the hospital at the end of her shift and drive her  home. One day as they were leaving the hospital, Gladys told Elvis that she had seen a patient arrive in a  pink Cadillac, and it was the most beautiful car she had ever seen. Elvis Presley never forgot that  conversation, nor the way her eyes lit up when she talked about that car.
 
The old portion of Saint Joseph's Hospital stands, albeit dwarfed by a modern hospital structure. Givenio's  Saint Joseph's proximity to Lauderdale Courts, one can easily imagine Gladys walking to work via Third  Street. At the hospital, in addition to her regular work, Gladys helped patients and their families get  through rough times. A walk through the old section of Saint Joseph's inspires a wonderful sense of the  goodness in humanity to which Gladys contributed throughout her lifetime. Saint Joseph's Hospital is at the  end of the street. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is located behind and to the right of Saint Joseph's.
1952
 
B.B. King's version of Lowell Fulson's "Three O'Clock Blues" tops Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart  for five weeks; later this same year, Little Walter's "Juke" reaches number one. Ralph Ellison recorded  "Invisible Man". 
 
Apart from the church, the strongest musical influence in Elvis Presley's early life came from his  companion at Lauderdale Courts. This was a public-assistance housing project that the Presley's called  home from May 1949 to January 1953. Among Elvis' friends who occupied the Courts or lived nearby  were Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, Paul Burlison, Jesse Lee Denson, Bill and Johnny Black, and Marcus  Van Story. All of these young men would have professional careers in music of varying degrees. 
 
Elvis Presley and his companions frequently gathered in the courtyard area or a nearby park to sing and  entertain themselves. They also rehearsed at the Girls' Club and the Canteen, also called the recreation  hall, at Lauderdale Courts. Johnny Black recalls that the boys would perform for the firemen at the station  next to Suzore II Theatre at 279 North Mean Street and for customers at a corner gas station.
 
The Denson family connection passing offers another intriguing glimpse into Presley's early years. Jesse  Lee Denson's parents ran the Poplar Street Mission, where, according to Denson's brother Jimmy Lee, the  Presley's obtained most of their household possessions. Jesse Lee was a gregarious kid, which, by all  accounts, Elvis was not; he appears to have taught Elvis Presley some rudiments of the guitar and brought  him to the basement jam sessions and Girls' Club gigs at Lauderdale Courts. Jimmy Lee remembers  Presley as a wallflower, in awe of bad-ass kids like Jesse Lee and Dorsey Burnette, who had served time  together at state reform school in Nashville.
 
Jimmy Lee Denson's portrait of Elvis Presley is that of an incorrigibly wimpy and terminally withdrawn  kid for whom complete sentences were a problem. That may be, but its clear that a transformation began  to occur at some point in 1953 or early 1954 - a transformation that Denson wouldn't have witnessed, as  he left town to sell automobiles in Houston in 1953. Jesse Lee remained in Memphis and eventually  recorded for VIK, the RCA subsidiary, in 1957, apparently without Presley's intercession.
 
1952
 
After his four year stint at the U.S. Marines, Jack Clement returned briefly to Memphis. Soon, he was off  to Wheeling, West Virginia with Buzz Busby doing, "a bluegrass comedy duet thing", kind a like Homer  and Jethro. Also at that time Jack Clement played in Baltimore and Boston and he made his first record.
 
"This was in 1953. We had been playing a radio show in Baltimore when Aubrey Mayhew, who managed  Hawkshaw Hawkins, asked us to do a show on his WCOP "Hayloft Jamboree" in Boston. While we were  doing that James Daliano was the owner but he let Aubrey run the label. We recorded my first two  published songs, "I Can't Say Nothing At All" and "I Think I'll Write A Song". They were by Buzz and Jack, and we did them in the style of Webb Pierce''.
 
JANUARY 1952
 
Jim Bulleit, owner of the Bullet label in Nashville between 1945 and 1949, returns to Nashville after  working as a promoter for KWKH radio, the Louisiana Hayride, and as promoter of a country music  jamboree in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Bulleit becomes involved in setting up distribution for Sun  Records in the spring of 1952, along with his own Delta and J-B labels.
 
All the labels in Memphis concentrated on blues music. There were also some gospel recordings. The  Spirit of Memphis Quartet recorded for King Records on location at the Masonic Temple in Memphis in  1952. Earlier the Reverend W.H. Brewster had recorded in 1950 for Gotham on titles which may have  been made at WDIA radio or another Memphis location. WDIA radio would have been the most likely  place for the recording of black music in 1949, and in fact the first two records made by B.B. King were  recorded at WDIA radio for Nashville's Bullet label ".
JANUARY 1952
 
Elvis Presley see the Newborn family band with Calvin Newborn and Phineas Newborn Jr. at such  local nightspots as the Flamingo Room at Hernando and Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee, and the  Plantation Inn in West Memphis, Arkansas.
 
"He got rhythm from my dad, he got boogie-woogie from my brother and he got his poise from me", assert Calvin Newborn. Of course there are dozens of musicians  around Memphis who'll tell you just how much Elvis Presley got from them, but Calvin has a point. Back  then, the youngest Newborn was a wild man, famed for a stage act that included leaping into the air in  midsolo, a routine that earned him the nickname "Legs". 
 
PLANTATION INN – Across the Mississippi Bridge in West Memphis, in the parking lot of Pancho's  Mexican restaurant, is the site where the Plantation Inn Nite Club once stood. While there's no marker,  plaque or sign noting that fact, the impact of the club, the music it hosted and the musicians it fostered,  can still be felt decades after its demise.
 
Today, a group of West Memphis civic and cultural interests, the city's Blues and Rhythm Society, Public  Library, Convention and Visitor's Bureau, and the Crittenden Arts Council, kicks off a two-day event  celebrating the rich legacy of the Plantation Inn.
 
The festivities begin this morning at Southland Park Gaming & Camp; Racing with an educational  symposium about the club. The panel includes ethnomusicologist Dr. David Evans; critic Robert Gordon;  folk art specialist Dr. Mike Luster; musicians Wayne Jackson, Calvin Newborn and Willie Mitchell;  former club bouncer Raymond Vega; and Brenda Berger O'Brien, daughter of PI founder Morris Berger. A dance concert will follow tonight, featuring trumpeter Jackson and an all-star PI Blues Band. A free  amateur blues contest will be Saturday at Worthington Park. 
 
"This event is part of a long-term project to really establish West Memphis' connection to the region's  music, which is pretty considerable," says Janine Earney, executive director of the Crittenden Arts  Council. "A lot of time we're just a footnote to Memphis, but many of the musicians lived and worked  here, and what happened in our clubs had a profound influence."
 
The Plantation Inn had a long and varied history. Once an actual plantation house, later it was a gambling  hall, and then a roadhouse. Morris Berger launched it as the Plantation Inn in 1942, and it soon became  the hottest destination in an area boasting a thriving nightlife.
 
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, West Memphis provided a lax legal environment that spawned a variety  of musical venues, like the Cotton Club and Danny's. While those clubs catered mostly to country music,  the Plantation Inn opened its stages to a host of great black acts: from the Newborn Family, father Phineas  and sons Calvin and Phineas Jr., to bandleaders like Ben Branch, Gene "Bowlegs" Miller and Willie  Mitchell. Although it survived an early-1960s crackdown on local clubs, the Plantation Inn closed its  doors in 1964, but not before playing a key role in shaping Memphis music.
 
Long before his trumpet would anchor the Memphis Horns and punctuate inimitable hits for the Stax  label, the West Memphis-raised Wayne Jackson got his education in Southland Park Gaming & Camp at  the Plantation Inn. "When I was a kid I always heard about the Plantation Inn," says Jackson. "It was one  of those places the adults went. They had linen tablecloths, good steaks and good music. Then as time  went by, and we became teenagers we would go and sit around and listen to the bands and the singing.  They'd serve us a beer and look the other way. We thought we were big time. But we got to hear what was  being played and fall in love with the music."
 
"There were times where I couldn't get in," recalls veteran musician/producer Jim Dickinson. "Like if I  didn't have a phony I.D. or something. So many a night I just went over there and got drunk in the parking  lot, stayed in my car listening to the music, because you could hear it from outside."
 
Author Robert Gordon, who devoted a chapter to the Plantation Inn in his 1995 book "It Came From  Memphis," notes that the club provided a whole generation of white musicians, often underage, with their  first serious dose of black music.
 
"Kids could get into clubs more easily across the river, and the exposure to bands like Willie Mitchell's or  Phineas Newborn's group, or the many others who came and went was crucial," says Gordon. "It provided  those kids with a kind of primer for Southland Park Gaming & Camp: for the rhythms and the repertoires  and the unusual horn arrangements."
 
"Of course some of those same bands also played Memphis clubs, it was just much harder to get into to  see them," adds Gordon. "Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn (of Booker T. & the MGs) tell a story about  going to the Flamingo Club on Beale Street and standing in the stairwell and listening to the music. But,  because they were kids and were white, they couldn't get in beyond that. But in West Memphis you could  practically get on the stage."
 
Beyond just witnessing the groups, the sights and sounds of what went on at the Plantation Inn had a  visceral impact on those who would come to help define Memphis music throughout the 1960s and  1970s.  "A lot of people say the origins of the 'Memphis Sound' began at the Plantation Inn, and I think there's a  lot of truth to that," says Jackson. "We did get a lot of the ideas from those bands. We dressed up and  shined our shoes and did steps, we got that idea from the Four Kings, who were Willie Mitchell's band.  We just learned about rhythm and blues and what you had to do to make people dance. So at Stax, we  always played with that intention."
 
To Dickinson, it was Plantation Inn bandleader Ben Branch and his group the Largos who provided a key  inspiration. "They were the single most significant influence on what became the Memphis sound. All of  what became soul music was derivative of what Ben Branch and Largos were doing," says Dickinson.  "But overall, the PI itself developed a kind of sound. That had more to do with the same musicians in  different groups coming and going. It was sort of what continued happening in the recording studios in  Memphis later on, how the same group of musicians developed a kind of interplay and a style''.
 
As part of the tribute event, Jackson will be playing in a band led by Marvell Thomas, a Plantation Inn  veteran who was a member of "Bowlegs" Miller's group as a teen, that will include local notables like  guitarist Skip Pitts and saxman Jim Spake, among others.
 
The Plantation Inn Blues Band will be performing a set of standards from the club's heyday. "We'll be  doing stuff from the 1940s through the 1960s. Songs like ''Tennessee Waltz'', ''Missouri Waltz'', which  were favorites of the Berger family'', says Jackson. "And songs by Bowlegs Miller like ''One More Time'',  Willie Mitchell's ''20-75'', and a whole bunch of other things from the era''.
 
As the Crittenden Arts Council's Janine Earney notes, the Plantation Inn event is just the first step in a  larger effort to highlight West Memphis' contributions to the region's musical history and heritage. "It's  important that document our history because it's very valuable. B.B. King lived and worked here, as did  Sonny Boy Williamson, and Howlin' Wolf. So there's a really rich wonderful musical tradition in West  Memphis, and the Plantation Inn is a very big part of that''.
 
CALVIN AND PHINEAS NEWBORN JR. - Born and rased in Memphis, Tennessee, his father Phineas  Newborn Sr. was one of the most in-demand drummers on Beale Street, playing in most of the top bands.  In 1949, Newborn Sr. formed with his sons, Calvin on guitar, and Phineas Jr. on piano, his own band. A  few earlier the young Newborns made their debut on Beale at the street's legendary amateur contest at the  Palace Theater. Calvin says the Newborn family band had a particularly strong influence on a young  white musician who often came by to see the group on local nightspots in Memphis.
 
In the early 1950s, Calvin and his family band helped B.B King make his first recordings in the studios of  WDIA, and the family band appeared on many early Sun Records recordings. Phineas junior continued  playing his behind off. it was, in fact, that portion of his anatomy that caused him to alter the  pronunciation of his first name. Phineas senior preferred the rather unorthodox "Fine-us", even spelling it  phonetically on the familyband's equipment. But Calvin recalls that in high school groups of girls would  follow his elder brother down the halls.
 
In the early 1950s, the Newborn family band was one of the hottest acts on the Memphis club scene.  Calvin's wild guitar playing and even wilder showmanship, and Phineas senior's rocksolid rhythm.  Phineas junior didn't want to just to play blues for a living and jazz after hours. A couple of years after the  early B.B. King sessions, the pianist, like so many Memphis jazzmen, left for the jazz capital of New  York. Blessed with dazzling technique, an unerring sense of swing, and deep blues feeling, Newborn  formed his own trio in 1955. He earned rave reviews for a 1956 appearance at New York's Club Basin  Street.
 
In 1958, he teamed with bassist-composer Charles Mingus to provide the music for jazz-loving filmmaker  John Cassavetes "Shadows". A year later the pianist travelled to Europe with Jazz from Carnegie Hall  tour.  As always in the music business, talent alone wasn't enough to guarantee commercial success, and  Newborn's genius proved too fragile. Problems with drugs and alcohol exacerbated his already delicate  emotional make-up, and the pianist was occasionally committed to mental hospitals during the sixties and  seventies. In 1989, Newborn, weakened by drug and alcohol abuse, died of heart problems at fifty-seven.
 
FEBRUARY 1952
 
Gladys Presley is forced to quit her job at St. Joseph's Hospital because, with her salary figured in, the  family is earning too much money to qualify for public housing. Vernon explain to the Housing Authority  that he has hurt his back and been out of work for a while and that the family is "trying to pay ourselves  out of debt. Bills are pressing and don't want to be sued". As a result, The Presleys are permitted to sign a  new lease at $43 per month.
 
FEBRUARY 1952
 
Chess and the Biharis resolved their conflict in an agreement by which Chess kept Howlin' Wolf and the  Biharis kept Roscoe Gordon from Sun Records. Chess released their second Wolf single immediately  after the deal was struck. Nevertheless, both Wolf and Roscoe would have to wait a number of years to  recapture their initial success.
 
"The first time I saw Howlin' Wolf", says Jim Dickinson on June 1990 in Hernando, Mississippi, "I was  still too young to know any better. It was the early 1950s. I was with my father at a warehouse in West  Memphis, Arkansas. My father and the warehouse manager were counting cartons of clothes pins. Over  the hum of the big band built into the wall I could hear what sounded like jungle drums. I followed the  pounding up wooden stairs to an office. Painted on the glass door was a lightning bolt and red letters  KWEM RADIO. The door was open. Four negro men in unbleached work clothes were playing music.  One man - bigger than the others - was growling words I could not understand into a silver microphone.
 
I watched until my father found me. The music stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. I found it later on  the radio. KWEM - 1070 WDIA "The Black Spot On Your Dial" - WLOK 1340 with Hunky Dory -  Dewey Phillips Red Hot And Blue on 56 WHBQ radio.
 
I had an older friend with a 78rpm copy of Wolf's "I Love My Baby". I listened to it over and over. Then  one day in Ruben Cherry's "Home Of The Blues" record shop on Beale Street, I saw the grey album cover  with the drawing of a lone wolf howling to the moon. I took it to the check-out counter, and Ruben said,  'Boy, you got the blues there'.  "I was hooked. In 1958 my high school combo was playing versions of "Evil" and "Killing Floor" to our  white teenaged Memphis audience. By the mid-1960s the Rolling Stones were playing Howlin' Wolf songs to the world.
 
I have heard Sam Phillips say that his discovery of Wolf was more significant than his discovery of Elvis  Presley. The Only artist to share the surreal darkness of Robert Johnson, Wolf brings out his band an  ensemble counterpoint unlike anything else in the blues. His voice seems to hang in the air, and make the  room rumble with echo. His singing is so powerful that between the vocal lines the compressor-limiter  through which the mono recordings were made sucks the sound of the drum and the French harp up into  the hole in the audio mix. Notes blend together and merge into melody lines that are not being 'played' by  any one instrument. Wolf is not bound by the three-chord blues pattern, and often seems to crass the bar  lines of western music. He is a Primitive-Modernist, using chants and modal harmonies of the dark  ritualist past brought up from mother Africa and slavery through electric amplifiers.
 
Like the unsolvable mystery of 'smokestack lightning', Howlin' Wolf contribution to the blues goes  beyond musical phrases. The 'idea' of Howlin' Wolf makes blues history somehow deeper and richer.  Bloody but unbowed, Chester Burnett is forever frozen in the time - space of these first recordings made  by Sam Phillips. Howlin' Wolf sings out his frustrations, never surrendering to the hopeless situation of  existence. The same giant pulled a plow like a man-mule in the Mississippi Delta, and lived to ride a  Shriners' minimotorcycle  on-stage at the Newport Folk Festival.  He toured the world playing the blues, and would sit in his hotel room in his boxer shorts and do-rag, and  imitate Senator Everett Dirkson. His life is a legend. His legacy is a treasure as unique as the man  himself. Share his vision of love, sex, death, and man's predicament in the Universe. Heed the call of the  Wolf, the haunted cry of an animal alone in the night. And that music, loved Elvis Presley".
 
FEBRUARY 1952
 
Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner leave Sun Records for Chess Records in Chicago. Sam Phillips need to  find new talent ever pressing, he turned to a precocious young piano player named Rosco Gordon.  Eddie Hill leaves Memphis to work for WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee.
 
FEBRUARY 1952
 
Sam Phillips borrowed some money from Nashville record magnate Jim Bulleit to begin his Sun Records  operation. Sam learned a great deal from Bulleit. Bulleit's company provided another model for Sun  Records. Sam Phillips reasoned he could duplicate its success in Memphis.  "I thought I could maybe make a go of a company that just recorded rhythm and blues numbers", Phillips
recalled.
 
APRIL 1952
 
Elvis Presley returns to work at Loew's State Theater but is fired five weeks later after an altercation with  another usher. Loew's State became notable for being the place where Elvis Presley got his first job, in  1948, as an usher and later being fired, and then re-instated. The auditorium was built into an older  warehouse which actually fronted Second Street. Second Street wasn't a suitable address for such a  prestigious theater so Loew's acquired a single storefront on Main Street which aligned with the  warehouse/auditorium on 2nd. Unfortunately, there was an alley between the two buildings which the  City of Memphis would not allow Loew's to close off. The solution? The storefront was gutted and turned  into a lovely half-block-long lobby which ended in a single grand stairway. This stairway rose to a level  high enough to allow a bridge over the alley and entered the auditorium at balcony level. When the LS  was not at peak capacity, the sign on the stairs said "downstairs closed" instead of the usual "balcony  closed" so familiar to those going to the movies in the 1960's.
 
The State had a vaudeville stage and pit. The hall was never renovated during its life and so retained all  it's Thomas Lamb "Loew's Adam" decor to the end. The first organ in the Loew's State was a Moller. It  was replaced by a Wurlitzer in the mid-1920's. The 2 big Loew's theaters in downtown Memphis were  under construction at the same time.
(Above) One of the places Elvis and his friends visited was the The Blues Shop, or sometimes called Charlies, a record store. Customers could take a record from the inventory and listen to the music on phonograph players inside the store.
 
It was  at 281 North Main according to the 1954 Memphis telephone directory. Storefront right next of the Suzore II is the apparent location for this store.  
 
SUMMER 1952
 
Elvis Presley started hanging out at The Blues Shop, referred to as "Charlie's", a little records store, which  was at next to the Suzore II on 286 North Main Street across the firehouse. It had a jukebox and a little  soda fountain and even sold "dirty" Red Foxx comedy records under the table. 
 
The owner Charlie Hazelgrove, never kicked anyone out; the store was a hangout for youngmen who were passionate about the music.
 
"One time we were hanging around Charlie's", recalled Johnny Black, "and Elvis said to me,  'Johnny, someday I'm going to be driving Cadillacs. It's so weird to think about - we're talking about an  era when we probably couldn't have gotten the money together for a Coke between us".
 
"In 1954, I was in Charlie's Record Shop and Elvis Presley came in and asked to borrow a dollar-fifty",  said Barbara Pittman. "I asked him what he needed the money for. He said, 'I'm broke. I need the money  for a movie'. I was earning money babysitting at the time. I coughed up my life savings - that buck-fifty -  and gave it to him. I thought maybe he was going to take me with him to that movie. But he went off without me. Spent fifty cents each getting himself and Dixie Locke into the movie and spent a quarter  each for a bag of popcorn". "And he never paid me back the dollar-fifty! In 1978 they brought me to an  Elvis convention in Chicago to relate my memories of being with Elvis and they paid me fifteen hundred  dollars. I finally got my money back!".
This paperback "The 1952 Senior Herald" from Humes High School in Memphis, Tennessee,  belonged to Frances Grear, as noted on the first page in blue ink. This was Elvis' junior year and he  is pictured twice: first in a group photograph of the Company B Second Platoon ROTC, near the  center in the second row in uniform, and then again on page 57 in the back row of the second year  speech group photo. Elvis has signed and inscribed above the platoon photograph in blue ink, "Best  of everything to a very likable girl Elvis''.
 
Notations and inscriptions from various friends and  classmates appear throughout the yearbook. The yearbook is being sold with a letter from Frances  Hunter which reads in part, "It's still hard to believe the very quiet and polite young man in my  Speech and Drama Class became the King of Rock And Roll. He did not sing at school until the  senior year I'm told. The only time I heard him sing in those early years was in our Speech And  Drama Class. Miss Lochrie brought in a machine that made these 45 plastic records. She allowed us  to sing, play an instrument or perform a drama piece and she recorded it''.
SUMMER 1952
 
According to his cousin Gene Smith, Elvis Presley particularly enjoyed the choir at the Centenary African   Methodist Episcopal Church at 878 Mississippi Boulevard in Memphis, and the two after sat in on   Sunday morning services. It is difficult to imagine the two boys only white faces in the otherwise allblack congregation, yet they were always welcomed.
 
Out of courtesy Elvis Presley and Gene Smith sat in the balcony, as blacks were required to do when they   visited white churches and social events.  "Elvis would be swept up by the singing", Gene said, "and   although he couldn't sing alone with the choir down on the ground floor because we had to be respectful   and keep quiet, he continually wanted us to go there on Sundays so we could sit and listen to the hymns   being sung and partake of the spiritual power of that particular gospel group". The Bible Days Revival  Church now occupies this building. 
 
SUMMER 1952
 
Elvis Presley showing up backstage at the monthly gospel concerts at Ellis Auditorium on North Mean   Street. These shows were produced by the Blackwood Brothers Quartet, a local institution with a national   following. The Blackwood family belonged to the same church as the Presley's, and Elvis Presley knew   several members quite well. During these visits, he met performers who would play an important part in   his professional life. J.D. Sumner, who would sing bass behind Elvis in the 1970s, was with the Sunshine  Boys at this time. Sumner remembers assisting Elvis in getting backstage. G.L. Coffey, building   superintendent at the Auditorium, recalls that Elvis Presley would walk on stage after the show and sing   over the public address system to the empty Auditorium.
 
Along with the gospel concerts, Elvis Presley was a frequent visitor to the East Trigg Baptist Church   located at 1189 East Trigg Avenue in Memphis. Here, Reverend W. Herbert Brewster was supported by   one of the finest black gospel choirs in the South. The lead vocalist with the choir was Queen Cee   Anderson. According to elders at the church, while Elvis Presley was in High School he often sang as a  member of the East Trigg congregation. "Those white boys used to get out sometimes", Brewster recalled.   "They were emotional and they got out on the road sometimes... The Happy Goodman Brothers, I wrote   for them too, and several other white groups. They took the songs and didn't do much changing. Elvis   Presley came out here, a truck driver, and now he is the greater thing". Elvis Presley never recorded any   of Brewster's songs, he did absorb a good many of the other songs he heard at East Trigg and over the  airways.
REVEREND HERBERT W. BREWSTER - Pastor of the East Trigg Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. An important composer and contemporary of Thomas A. Dorsey, Brewster composed scores  of gospel songs beginning in the early 1930s.  Many of his compositions were written specifically for his  choir of the Brewster Singers with his famed soloist, Queen C. Anderson, but two of his songs, "Move On  Up A Little Higher" by Mahalia Jackson, and "Surely, God Is Able", gained wider popularity. He also  wrote Clara Ward's "How I Got Over".
 
"My music has never been to make money", Brewster would say. A gospel song was simply a sermon set  to music, he felt, and a good sermon has the power to influence. Harper Brewster knew that the challenge  of any minister is to get people attention. "It's a funny thing", Reverend Brewster once said, "So many  people will listen to a song when they won't listen to a sermon". Once when he was criticized by a group  of ministers for putting "all that jubilation" into his services, Reverend Brewster said, "You want to catch  fish, you got to fish with the kind of bait they'll come to. If singing a song too slow rocks them to sleep,  pick it up". He was thrilled that so many people would come to his church to hear his music. Brewster  recalled, "There'd be as many white faces - and sometimes more - than black faces at evening services.  Elvis Presley was just a casual boy who came for the singing".
 
Reverend Harper Brewster used the power of music to fill the thirty-two pews of his small church. His  radio show on WDIA radio, called "Old Camp Meeting Of The Air", was one of the first gospel shows on  radio, and through it he was introduced to a white audience who eventually came to the church to hear his  powerfully delivered message. He had the gift of "whooping" - the ability to tell a story in a melodious  style. His sermons were lyrical and dramatically delivered in his rich, mellifluent voice. And the music,  well, everyone came to hear the music.
 
EAST TRIGG BAPTIST CHURCH - Located at 1189 East Trigg Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, Reverend  Harper Brewster had a favorite saying, "When grace is in, race is out". The doors of his black church in  South Memphis were open to everyone, and the number of white visitors who sat in his congregation  during the years before desegregation were testimony to his ministerial gift. One of those visitors was  Elvis Presley.
 
Today East Trigg Baptist Church is still active, although the congregation is now predominately black.  After the turmoil surrounding Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in Memphis in 1968, many white  people avoided places that they considered to be predominantly black, such as the East Trigg  neighbourhood. 
 
GUY L. COFFEY - Was concessions manager at the Ellis Auditorium. About an hour before a show, he  would open the doors on Poplar Avenue, on the south side of the building, and look out over a sea of allwhite  faces boys from Humes High, South Side and Tech High schools, all wanting a chance to make a  dollar or two in commissions so they could buy school lunches the next day, the following week.
 
"I had gone to Humes", said Coffey, "so I knew what this meant to them. I knew they needed the money.  So, in selecting, I always leaned toward the Humes kids. They were good kids. Elvis Presley would show  up for the Monday night wrestling matches, for the gospel sings, for the country music gigs. He stuck  mostly to selling Cokes. On a good night, he could earn three or for dollars. And while the money was  needed, equally important to Elvis was the opportunity to be around performers. Sometimes, after a night  event had ended and the Humes kids had settled up, financially, Elvis would go up on stage and play to  imaginary crowds, bowing to their applause", said Coffey.
 
"I would have to tell him, 'Come on now, Elvis, we have to close the place up'. And he would say 'Yes,  sir', and we would walk silently out of the building", said Coffey.

BLACKWOOD BROTHERS  - Perhaps the most popular group in southern gospel music history, the  Blackwood Brothers parleyed their rural Mississippi sharecropping background into a million-dollar  entertainment empire. 

For many fans in both the South and the mid-West, the Blackwoods defined the  singing quartet style that is the backbone of classic southern gospel music and engineered many of the   musical and promotional innovations that permitted gospel singers to professionalize their music.
 
They   were among the first to issue their own phonograph records, to break from the songbook publishers that   had dominated gospel music for the first four decades of the century, to begin their own radio   transcription service, to consciously seek out and adapt new or original songs, to travel by air, and to  adapt harmonics and accompaniment appealing to a nationwide popular audience.
 
The original quartet was formed in 1934 at Ackerman, Mississippi, by three brothers, Roy, Doly, and   James, sons of a Delta sharecropper and his wife who sang casually in church; the fourth member was  Roy's young son, R.W. By 1937 the group found itself broadcasting on radio at Jackson, Mississippi,   doing not only gospel but pop and country tunes, and after April 1939 they performed on a 50,000-watt   station, KWKH, recently opened in Shreveport, Louisiana. Here they began an affiliation with the   songbook publisher V.O. Stamps, who provided them with a car, contracts, a stipend, and a piano player,   thus casting them into the format of "four man and a piano" that had become characteristic of earlier   gospel quartets. In 1940 Stamps sent them to Shenandoah, Iowa, where they began a decade's stay at   KMA that saw them develop their unique style and build a huge following in the mid-West.
 
At Shenandoah the quartet began to experiment with modern harmonies (built on sixth and ninth chords),   developing their precise enunciation and diction and borrowing verve, dynamics, and solo breaks from   pop and black gospel music. In 1946 they began to make records, first on the White Church label and then   on their own Blackwood label, recording some 49 singles between 1946 and 1951. A move back from   Shenandoah, Iowa to an office on Jefferson Avenue in Memphis in August 1950 put them in the center of   the then-burgeoning gospel movement, where both black and white groups vied for air time and for places   at "all-night sings", popularized by promoter Wally Fowler in 1948 and 1949, in Ellis Auditorium at   North Mean Street in Memphis.
 
With their broadcasting base at WMPS radio, the Blackwoods - now with only two of the original four   still singing - became one of the first postwar gospel groups to sign with a major label when they began  recording for RCA Victor on January 4 1952. Hit records and a win on the nationally broadcast Arthur  Godfrey Talent Scouts show in 1954 followed. Memphis Mayor Frank Tobey issued a proclamation   designating the date as Blackwood Brothers Quartet Day for the "great credit" the group brought to the   city, but barely two weeks after the Godfrey show two members of the group, R.W. and bass singer Bill  Lyles, were killed in a plane crash. On July 2, 1954, Governor Frank Goad Clement gave the eulogy at the   funeral.
 
Within a month the Blackwoods had recovered and regrouped and were back on the concert circuit;   another Blackwood, Cecil, the brother of R.W., stepped in, as did bass singer Jerry D. Sumner, who was   to play an important role in the group's sound throughout the 1950s. A string of national television  appearances and successful record albums followed in the mid-1950s, and the group's promotional   activities reached new heights through their founding of the National Quartet Convention in 1957 and of a   new all-gospel record company, Skylite, in 1960 as well as through the purchase of several of the old  gospel songbook companies, which had fallen on hard times. From 1967 to 1977 the group won   numerous Grammy awards and as late as the mid-1970s still featured James Blackwood, his son Jimmy,   and his nephew Cecil.
 
The Blackwood Brothers discography is voluminous. In addition to hundreds of singles, it includes at   least 58 long-play albums on RCA Victor from 1956 to 1973 and at least 42 albums on the Skylite label   from 1961 to 1981; probably 20 albums exist on various other labels. Songs the Blackwoods have been   most associated with include "Have You Talked To The Man Upstairs" (their first RCA hit and the   winning song on the Godfrey show), "Swing Down Chariot", "My Journey To The Sky", "Paradise   Island", "In Times Like These", "Looking For A City", and "The Old Country Church".
 
The influence of the Blackwood Brothers was perhaps at its strongest during Elvis Presley's later   performances. When Elvis began touring again in the 1970s, Elvis had gospel singers accompany him on   vocals. The first male quartet Elvis Presley employment was The Imperials, which included Terry  Blackwood, a son of Doyle. In 1972, Elvis Presley hired J.D. Sumner and The Stamps Quartet to perform   with him.
 
In times of their greatest need, the Presley family called upon the Blackwood family. Elvis Presley paid   for their flight back to Memphis so they could sing at his mother's funeral. Less than Twenty years later,   Vernon Presley asked James Blackwood (who then sang with the Masters Five) to sing at Elvis' funeral.   Today the Blackwood family continues to sing gospel music around the country. Only James Blackwood   remains from the original family quartet.
UNKNOWN DATE SUMMER 1952
 
There was one club, from owner-entrepreneur Andrew "Sunbeam" Mitchell, the Hippodrome, located on  500 Beale Street, that catered to young white kids. "If you looked like you wouldn't make trouble, they let  you in", Ronald Smith recalled. 
 
"We loved to go there and watch the black musicians", Elvis' friend  Kenneth Herman remembered. It was at the Hippodrome that Elvis Presley continued to develop his  musical style during 1952. Performances at the club also inspired Elvis Presley, Ronald Smith, and  Kenneth Herman to talk about making a record.
 
In sum, the atmosphere in Memphis was a very special one. On street corners, country bluesmen played  for tips. In Handy Park, jug bands vied with informal groups that played the blues and popular songs for  the crowd's attention. The theaters along Beale Street featured vaudeville blues singers such as Bessie Smith, Memphis Minnie, and Ma Rainey. Young musicians like Memphis Slim and Sunnyland Slim, who  drifted in as supporting musicians, wound up as local celebrities. The Memphis blues scene soon took on  a professional quality. When Elvis Presley began frequenting Beale Street in the early 1950s, it was in the  midst of a revolution.
SUMMER 1952
 
Elvis Presley frequent attended at the Blackwood Brother' Record Shop and Offices, located at 186  Jefferson Avenue in Memphis. The shop at Jefferson provided office space for their various enterprises  and a retail outlet for their recordings. Doyle Blackwood stopped performing with the group to manage  this shop. It was open for business in the early 1950s, so it is likely that Elvis Presley did visit the site.
 
BLACKWOOD BROTHERS RECORD SHOP AND OFFICES - During the 1950s, an office and shop  located at 186 Jefferson Avenue served as the headquarters for the Blackwood Brothers, a gospel quartet  that had a profound effect on Elvis Presley. In 1960, the Blackwood moved their shop to 209 North  Lauderdale Street, just around the corner from Poplar Tunes. This shop had room for their own recording studio and coincided with the creation of Skylite Records, their record label.
 
The Blackwood Brother's Record Shop and Offices were located on the northwest corner of the  intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Third Street. The building has been replaced by the One Memphis  Place Office Tower. The Blackwood Brother's Shop at 209 North Lauderdale Street is still visible. From  Poplar Avenue, turn left on Lauderdale Street. The shop is on the west side, just south of Exchange Street  and Lauderdale Courts.
UNKNOWN DATE MAY 1952
 
Elvis Presley, shopped at Lansky Brothers, a Memphis men clothing store, officially named Lansky's   Clothing Emporium, located at 126-128 Beale Street, established in 1949 by Bernard and Guy Lansky as   an Army surplus store.  Lanky's specialized in loud clothing, i.e. yellow suits, pink sport coats, and white   shoes. The store catered mainly to black patrons, including Rufus Thomas and Junior Parker. Later, Elvis   Presley bought clothing from Lanky's for many years.
 
Many of the Sun recording artists - Sonny   Burgess, Billy Lee Riley, Charlie Feathers, Roy Orbison, Bill Justis, and brothers Johnny and Dorsey   Burnette - also bought their clothes at Lanky's. Elvis Presley's favorite colours where pink and black. 
 
Lanky Brothers provided the suits for both Elvis' and Vernon Presley's pallbearers at each one's funeral.   Among other things, the Lansky brothers owned their own Memphis record label for a while, Peak   Records. In 1956 Elvis Presley traded Bernard Lansky his Messerschmidt automobile for new clothing.   "He came down and looked through the windows before he had any money, we knew him strictly by   face", recalled Guy Lansky. "He was working at the theater at that time, holes in his shoes and socks, real   shabbily dressed, but he stood out, his hair, sure, but it was his... what I'm trying to say, it was his, you   know, manners. He was just a very nice person".
LANSKY BROTHERS UNIFORM SHOP/MISSISSIPPI RIVER CAFE/BLUE LIGHT  PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO (THAN NAMED ELVIS PRESLEY'S MEMPHIS CAFE) NOW A NEW LOCATION ON THIS SIDE  - Before 1890.   Located at 126-128/130 Beale Street, tel, 901/525-3655, across Second Avenue, Lansky's Clothing   Emporium outfitted the best of Memphis' musicians, including Rufus Thomas, Junior Parker, Sonny   Burgess, Roy Orbison, B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Rufus Thomas, and others. 
 
In 1946 Samuel Lansky bought and opened a shop for his two sons, Bernard and Guy, at 126   Beale Street, originally a store which sold leftover Army supplies from World War II, Bernard   took advantage of the elevating Beale Street music scene and looked to provide clothing for   the typical characters of Beale who wanted to dress dapper. 
 
Elvis Presley first shopped at Lansky's in May 1952, when he was still in high school. Many items from   his "loud" wardrobe were purchased at Lansky's. He continued to shop here throughout his life. Upon   Elvis' death, Lansky's supplied his pallbearers with suits. Lansky gave Rufus Thomas free suits for advertising his store. When Rufus appeared on the stage of the Handy Theater, he opened his coat and   shouted, "Ain't I'm clean? You know who makes me clean?". The audience screamed back, "Lansky   Brothers!". Although this building currently has a single address, 130 Beale Street, it originally consisted   of three separate stores. Between 1900 and World war II, 126-128 Beale Street contained secondhand   clothing, furniture, restaurant, and shoe repair businesses. Beginning as a uniform store in 1946.
 
The building which housed Lansky's has undergone numerous changes. When Elvis Presley had his first   publicity photo taken, the Blue Light Studio was part of the Lansky building. In 1942 the Blue Light   Photography Studio entrance was located at the corner of 130 Beale Street and Second Street.   In January 1956, just before Elvis Presley first television appearance on Stage Show, he had a   professional portrait made there. It was not his first portrait, if you count the unflattering photograph   taken by a Memphis Press-Scimitar photographer just before his appearance at the opening of the Lamar-  Airways Shopping Center. Elvis Presley trusted the Blue Light Studio because he had passed by the shop   and looked at the pictures on display for years. On this particular day, Mrs. Margaret Sutton took Elvis'   photograph.
 
In the early 1960s, it became part of Lansky Brothers Big and Tall Men's Shop. The fate of the Lansky   building is uncertain, eventually it may reopen as a book and record shop in music history as the Center   for Southern Folklore (Phone 901-525-3655, Fax 901-525-3945. Documents the people and traditions of   the South with films and exhibits plus Memphis music, books, arts, and crafts. Beale Street and Delta   Region tours also offered. Distinctive gift-shop. Memphis musicians perform in an engaging smoke-free   performance space. Coffee bar. Admission is free. Contributions of $2 for adults and $1 for seniors suggested. Inquire for charges for guide tours). Although it deals with all aspects of Southern culture, this   museum provides the best in-depth background to Delta blues and rockabilly in Memphis. Special   exhibitions change regularly, and the walls are always covered with archive photos, obscure record   sleeves, and average biographies. Opened in 1989 and run on a nonprofit basis, the center also contains a   gift shop selling books about blues, plus compact disc compilations of various regional musical styles.   There's also a small performance space where septuagenarian blues pianist Mose Vinson, once a janitor at   Sun Records, plays every Friday and Saturday while enthusiastically explaining the basics of his boogiewoogie   style.
Prior to World War II, the building was used mostly as a restaurant. Thomas Pappas operated one from  around 1919 to 1940, usually under the workingsma's trademark, Joe's Lunch Room. In the summer of   1997 the new venue will called Elvis Presley's Memphis will open inside the renovated Lansky building. 
 
This club will be the first of several teemed nightclubs conceived by Elvis Presley Enterprises   Entertainment in the world. It will be a two-story restaurant and bar with seating for about 300 people, and it will have a performance stage and small retail area, plus a wine cellar. Live musical entertainment will be the key of the atmosphere, along with a first rate menu from southern food will be served and top   quality service. 
 
Mainstream blues, rock and roll and gospel will be a part of the musical mix, but the   emphasis will be on classic and current rock and roll, performed by known and up-and-coming bands. Of   course, Elvis Presley recordings and memorabilia on display, and specially produced Elvis videos will   have a constant presence.
 
The Blue Light Studio survived the decline of downtown Memphis. In the 1970s when Beale Street was  abandoned, the studio simply moved a few blocks away to 145 South Main Street. In 1994 the Blue Light   Studio moved again to 115 Union Avenue. Today one can still walk in to have a portrait taken, and one  can still see the portraits of Elvis Presley. The site of Lansky's at 126 Beale Street is now occupied by Elvis Presley's Memphis nightclub and restaurant.
 
The original location was on the northwest corner of Beale Street and Second street. Today the Blue Light   Studio is on Union Avenue between Main Street and Second Street, west of the Peabody Hotel. Lansky   Brothers today located on 149 Union Avenue, in the lobby of the luxurious Peabody Hotel, only a waddle   away from the famous Peabody ducks.
A note from Bernard Lansky's Clothier to the King reads: "Remember the excitement of the fifties? America was breaking away from the wholesome boy-next-door look in favor of ducktails, turned-up   collars and bopping to sings like "That's All Right", Mystery Train" and "Blue Moon Of Kentucky". 
 
It   was an era that changed the face of America - the world. Haven't you ever wanted to turn back the clock?  Be cool again? Here's your chance. I've just created this limited collection of clothes for the young at  heart, those who would like to go back to the freedom of the fifties when everybody, but everybody, was be-bopping to this evil music called rock and roll". 
 
In 1999 Bernard J. Lansky said, "I looked up one day and saw this young man looking at the display in   the window of our menswear store on Beale Street in Memphis. I had seen him before. I knew enough   about him to know he worked as an usher at Loew's State theater on Main Street, just around the corner. I  didn't know his name. But, I get ahead of the story of how Lansky's became known as Clothier to the   King".
 
Actually, as my brother and I started out just after coming home from the Army in World War Two, we   sold military surplus goods. The war was over. People were looking for inexpensive clothes. They could   come into our shop and drop down fifty cents and walk out of there with a cap or something. For a dollar  ninety-five, they could get a fatigue shirt or fatigue pants. All of this is a far cry from the reputation we   were to build within the next decade on Beale Street".
 
"When the surplus era began phasing out, we switched to high-fashion menswear and all the merchants up   and down Beale, and around the corner on Main Street, were looking at us with raised eyebrows. High   fashion? On Beale? Are you crazy or something?".
 
"But we had seen a void in the Memphis market. Practically everyone was selling the same plain old   things everyone else was selling. No one was selling really high fashion clothes. I mean, we carried   nothing but the finest. That's what the kids of the late forties, early fifties wanted. And we gave it to them".
 
"Now, back to that young man eyeballing the haberdashery in our window. I walked outside to greet him   and told him, 'Come on in and let me show you around'. He said, 'I don't have any money. But when I get   rich, I'm going to buy you out'. I had no idea what his name was, but I told him, 'Do me a favor, will you?   Just buy from me. I don't want you buying me out'".
 
"And that's how Elvis Presley began shopping at Lansky's and via our connection with Elvis and a flood   of other well-known artists, that's how we earned the reputation of Clothier to the King. Elvis started out   buying things in a pink and black combination. After his early records on the Sun label began making him  a local hero, all the kids were swarming down to Lansky's on Beale because they wanted pink and black,   just like Elvis wore".
 
"We had everything they wanted. Black pants with pink shirts with big high collars; the row collars with   the big sleeve; with three button sleeves; and with big sleeve cuffs. Something different. They were   looking for something different, and we gave it to them".
 
"We knew what this young man should be wearing when he went on stage, on television, things like that.   We knew he should be wearing something different from what other entertainers were wearing. So we   started him out with big shirts, peg pants, half-boots of patent leather. He would also come into the store   and buy fly clothes. This was with the rolled up collars".
 
"He would watch TV and see those gangsters wearing those big hats - we called them Dobbs hats. I think   we sold them for twenty-five, thirty dollars. They would cost a hundred and a half today. Elvis would call   and say, 'Mr. Lansky, send me over a half-dozen of them hats. And send some over for the other guys,   too'. So everybody in the group - they later became known as the Memphis Mafie - got a hat".
 
"Elvis was a dynamite young man. What he did for us... well, he was a great public relations man for us.   Anybody asking him where he got his clothes, he would answer, 'I got them from Lansky's on Beale.   Once he hit it really big, he came in more often and, no, he never bought me out. Every time he dropped  by he wanted something different. We outfitted him for his appearances on the Louisiana Hayride. We   outfitted him for the Ed Sullivan and Dorsey Brothers shows on TV. Knowing he was going on the   Sullivan show, I sold him a coat with a velour collar. That was a real shock, that and his pegged pants and  patent leather half-boots".   "And despite how tremendously big he became - you know RCA/BMG has named him Artist Of The   Century - he was the nicest ever want to Meet. It was always, 'Yes, sir, Mister Lansky'. And I would tell  him, 'Mister Lansky is my father. I'm Bernard'. And that never changed. And when he came in on a   shopping spree, if you happened to be in the store when he was there and you wanted something you   liked, he'd buy it. He didn't care who it was or what it was. He bought it for them".
 
"We sold to quite a few well-known entertainers: B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins,   Rufus Thomas, Bobbie Blue Bland, Charlie Rich. For years Rufus would go on stage and show off his   clothes and say, 'Ain't I clean? Lansky's. Rufus introduced Walking The Dog and Do The Funky Chicken   to the world. When we went to the markets, we were always on the lookout for something different for   Elvis, because Elvis would put them on and walk out on the streets and he was going to be our   advertising, our billboard".  "People would ask, 'Elvis, where are you buying your clothes'? And he would say 'Lansky's. We did a lot   of mail order sales because of him. He was a real sharp dresser. Real neat. His clothes looked great on   him. He was clean as Ajax. I mean, really nice. We would get new merchandise in and we would load it  into a truck and I would have my son drive it out to Graceland for Elvis to look at. When the truck came   back, it was empty. Elvis had taken all of it".
 
"I still remember his size. At that time it was a 42 coat with a 32 waist, a size 10 1/2 boot. He wore a   medium shirt - 15 1/2 by 34 shirt. We knew what Elvis concerts were like, filled with screaming women.   When he first started throwing scarves into the audience, those were scarves we got for Elvis. When Elvis   came into the shop, I would treat him like a baby. Put clothes on him. Stand him in front of a mirror.   Marked his clothes (for alterations). And I would say, 'Elvis, this is what you want, right here. This is   what I've got for you'. And he would start laughing, and then buy it".
 
"He walked into the sore one day and said, 'Come look what I've got'. Outside, he showed me a German   Messerschmidt car, saying it had been given to him by RCA Victor, his record label then. I said, 'Elvis,   that's a nice one. When you get tired of it, I want it. That's mine. He laughed. And thirty days later he gave   me the car. I still have it". "And I still have all those wonderful memories of when Elvis was a Number   One customer and a Number One walking billboard for Lansky's, which soon became known as the   Clothier to the King".
 
In 1981, Bernard Lansky bought out his brother, and he and his son Hal Lansky opened a bigand-tall l business. It grew to 11 Lansky Big and Tall stores and Hercules stores in the Mid-  South. In 1994, they sold for a nice profit.
 
In 2001, Lansky's established a new line of clothing entitled "Clothier To The King," which   provides reproductions of clothing that Elvis actually wore combined with new 1950s-inspired   clothing. Lansky Brothers has since moved its location from Beale Street to Memphis'   renowned Peabody Hotel, but is still as busy as ever. Bernard Lansky remains an ideal figure   of Memphis history. Musicians that currently shop there include Elvis Presley made it famous   for the likes of The Jonas Brothers, Robert Plant, Eddie Floyd, Stephen Stills, Steven Tyler,   Dr. John, Gavin DeGraw, and numerous others.
 
On Sunday August 14, 2011, Lansky Bros. will unveil a historical marker located at 126 Beale   Street to celebrate the history of Lansky Bros. at the original location.
 
Guy Garret Lansky died on January 6, 2005 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at his Jewish   home in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 83. His brother and storyteller, and most notably, Clothier to the King, Bernard Joseph Lansky passed away peacefully at the age of 85   on November 15, 2012 at his home in Memphis, Tennessee.
 
On July 3, 2014, the old Lansky Brothers clothing store, and Elvis Presley's Memphis Cafe is rebuilt for the new location of the Hard Rock Cafe after 16 years at 315 Beale Street. The renovation costing $2.5 million dollars.
JUNE 1952
 
One of the first clubs that Eddie Bond with his Stompers hired Elvis Presley to play was at the Veterans of  Foreign Wars (VFW) Hall, 4263 Old Highway 51 South in nearby Hernando, Mississippi, rural town, half  an hour from Memphis, Hernando was home to a long, white VFW building with a huge parking lot, one  often used by moonshine whiskey drinkers. It was located on the outskirts of town and, according to  Bond, "drew a hell of a crowd". 
 
Saturday night dances were a tradition, and people of all ages showed up for the music. The young men  dressed up and the girls had on their finest dresses. At intermission time, the parking lot was filled with  refreshment seekers. "Elvis Presley was nervous that hot summer night in Hernando", Edyth Peeler, a  local resident recalled. "He wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a plaid jacket. We had no idea who he  was". "They surrounded him at the intermission. He sure was a good-looking boy. 
 
Now that I recall, I also  liked his singing". Comments like these were repeated by a number of other Hernando residents, all of  whom had found memories of the night Elvis Presley performed in their little white VFW Hall. Elvis'  appearance with the band provided some insights into his future career. When Elvis Presley arrived in Hernando and got out of his car, he was horrified at the dance site. "Elvis' hand't played any country  honky-tonks", Eddie Bond recalled. "He was stunned by the drinking in the parking lot". Moonshine  whiskey was in abundance and it was not unusual for a gun to fire followed by a rebel yell. The VFW  dance was a place where the farmer, the small businessman, and local workers could let loose. Young girls, not so young women with big breasts, and the traditional-looking army couple crowded the dance  floor. To Elvis Presley, it was a strange environment to sing romantic ballads. Elvis Presley told Eddie  Bond that he would convert the crowd to his kind of music. Bond had no idea what Elvis Presley meant.  When Elvis Presley performed Guy Mitchell's 1950 classic "The Roving Kind" and Johnny Ray's 1951 hit  "The Little White Cloud That Cried", it was clear that he selected songs the locals liked. "I saw those  tunes on the jukebox inside the hall", Elvis laughed. "I knew those folks would like those songs", he told  Eddie Bond.
 
During his performance, Elvis Presley sang two sets of songs. During each set he sang "Crying In The  Chapel". No one was really sure why Elvis Presley repeated his songs, considering how many he knew.  The reason was simple. He used these small shows to perfect his delivery of a particular tune. Since he  favoured pop ballads, no one really cared if Elvis Presley sang a song more than once - he was able to  work the girls into a frenzy with anything he sang. What it amounted to, though, was that long before  Elvis Presley became the first rock and roll superstar, he was consciously practicing the act that would  take him to the pinnacle of show business success. 
 
Today the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall are still operate on the original location, and according  to Memphis musician Don McGregor: ''On March 12, 2011, my friend Jimmy Newman called a bunch of  musicians together to play at the Hernando VFW that day to help raise money for his good friend and  neighbor, Butch Angelo, who had recently had his house burned down by addled and irate relative. More people played than just the ones pictured. We called ourselves Lost Dog that day, one of the several  appellations applied to Crawpatch. (See www.crawpatch.com ). The band consisting that day of Jimmy  Newman, Brandy Parks, Andy Morton, Jimmy Crosthwait way in the back on washboard, the late, great  Sid Selvidge, and me, Don McGregor. Also playing with us that day were David Luttrell, Kenny Brown, and Dr. Charles McNutt. We raised a good bit of money for our friend Butch, and had a great time doing  it. The VFW is a timeless old place. Every one I've ever played in was exactly the same, full of the smells  of cigarette smoke and hot grease, and full of old friends who have known each other all their lives, who  gather there in the smoke filled rooms to drink their whiskey and beer, and tell all their old stories again  and again. I love the stories. Hunting stories, fishing Stories, and, in North Mississippi, Dane Layton  stories''.
 
Don McGregor is a Memphis, Mississippi and Arkansan son of the South. He has been playing music all  his life. Never overly interested or involved in mainstream music, he has always searched out the obscure,  the un-commercial, the un-championed jewels of real, unadulterated music often found on the back sides  of albums, on old 78’s, or written by friends and underground heroes. He has been writing original songs  since 1970's and, as all good songs must be, they are distilled from life experiences.  Don was involved in many Memphis underground bands during the early 1970’s such as Crawdad, Horse  Shoe, Briarpatch, and Crawpatch, as well as later bands such as The Rhythm Hounds and Ripple.  Currently recording as well as playing shows with The Bluff City Backsliders, 1920’s and 30’s jump jive,  Lost Dog, and the reunited Crawpatch, (country/bluegrass/Grateful Dead), he continues to write, record,  and perform his solo act.
(Above) Home for the  Incurables, 1467 McLemore Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded by the King's Daughters and Sons of Tennessee, the home opened in 1908.  A new building was completed in 1912.  The institution provides  a home for persons afflicted with diseases pronounced incurable.
 
UNKNOWN DATE PROBABLY JUNE 1952
 
Another venue for Elvis Presley and Eddie Bond was on the south side of Memphis at the Home for the  Incurables on  1467 McLemore Avenue in Memphis. According to Eddie Bond, Elvis Presley frequently entertained with the  band even though he wasn't always invited. When the musicians arrived to set up, Elvis would be there  waiting. In these appearances, according to both Ronald Smith and Eddie Bond, Elvis Presley sang  contemporary pop ballads.
 
Home For The Incurables was a residence for the physically handicapped, and  the patients loved to see live musicians. Johnny Fine was the group's bass player, and he remembers that Elvis Presley's ballads had a soothing effect upon the patients.
 
Ronald Smith often had to defend Elvis  Presley, because some of the other musicians were tired of seeing him show up at the gigs. "I used to be  Elvis would be waiting for us", Kenneth Herman remarked, "but we always let him sing something".  Kenneth Herman continued to reminisce: "We still don't know how Elvis Presley found out we were  playing". At the country or hillbilly nightclubs, Elvis Presley was adept at jumping on stage to fill a few  intermission minutes or to appear in an amateur night spot. It was typical of Elvis Presley find every  opportunity he could to play his music in front of an audience - any audience. "Sometimes we went to the  Home For The Incurables over in the Glenview area. They used to have live radio shows with live singers  there, recall Buzzy Forbess, "a West Memphis radio station set the whole thing up. Well, one night over at  the Home for the Incurables, Elvis got up on the stage and he picked his own guitar. The rest of us just  bopped while he was picking. The patients loved it. Elvis was playing his own version of Kay Starr's  "Harbor Lights". It's a slow song, you know, but Elvis was putting his own little touches to it. He couldn't  fast dance in those days, but he could slow dance. Everybody could slow dance".
 
"I had been playing in joints since I was fourteen", said Ronald Smith. "I knew a lot of musicians and you  could always put a band together by calling around. I got Curtis Lee Alderson, Kenneth Herman and Elvis  Presley to go with me out to Kennedy Hospital. The guys really enjoyed it. Some of them were there in  wheelchairs. Some on crutches. Curtis had a raw talent like no one you ever heard. We played mostly  jump tunes for the soldiers, nothing slow at Kennedy. And they applauded each song and really  appreciated our coming out there. But I think we were the ones who had all the fun that day".  "Elvis Presley was really in true form that night at the Memphis Home For Incurables", said Ronald  Smith. "After the show, one of the patients came up and he was mumbling what he was trying to say. We asked him two or three times to repeat himself, and he did, but he was mumbling so bad we couldn't  understand him".  "Finally, someone from the Home came over and asked him to repeat it, and then turned to Elvis Presley  and said, 'He wants to know if you have a bone in your ass'. We really laughed when we heard that", said  Smith. Alderson went on to a rewarding career in music in Las Vegas and Hollywood.
 
The Memphis music scene was a very competitive one, and it was a natural place for Elvis Presley to  develop his talent. In small clubs like the Silver Slipper, the Silver Stallion, the 1600 Club, the Green  Owl, the Green Beetle, the Rosewood, the Officers Club Airport, the Blue Haven, the Bon Air Club, the  Palms, the Coral, the Wayside Inn, the Gypsie Village, the Hut, the Hi-Hat Supper Club, the 5 Gables, the  Cottage Inn, the Peabody Hotel on Union Avenue, the Hotel Chisca, the Hotel Clarage, the Cotton Club in  West Memphis, Danny's, the Wagon Wheel, the Plantation Inn, and the VFW Hall in Hernando,  Mississippi, Elvis Presley learned his craft. These little, out-of-the-way clubs provided the training ground  for a number of other Memphis musicians who were soon to burst into the national spotlight. There was  also a "Teen Canteen" that offered an opportunity for fledgling musicians to find an audience.
 
GREEN OWL - A beer joint for blacks located at Market on the corner of 260 North Main Street. Despite  segregation in the South, the working-class neighborhoods were for the most part racially mixed. Living  in the inner city, Elvis Presley was exposed to all of the music and culture the black community had to  offer.  Charlie Bramlett, Elvis' boyhood friend who grew up at 573 Alabama Avenue, remembers a lot of black  entertainers performing on different corners in the neighborhood. Near Winchester Park, at the bottom of  the hill, were a lot of juke joints. "Going down there you'd hear really good black entertainment", Charlie  said. "They'd play harmonicas and guitars and pitch washers. That's the way it was on Beale Street too.  They would be out there singing and passing the hat".
 
The Green Owl was the joint, not far from where W.C. Handy once operated his office and sheet-music  shop and is the club that Buzzy Forbess remembers most from teenage days with Elvis Presley. "Every  now and then we would walk into the Green Owl, a beer joint for blacks. Elvis loved the Green Owl.  They always had a crowd there, and people would spill over onto the sidewalk. He particularly liked one  of the musicians in the Green Owl. This guy had fashioned a five-gallon bucket and a broom handle into a  bass, and he was pretty good at playing it".
 
"We would walk down to Beale Street and spend a lot of time looking at the photographs in the window  of the Blue Light Studio. We would spend a lot of time on North Main, in the theaters, and every now and  then we would walk into the Green Owl. It was the Green Beetle, for whites, down on South Main. Elvis  loved the Green Owl. They always had a crowd there and people would spill over onto the sidewalk",  remember Buzzy Forbess, "He particularly liked one of the musicians in the Green Owl. This guy had  fashioned a five-gallon bucket and a broom handle into a bass and he was pretty good at playing it".
 
For most southern whites, the black culture was witnessed from afar, still separate by law and custom no  matter how close they lived to one another. But Elvis Presley's love of black music, played at places like  the Green Owl, helped him to see past those barriers. As Vernon Presley once said. "Elvis was more color  blind than most". The Green Owl is now demolished.
 
RONALD SMITH - A South Side High School student who later graduated from Mann Private School,  Smith dated Barbara Hearn, who eventually went out with Elvis Presley. During his high school years,  Smith was a professional musician playing nightly in Memphis clubs. He had to leave South Side High  and enroll at Mann Private because of the rigorous demands of his music career.
 
Most Memphis observers rate Smith's guitar work as superior to Scotty Moore's. Because of his musical  skill, Ronald became a close friend of Elvis' during his last year at Humes High School and often went  out with him. It was Ronald Smith who organized Elvis' first band. In May 1952, they played their first  gig at the Hi-Hat
 
Supper Club on South Third Street and Ronald Smith remembers they didn't get paid. At the Hi-Hat,  Mark Waters played drums, Dino Dainesworth played saxophone and clarinet, Smith played guitar, and  Aubrey Meadows played piano. This band played pop music and hired Elvis Presley as the lead singer.  This was essentially Eddie Bond's band, but they were musicians who played rhythm and blues and dance  music. This band, with some change in members, played the Columbia Towers at Main Street, the Home  for the Incurables, and the Kennedy Hospital, located at 1030 Jefferson Avenue, with Elvis Presley as the  lead singer. In September 1954, Smith played at Cherry Valley High School in Arkansas and at the  Poughkeepsie, Arkansas, High School. Bob Neal booked these concerts, Elvis got paid but Ronald Smith,  Curtis Alderson, Kenneth Herman, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black didn't get paid for these gigs. "I wasn't  hostile, we were young and it was fun playing with Elvis", Smith remarked in 1986. Smith was also the  guitarist with Eddie Bond And The Stompers, and his rockabilly guitar riffs were an important influence  upon Elvis Presley. Smith also helped Elvis select 45rpm records and generally talked music with the  future King of Rock and Roll. A dedicated historian, Smith has preserved records, badges, memorabilia,  and artifacts that trace Presley's musical roots. He still active as a performer in the Memphis area.
 
KENNETH HERMAN - Steel guitar player, Kenneth (Kenne Dwain) Herman was born in Port Arthur  Texas in 1937. He and his mother and grand-mother moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1941. When he  was 8 years old he saved his change, for ever it seemed. He bought a harmony guitar for eight dollars. He  still has this guitar. When he was ten he bought a six string National steel guitar from a neighbor and learned how to play it.
 
By the time he was thirteen he had learned how to play well enough to win the Ted Mack Amateur  Show, out of New York City. He went on to play the Steel at the Grand Ole Opry, Louisiana Hayride an  all of the other places that played Country and Rockabilly Music. He played for Faron Young, Ernest  Tubb, and many other artists. He played for several years at the Western Steak House & Lounge in Memphis.
 
In the 1950s, he toured with Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Roy Orbison, Herman is an inordinately  talented musician who fused country and rockabilly music. Herman could also play the bass, and there  was talk for a time that he would replace Bill Black and tour with Elvis Presley. Like Ronald Smith,  Herman played with Elvis Presley prior to the Sun days and was a close friend of the Presley's. An intelligent maverick, Herman carved out a reputation in Memphis as a private investigator while  continuing to pursue country music as an avocation. He currently lives in Florida and pursues country  music.
 
EDDIE BOND AND THE STOMPERS - Country and rockabilly singer, disc jockey, promoter, radio and  television station impresario, song-writer, charity worker and law enforcement officer, all parts of the  multi-faceted person that is Eddie Bond. For over forty years now he had been completely immersed in  the southern musical culture that spawned the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison et all. Whether he is performing in Memphis, Tennessee, Drew, Mississippi or Prudhoe, Tyne and Wear,  England, Eddie Bond continues to be a living embodiment of the traditional sounds of country and  authentic rockabilly music. Bond was born in Methodist Hospital, Memphis, on July 1, 1933, Eddie  James Bond grew up in a South Memphis neighborhood in an apartment above Kickapoo Inn across the  street as a drug store soda jerk, an essentially non-musical family, which still provided some  encouragement to the young member of the family who, at the age of eight, had put together enough  nickels and dimes to buy his first guitar. His initial interest had been aroused by listening to Roy Acuff  and Ernest Tubb who, at the time, the early 1940s, were widely heard on the radio and record; his early experience of performing developed through his teenage years as he gigged around the beer joints of  Memphis. He attended Pine Hill Junior High School and South Side High School. On leaving school in  1950, he held down a variety of jobs including furniture factory worker, paint sprayer and, a job common  amongst Memphis rockabilly truck driver. After an eighteen month stint in the Navy, Bond returned to  work in paint, this time selling not spraying for Campbell and Son as a salesman. The time had now  moved on to 1952 and he formation of his band the Stompers took place over the ensuing months; wellknown  members would be Reggie Young, John Hughey, Jimmy Smith and Johnny Fine. Earlier  incarnations of the band included Ronald Smith, Enlo Hopkins, Cutis Lee Alderson and future "Musical  Warrior" for Charlie Feathers, Jody Chastain. In the early 1950s Bond played with the Snearly Ranch  Boys, and he developed a strong interest in country music. By 1953 Eddie Bond and the Stompers were a  fledgling country and western band with rockabilly overtones. Bond, who graduated from Memphis'  South Side High School two years before Elvis Presley, following failed auditions at Sun Records and  Meteor, Eddie secured as well-known musician signed a recording contract with Ekko in 1955, although  an Los Angeles company, had a Memphis office which was located at 36 North Cleveland in Memphis.
 
Although not certain, Eddie now believes the Ekko session was held at a Murray Nash Associates  connected studio in Nashville. Celebrated pickers were brought in by Artists and Repertoire man Red  Matthews, who supervised the session, resulting in two single releases at the tail-end of 1955; "Double  Duty Lovin" was coupled with "Talkin' Off The Wall" (Ekko 1015), "Love Makes A Fool (Everyday)"  being paired with "Your Eyes" (Ekko 1016). No fabulous sales were achieved but they formed the basis  for the next session which saw Eddie move further towards the bi-time and a major label deal for Mercury  Records in 1956. His band, the Stompers, included two fine musicians, one of whom - guitarist Ronald  Smith - was an important influence upon young Elvis Presley. Historians have overlooked the influence of  Eddie Bond and the Stompers upon Elvis, because Bond recorded after Elvis was already a regional star.  In 1953-1954, however, Bond hired Elvis Presley to sing "pop songs" at the Stompers' engagements. As a  result, Elvis was influenced by Bond's rockabilly and country singing style and intrigued by Smith's guitar  work. When Elvis' Sun Records sound emerged, it depended heavily upon Bond's style.
 
Other developments during this time included appearances on the Louisiana Hayride alongside Johnny  Horton, Elvis Presley and Sonny James, and further touring alongside Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Harold  Jenkins (later to become Conway Twitty), and Charlie Feathers. Concurrently a move to develop links with radio were set up when the "Eddie Bond Show" was  transmitted on KWEM, beginning a relationship with the airwaves that continues today. So now touring  was joined by broadcasting as well as recording in the continually broadening of the Bond career. At the  same time Eddie signed with Bob Neal's Stars Incorporated, located at 160 Union Avenue in Memphis  (now Holiday Inn Hotel), then looking after the interest of Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash with Warren  Smith and Roy Orbison soon to be added to the ranks.
 
Four sessions were recorded for and by Mercury, the first of which he poses a mystery. Held at radio  station WMPS in Memphis, and produced by Mercury Artists and Repertoire man Dee Kilpatrick, four  songs were recorded but only two were issued on Mercury, "I Got A Woman"/ "Rockin' Daddy" (Mercury  70826), the remaining two songs, "Sister Jenny Won't You Pray For Me" and "Blue Suede Shoes" do not  even appear on Mercury paperwork never mind tape vaults. Eddie Bond confirms they were recorded and  that he does not have tapes either. What happened here is unknown, perhaps an independently produced  session with an option taken up by Mercury was effected? Mercury usually recorded in Chicago or  Nashville, so why use WMPS radio in Memphis? Eddie is certain that Dee Kilpatrick was involved but  could he have been there in an audition situation resulting in these tapes being used by Mercury? There  has to be a reason for the remaining two titles not appearing at Mercury either on tape or on paper.  What is certain is that the Stompers' were featured on this cuts which, when released on a single, sold  healthily. Thirty-seven years on Eddie speculates: "It probably sold more than some current hits today as  figure are calculated quite differently".
 
Nashville was the location of the next session that produced Bond's strongest rockabilly performances  ever with "Boppin' Bonnie" (Mercury 70941), "Flip Flop Mama" (Mercury 70882), "Slip Slippin' In"  (Mercury 70882) and "Baby, Baby, Baby (What Am I Gonna Do)" (Mercury 70941) used by Mercury on  two singles in June and September of 1956, which sold well enough for Mercury to organise two more  sessions held in Houston, Texas, in 1957. As Bond's natural inclination was towards country, these two  sessions focused more on country material than the previous two studio forays. With the then current tieup  of Mercury and Starday, Pappy Daily of the latter company was at the helm. Daily was then steering  George Jones through his initial success period, so was well placed to watch over Eddie Bond's Houston  sessions which were held at the Goldstar Recording Studio. The material was supplied by Quinton  Claunch and Bill Cantrell, Darrell Edwards, and Roger Miller, as well as Eddie Bond himself; "You're  Part Of Me" was tagged with "They Say We're Too Young" (Mercury 71067), "Lovin' You, Lovin' You"  teamed up with "Hershey Bar" (Mercury 71153) and "Backslidin'" ended up being the final Mercury  release when backed by "Love, Love, Love" (Mercury 71237), "One Step Close To You" (MG 20360)  was held over until 1960, when it was used on a collection featuring Louisiana Hayride stars, leaving  "King On Your Throne" to make its debut on Zu Zazz Z 2005. The fourteen Mercury titles represent the  essence of rockabilly and authentic fifties country music.
 
Following the Mercury deal, Eddie began label-hopping through the South, particularly around Memphis.  First stop was 706 Union Avenue in Memphis for Sun Records, where Jack Clement produced three titles  included, "Show Me", "Broke My Guitar" and "This Old Heart Of Mine", all in a more-country-thanrockabilly  mould. None were issued at the time having to wait for the rockabilly revival and subsequent  glut of compilations released in the 1970s and 1980s (Bear Family BCD 15708).
 
Although not part of this, but recently re-issued on Stomper Time STCD 1, there followed a plethora of  recordings for "D", Stomper Time, Wildcat, MCCR, Decca (through his friend Webb Pierce), and United  Southern Artists. All were basically country releases.
 
Early 1962 saw Eddie back in Memphis recording at the 639 Madison Avenue for, Sun Records flip label  Phillips International, or re nearly thirty sides were recorded during January and February; the fruits of  these sessions being a selection of gospel items that were eventually used on an album in 1963, "Eddie  Bond Sings Greatest Country Gospel Hits" (Phillips 1980), plus a mixture of country standards and a  couple of Bond revivals. Although not strictly recorded by Sun or Phillips International, these recordings  were all bought in and have been embraced as "Sun" tracks as a result of the Phillips International album  release.  Further stopping-off places on the label circuit included Memphis, Pen (leased on Decca), Diplomat  ("Monkey And The Baboon"), Millionaire, Goldwax, Memphis, MCCR and Tab, which took Eddie to the  end of the sixties during which time he had expanded his radio operations and achieved great success by  increasing his listening audience noticeably to the extent that a 64% share was achieved and a plaque  presented to him by Billboard to honour the achievement.
 
The Tab recordings of 1969 inaugurated the Buford Pusser Years, when Eddie was involved in writing  and recording about the dubious character of Sheriff Pusser who became a southern hero when  Hollywood portrayed him in the film "Walkin' Tall", and ran for sheriff in Hernando, Mississippi, in 1974.  Bond later admitted to having mixed feelings on the subject but there was a certain fame that was achieved through the association. Many country fans were first introduced to the exploits of Buford  Pusser through the recordings of Eddie Bond. In the wake of his meeting and ventures with Pusser, the  office of Chief of Police in Finger, Tennessee, was achieved by Eddie Bond. Coincidentally, Finger was  the birthplace of Buford Pusser himself.
 
The following years saw more country sessions on Tab in the States and, following the first U.K. visit in  1982, rockabilly recordings were issued on Rockhouse Records in Holland produced by Dave Travis,  whose band always support Bond on tour, as was the case in 1982, 1985 and 1992.
 
He continues to be an outstanding performer with a strong European following. A successful businessman  in Hernando, Mississippi, Bond's records are released to large European sales. This retrospective of his  associations with Ekko, Mercury, Sun Records and Phillips International documents his genesis as a  country and rockabilly singer; a role perfected over his long career in the recording and broadcasting  industry.
 
Through it all, the consensus is that Eddie Bond made more friends than enemies. In the late 1990s, he  moved east to Bolivar, Tennessee where he opened a store and a club that he was anxious to mention was  not a nightclub. Morbidly obese, Bond moved to an assisted living facility for a time.
 
On Wednesday morning, March 20, 2013, Eddie Bond died from complications of Alzheimer's disease  and dementia at his home in Bolivar, Tennessee, at the age of 79.
 
KENNEDY VETERANS HOSPITAL - Located at 1030 Jefferson Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, Elvis  Presley to entertain someone. "Sometimes it would be at the old Kennedy Veterans Hospital to entertain  the veterans", recalled Buzzy Forbess, "for the wounded coming home from the Korean War. There we  would just mingle with the guys, talk and maybe shoot pool with them. Anything to take their minds of  their problems".
 
When the hospital was opened in 1944, it was located at the corner of Park and Shotwell Avenues. The  city fathers didn't think Shotwell Avenue was an appropriate name for a street on which a hospital caring  for the war wounded was to be located, so they changed the name of the street, south of Park, to Getwell.  It remains Shotwell immediately north of the property, which today is a part of the University of  Memphis.
 
During 1945, when the sergeant in charge of entertaining the troops put out the call for ideas, Army  Sergeant Joe Broussard - who had been badly injured when his scout motorcycle, running dark during  maneuvers, had crashed into a troop-carrying truck - came forward. "I've got this nephew who pitches on  a Little League baseball team and they're pretty good. Maybe we can get that team to play one of their  league games out here. I'm sure the fellows would love to see some baseball".
 
The invitation was issued. Lawson-Getz, which was to become the Exchange League's champion that  inaugural summer, played WHBQ radio, winning 504. More than two thousand wounded soldiers really  got into the game, choosing sides and loudly cheering "their" team. The youngsters on both teams were  nervous, but thrilled. Never before had they played before such a large, vociferous crowd. Broussard's  nephew, who rang up a 28-2 record that summer, was a tall, skinny, olive-complexioned twelve-year-old  named Bill Burk. And the sergeant in charge of entertainment, after the war, went back to Hollywood  where he resumed his movie career and later starred in the television series, Sgt. Bilko. His name: Phil  Silvers.
THE SILVER SLIPPER SUPER CLUB - In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the Memphians flocked to a place on  the outskirts of town called the Silver Slipper, this popular nightclub was located on 70 Macon Road in  North East Memphis, just outside the city border. By all accounts, Bob Berryman was a shady character. A rather notorious gambler and bootlegger, he served eight years in prison for murdering a bouncer at a  downtown nightclub. The club was built of white stucco with a tile roof and rows of arched windows. And  on the sign at the main entrance sported a huge illuminated slipper. 
 
It was considered ''Memphis'' most  luxurious nightclub. In addition to the dining and dancing, there was gambling. Generations of Memphians  spent many evening there. The Silver Slipper operated off and on from 1929 until it was destroyed by a fire  in 1958, but the actual site today is just off present-day Shelby Oaks Drive.
 
The Silver Slipper also featured live entertainment. They were not the biggest headliners, but entertainers on  their way up, and in some cases, on their way down. The Andrews Sisters appeared there in 1933 before they  hit big-time. Name dance bands did appear there Even Elvis Presley performed here at the beginning of his  career with his friends. Toward the end, the Silver Slipper entertainment leaned more toward burlesgue.  When the building was demolished, Elvis carried off the famous mirror ball as his trophy.
BOB BERRYMAN – Born in 1888, Robert Arthur Berryman was a Memphis native. Very little appears in  print about his life. Although never mentioned in newspapers accounts, he was a bootlegger, gamblers, well  known nightclub operator, and a murderer.
 
As his reputation grew he was referred to as ''Czar of Memphis night life'' or a ''sportsman about town'', and  ''King of Memphis gamblers''. During a 1927 crackdown, the police discovered a thriving Monte Carlo run  by Berryman in the Gehring Hotel, right under their noses at Main and Union. Two years later he invested  $100,000 in the Silver Slipper, a plush nightclub on Macon Road, just outside the city limits. On opening  night, the newspapers reported that ''the 400 of Memphis society were among the 450 guests lucky enough to  get reservations''. It wasn’t mentioned, but dice and roulette were available at the club. All the vices were  closely regulated by E.H. Crump in the time-honored fashion of ''keeping the business in local hands and  keeping strangers out''.
 
In 1937, Berryman began a new adventure, a motor hotel on Highway 61, known as Berryman's Tourist  Court. It was a rather unique adobe architectural style arranged in a semi-circle with a two-story manager's  residence by the entrance. It was featured on many postcards of the period and became quite well known but  most folks didn't associate it with the Berryman of Silver Slipper fame. Years later the name changed to  ''Adobe Village''. It has now been demolished, of course.
 
In 1940, an associate of Berryman named John Phillips was standing outside the entrance to Joe Foppiano's  Grill. Bob Berryman drove up, parked, and then pulled a sawed-off 20-gauge shotgun and shot him. The  wounded Phillips ducked into Foppiano's and made his way to the rear exit. Berryman followed and shot him  again. When Phillips begged for no more, Berryman pulled out a snub nose Colt and emptied it into Phillips,  and then calmly waited for the police.
 
Charged with murder, Berryman pleaded self-defense, claiming that Phillips was out to kill him. The jury  didn't buy Berryman's story, and in spite of threats, they gave a guilty verdict and Berryman was sentenced to  life in prison at the Tennessee Penitentiary. Foppiano's didn't stay in business much longer after this. The  building went through a series of Furniture Stores and was eventually demolished in the 1960s.
 
Even with a life sentence at the Tennessee Penitentiary, Berryman was on occasion spotted at Nashville  hotels with his wife. He had been such a ''model prisoner'' that he was given ''special privileges'' which  included overnight trips to Nashville. The governor of Tennessee was later persuaded by Berryman's friends  to commute his sentence due to ''health reasons''. He had served only 8 and a half years of his sentence.  Robert Arthur Berryman died in Nashville in 1965 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.
AUGUST 1, 1952 FRIDAY
 
Memphian Kemmons Wilson opens the world's first Holiday Inn on 1941 Summer Avenue in Memphis, which  was then the main highway to Nashville. A builder who had once been the country's top Wurlitzer  jukebox distributor, Wilson decided to build the sort of dependable family motels he'd always wished for  when the Wilsons were on vacation.
 
Though amorous Memphis teens might have preferred one of Wilson's rooms, young lovers made do with the area's drive-inn movie theaters. Sam Phillips was one of  the early stockholders in Holiday Inn. 
 
Wilson came up the idea after a family trip to Washington D.C. during which he was disappointed by the quality and consistency provided by roadside motels. By 1957  the chain was franchised and followed his tenet that all Holiday Inn properties should be standardized,  clean, predictable, family-friendly and readily accessible to road travellers. By 1968 there were 1000  Holiday Inns. The chain dominated the market. By 1972, there were over 1,400 Holiday Inns worldwide.  Kemmons Wilson sold his interest in 1990.
 
AUGUST 6, 1952 WEDNESDAY
 
Elvis Presley worked in the table department at Upholsteries Specialties Company, located at 210 West   Georgia Avenue in Memphis, while in high school. Elvis Presley gave his birthdate as January 8, 1934, to   add one year to his age. As job references, he listed his previous jobs with Precision Tool and Loew's   State Theater. Elvis' uncles Travis and Johnny get him and cousin Gene Smith on the crew at Precision.
 
UNKNOWN DATE SUMMER 1952
 
Elvis Presley had begun frequenting the rough hillbilly bars on Highway 78. During the spring and  summer of 1952, Elvis Presley had discovered for the first time Eagle's Nest Night Club, located at 4090  Lamar Avenue, in Memphis, a large and popular country music bar that was undergoing a musical  transition. Many of the future rockabilly and rock and roll stars tried out their now songs at the club. Johnny Burnette, while still working for the Crown Electric Company on 475 North Dunlap. , would  often play guitar on weekends there, and it was Burnette who got Elvis Presley a job cleaning up in the  club. Burnette played country music, and was thinking about forming his own band. Elvis Presley  attended concerts at Ellis Auditorium and was a regular at the St. Mary's Dance.
 
UNKNOWN DATE SUMMER 1952
 
On the corner of North Parkway and Dunlap Street, the city operated an artesian well and The Parkway  Pumping Station, named as Water Works, where Elvis Presley and his friends from Humes High School  often played. Elvis' high school friend Buzzie Forbess remembers a particular football game there. During  those days not only were the schools segregated, but their sports teams never played opponents of a  different color. One day, Elvis Presley, Buzzie Forbess, and about ten of their buddies went over to the  water works to toss around a football.
 
When they got there, they found about forty black kids already at the park. They quickly organized teams,  white against black, and began to play. Elvis Presley's team could generally hold their own, but this time  they were no match. Maybe their hearts weren't quite in it, or maybe they were just silly. While Elvis  Presley normally took football seriously, on at least this one occasion, his humour overcame his  completive spirit.
UNKNOWN DATE SEPTEMBER 1952
 
Elvis Presley perform at the Teen Canteen, a small building in the Lauderdale Courts apartment. "Elvis  Presley was a central part of the neighborhood", Buzzy Forbess remembers. "Most of the parties were at  his house, and in the evenings things centered around Elvis Presley and his guitar". Elvis was sop busy  playing the guitar that he seldom danced. When Elvis Presley did dance, it was to Kay Starr's "Harbor Lights". Johnny Burnette, who graduated from Humes High School in 1952, was a frequent  visitor to the Presley household; Johnny Burnette and Elvis Presley would sit around and play their  guitars. They spent long hours talking about different types of music and trying out new songs. One of  these counselling sessions stood out in Elvis Presley's memory. He continually talked about the time on Thanksgiving Day, 1952, when Johnny Burnette came hot on leave from the U.S Navy. Burnette came  over to the Presley's house and persuaded Elvis Presley that better times were ahead. Like the old days  during their youth, they played and sang for hours. Johnny suggested that Elvis develop the same unique  rockabilly sound that they both enjoyed, and he urged Elvis Presley to consider forming a group.
 
At this time Elvis Presley, Buzzy Forbess, and the other young men from the Lauderdale area played  football at the Triangle. "That was on the north side of Lauderdale Courts, on Exchange, east of  Lauderdale", recalled Buzzy, "It was shaped like a piece of pie, so we called it the Triangle. All the kids in  the neighborhood met there after school and on Saturday. We would choose up sides between ourselves  and play some knock-down, dragout football games. We also had this Lauderdale Courts team". "There  were other teams from Winchester and Malone Parks and at the Water Works over on North Parkway.  Each Saturday our team would play one of those teams. Elvis was one of our ends. He had good speed  and good hands and he could catch the ball well. And while he did mix it up, that was really not his bag".
 
On September 1952, Elvis Presley took a part-time job at the MARL Metal Company, located at 208  Georgia Avenue, Memphis. On the application he filled out at MARL Metal Company, Elvis Presley  listed his previous job at Precision Tool. When the supervisor at MARL Metal called the Precision boss,  he received a glowing report about Presley's work. He was told that Elvis Presley was let go because he was too young, but the supervisor noted that he was an aggressive and responsible worker. At MARL  Metal, Elvis Presley had a dead-end janitorial position. All he did was sweep up during the evening shift,  but the dollar-an-hour pay was excellent. In less than eight weeks, he worked from 3:00 to 11:30 p.m.  each day, though, Elvis Presley's school work suffered dramatically.
 
MARL METAL MANUFACTURING COMPANY - Memphis firm located at 208 Georgia Avenue in  Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley worked after-school for a dollar an hour for two months,  starting September 1952. The company manufactured dinette sets. He worked a full shift from 3:30 p.m.  to 11:30 p.m. proved to be too difficult considering he was still a full-time student. When he began to fall  asleep in his high school classes, his parents made him quit his job at MARL Metal. He quit after two  months.
 
Nonetheless, it was a valiant attempt to help his family. His application for employment, according to  Vince Staten, an early biographer, listed five dependents, an astounding claim for a freshfaced young kid.  Elvis Presley had only one co-worker because everyone else at MARL worked the first shift. By all  accounts, Elvis Presley got along well with his partner, and they took their breaks together. Elvis wasn't  much of a conversationalist, though. It seems he was too busy playing the guitar. MARL stood for Morris,  Albert, Robert, and Louis Bozoff, the brothers who owned the company. Elvis Presley was hired by  Robert Bozoff to work in the fabricating division.
THE TRIANGLE / LAUDERDALE COURTS - On the northern boundary of Lauderdale Courts was a  grassy area that residents called "The Triangle". The Triangle was the home of many social gatherings at  Lauderdale Courts - some of the kids played football here, some of the adults visited with each other, and sometimes the Courts musicians played here.
 
Jean Lazenby Foster, a resident of Lauderdale Courts, said, "When we were coming up in the Courts, we  used to sit out and have little groups all the time. Everybody singing and playing, and sometimes there's  more than one guitar. There wasn't much on the TV back then so we stayed outside and played music, and  it was the good old days".
 
Johnny Black remembers, "I could make him talk. If you'd get him to talk to you, he would open up.  Sometimes he was just lonesome and needed someone to talk. He wasn't quite our age. I was into music  and some of the same interests he had, so it made it easier for us to talk", Johnny recalled. Jean Foster remembers a day when she was about fifteen and was sitting on the edge of the Triangle. Elvis was living  at Graceland then. "Elvis Presley came back to bring his mother and father to visit friends. I was playing  the guitar facing the street, and the kids were facing me. They didn't see Elvis drive up, and I didn't tell  them that he drove up. He gave me the high sign and the motion to be quiet, and he waved at me. When  he came back out with them about thirty minutes later, he winked at me and waved good-by and blew me  a kiss".
 
Jean smiled at Elvis that day, but she didn't wave. Elvis deserved his privacy, and she knew that the kids  would race toward him. She waited until his car had disappeared from view, and then she told the kids  that Elvis Presley had just left. "They almost killed me", she remembers.
 
Buzzy Forbes, Farley Guy, Paul Dougher, and Elvis Presley, the quartet got to joking, after a tough  football game on the Triangle, about a new entertainer fellow named Liberace, how he dressed up funny,  how he had a candelabra on his piano, how people laughed at him. Elvis' contribution to this conversation  was, "If I could be like him, I would laugh, all the way to the bank".
 
UNKNOWN DATE SEPTEMBER 1952
 
Beginning his senior year, Elvis Presley has become a somewhat difficult student, failing exams that bring  down his average and often missing school. He is spending more time around the Memphis music scene  on Beale Street. His good looks and flashy style of dress gain him notice, not always positive, and Red  West intervenes on several occasions. Elvis Presley meets Marty Lacker, a fresh kid from New York City.
 
"I met Elvis in the secenth / eight grade 1949. I was still in high school", said Red West. "Elvis had just  had his first hit in Memphis and I was going to get on a bus.... I was in a football team and ... he pulled up  in this little ol' green car he had - he was just coming out to visit and I yelled at him come over. So he  came over and said that he was going on the road somewhere in Mississippi - and did I wanna go with  him. I said, 'Yeah!'. I guess he thought he may have some trouble with people or whatever... So while I  was still in high school I started traveling with him. I was a senior - he'd already graduated. So I travelled  around with him down in Mississippi, Arkansas, The Louisiana Hayride - all over the place".
 
"I drove a lot. Back when he was on the Dorsey Shows in New York - they would go in and do those once  a week and then fly out to Florida - well I drove from New York to Florida. I'd drive all the instruments  down there. They'd have instruments for the show and then their own instruments down where they had to  be next. I'll never forget that trip - that's quite a drive", said West.
 
FALL 1952
 
Elvis Presley wanted to play football for his high school team at Humes but had to work after school.  Instead, Elvis Presley watched the team play on Friday nights during the fall season. Many of the Humes  games were played at Crump Stadium, which was adjacent to their archival school, Central High. Crump  Stadium is located at Linden Avenue at Cleveland Street.
 
Until 1965, when the Memphis Memorial Stadium (now the Liberty Bowl) opened, Crump Stadium was  the largest arena in Memphis, used by both colleges and high schools. Today, it is still in use as a high  school football stadium, with seating for twenty thousand.
 
NOVEMBER 1952
 
Sam Phillips and Jim Bulleit are in discussion about a new distribution set-up to facilitate a re-launch of  the Sun label.
 
NOVEMBER 15, 1952 THURSDAY
 
Ronald Smith, one of Elvis' friends and a student at South Side High School nervously prepared for the  South Side Amateur Night Show. The sixty-cents admission benefit the concert at 8:00 p.m. for the school  band. Ronald Smith and Elvis Presley played acoustic guitars and performed as a duo, with Elvis Presley  singing cover versions of Lefty Frizzell's "Til Then" and Billy Ward And The Dominos' "60 Minute Man".  The Shelby Falen band were special guests on the show, but weren't allowed to compete for prizes.  Falen's group was semi-professional and solidly-booked into local clubs. Paul Burlison played lead guitar  for the group, and he was intrigued by Elvis' talent. Paul Burlison, a close friend of Ronald Smith's, was  extraordinarily gifted on guitar, and he engaged in a friendly guitar duel with Ronald Smith that night.  Elvis Presley benefied greatly from such musical battles. Although Ronald Smith and Elvis Presley failed  to earn enough applause for an encore, they left feeling good about the show.
 
Each night as Elvis Presley prepared the Eagle's Nest for its musical explosion, he talked with the  musicians. Almost everyone ignored Elvis; he was simply another nice kid talking music. Doug  Poindexter and the Starlight Wranglers played regularly at the Eagle's Nest. "That boy was always around  the music scene", Poindexter remarked thirty years later. "I knew he had something special, and my boys were jealous of him", Poindexter commented sipping on a whiskey. "I think Elvis Presley judged himself  against the other boys", Poindexter remarks confirmed that Elvis Presley studied and adopted the best that  local musicians had to offer. It was as Elvis Presley watched Poindexter's group that he concluded that he  had to form a backup band for himself. So, Elvis Presley began looking. One person he admired was Paul  Burlison, lead guitarist for the Rock And Roll Trio. Not only was he a musician that Elvis Presley envied,  but Burlison had a style that Elvis Presley loved. No one could play lead guitar like Paul Burlison; that is,  until Elvis Presley saw the musicians in Doug Poindexter's band. He realized that Scotty Moore's guitar  and Bill Black's bass were the best he had ever heard. They had a sound that Elvis Presley believed could  transform his voice. As he entered his final year at Humes High, Elvis Presley had finally acquitted the  confidence to pursue a musical career.
 
NOVEMBER 17, 1952 MONDAY
 
In November 1952 it was determined that the Presley's projected annual income had risen to $4,133 a  year, well over Housing Authority limits, and on this date the Presley family got an eviction notice,  requiring them to move out by February 28, 1953, of the Lauderdale Courts.
 
On the Presley family's 1952 two W2's tax return Gladys declares an income of $555.70 from St. Joseph's  Hospital and Vernon $2,781.18 from United Paint. Vernon's mother, Minnie Mae, is declared a live-in  dependent, and Gladys' retarded brother, Tracy Smith, is listed as a resident ten days a month. The income  return is handwritten. Elvis is listed as a dependent. Both copies are on a standard withholding form,  beige in color with brown lettering. Vernon's W2 is torn on the left bottom side. Also attached is a adding  machine tape with the total amount of income, deductions, and amount due on the tape.
 
NOVEMBER 28, 1952 FRIDAY
 
The Memphis Housing Authority notified the Presley's that they no longer qualified for public housing.  The family income exceeded the among required to live in the Lauderdale Courts.
 
UNKNOWN DATE FALL 1952
 
Memphis automotive contest Road-E-O sponsored by the Jaycees in which Elvis Presley was named "Mr.  Safety" in the fall of 1952. Elvis Presley also got his picture in the local newspaper.
 
UNKNOWN DATE FALL 1952
 
Elvis Presley attended the Midnight Rambles at Handy Theater, on Park and Airways Avenue. A whole  gang would get together on Sunday night and go out to the coloured district in Rorange Mound for the  late show, which was whites-only. There you could catch jazzy bluesman Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, born  December 19, 1917 in Houston, Texas, Ivory Joe Hunter, Wynonie Harris, and local acts like Bobby  "Blue" Bland, Little Junior Parker, and the comedy act of Rufus Thomas.
WINTER END 1952
 
Elvis Presley performed during amateur nights at the Silver Stallion Night Club located at 1447 Union  Avenue and the Palms Club on Sumner Avenue in Memphis. The appearance on the Palms Night Club  had been set up by Sleepy Eyed John. The Silver Stallion would be mentioned in the upcoming 1953  Senior Class Prophecy of Humes High School. About this time, James Luther Dickinson, a Memphis music entrepreneur, remembers seeing Elvis Presley singing at parties in the basement of the Chisca Hotel  on 272 South Mean Street where 56 WHBQ radio had its broadcasting studio on the second floor.
 
Memphis record producer and musician Jim Dickinson (who later worked at Sun Records as part of the  Jesters), remembers seeing Elvis Presley play at small clubs and hops around town before "That's All  Right". "Presley would play quite regularly at basement parties in the Hotel Chisca", recalled Dickinson.  "I started noticing as a producer", Dickinson asserts, "that Spooner Oldham, the keyboard player, played  drastically differently in different places. His best playing was done in Memphis. I wondered if the same  was true of me, so I got out my own tapes, and by God it's true. I may not play better in Memphis, but I  certainly play differently, and if I stay away too long I start to play funny. Memphis music is about racial  collision in both directions. The rednecks who are playing blues still feel funny about it because they're  playing black music".
 
When the Memphis Development Foundation, one of the many groups trying to organize the "Beale  Street Project" in the late-1970s (which is what the "Beale Street problem" has become), decided to make  a record album about Beale Street to boost their cause, they turned, perhaps fittingly, not to one of the  street's black regulars, but to a white named James Luther Dickinson. Dickinson's credits were impressive  - he had toured with the Rolling Stones as a keyboard man, worked with the seminal Dixie Flyers in  Miami, and produced extensively, including working for Ry Cooder.
 
The results were spectacular, if unexpected. The album, "Beale Street Saturday Night", is a masterpiece,  going beyond the idea of a record to Oakum, as one writer called it, a folk tale, a tiny mirror of Beale  Street the way it was. The song was sung by Sid Selvidge, another white, and he melded perfectly with  such Beale Street greats as Furry Lewis and Sleepy John Estes and Prince Gabe. Proving, perhaps, that  some people can still hear the words. Dickinson went on to produce the Beale Street Saturday Night  album, which evidenced a depth of understanding for Memphis music that is especially rare in Memphis.  "It was an excuse to give money to a bunch of old black people, and I really liked doing that".
 
Enlightening, but it still doesn't explain what he is doing back in Memphis, on the other side of the world  from rock and roll success. He gets up from the couch and paces, in his pyjamas, around the living room.  Two or three times he starts to speak, then shifts gears and continues pacing. Finally he walks through the  dining room to a window and jerks back the shade.
 
"Come here", he says, "Look out there and tell me what you see", says James Luther Dickinson.  "Like hell". "What you see is nigger houses, sharecroppers shacks. And, damn it, I want to be able to see  those shacks. I want to be able to see those honky-tonks. There is just something in me that loves it. Now  maybe that makes me a racist, I don't know. But this is - we saw a change in Memphis that affected the  whole world... A bunch of crazy rednecks playing nigger music". "People don't understand the life of  Elvis Presley, and people won't understand the life of Elvis Presley. Elvis did just what he wanted to do.  He never did anything but rock and roll. He played the Ubangi Stomp till he rolled over dead. This is  where I want to be".
 
Furry Lewis lived at 811 Mosby Avenue in Memphis, and he liked to talk about Elvis Presley: "I go  somewhere and people ask me if I am going to practice. I tell them, "No, I don't need to practice 'cause I  knew what I was going to do before I left home". "Just like you got a guitar and I got one and I don't care  what you play, I go right on behind you and it sounds good, too. I just know how to do it. Go on and play;  I'll be witcha. Elvis Presley, I tell you, he's good. He's fine. He made plenty money, more'n I ever will  made. But he just couldn't play the blues and sing the blues like I can, I'll tell you that right now". Furry  Lewis died in Memphis on September 14, 1981 and buried on 2012 Hernando Road in Memphis, across  Graceland. On Walter "Furry" Lewis beautiful guitar-painted tombstone grave in 1983, reads: "When I  Lay My Burden Down".
 
LATE 1952
 
Sam Phillips began to experience some local success, he in turn was faced with the fact that other labels  were signing his performers. Duke and Peacock were the chief culprits, with RPM//Modern also  attempting to sign selected acts. Sam was learning some hard lessons about contracts, Meteor Records  entered the blues and rhythm and blues field, further challenging Phillips' local hegemony.
 
DECEMBER 1952
 
Sam Phillips tried released the recordings of Red Hadley. He offers the songs to several labels but they  are not taken up. Sun itself is concentrating on blues, not country.  Lester Bihari forms Meteor Records, located at 1794 Chelsea Avenue in Memphis. The label records  blues, country, gospel and rockabilly, providing the final impetus for Phillips to revive the Sun label.
DECEMBER 1952
 
Planters Peanuts opened a shop in Memphis at 24 South Main, Memphis in 1949. Elvis Presley in 1952 at  The Peanut Shoppe, located at 134 South Main Street, Memphis. Justin Adler, who bought the stores from  Planters Peanuts and renamed ''The Peanuts Shoppe'', would come in early every morning to polish the  windows and clean the store thoroughly before opening for the day. "I kept that place sparkling", she said.
 
Mr. Adler remembers the times Elvis Presley would come into the store. "You know how Elvis used to  loll around things?". Mr. Adler said, "He used to fool around on those showcases and talk to the sales  ladies. I'd walk in the customer's aisle and just slip my hand under the back of his usher's coat, grab him  by the belt, and escort him out". Given Elvis' fondness for peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, it stands  to reason that he was drawn to the smell of freshly roasted peanuts. 
 
According to artist and art teacher Gene Gill, "You could always smell the aroma of roasting nuts when  you got near Planter's Peanuts. As you approached the store window you heard a "tap, tap, tap". It was a  small mechanical version of Mr. Peanut, whose cane tapped on a 50 cent coin glued to the front window.
The real Mr. Peanut was always on the street nearby passing out samples to anyone who held out their  hand".
 
Memphian Bob Mann said, "Yes, I remember this guy (I guess it was a guy) out on the sidewalk by the  Loew's State Theater. The aroma in that area was wonderful. Once I bought a half-pound of cashews at  that store and ate them all during the movie. I felt pretty sick afterwards but really enjoyed them while I  was eating them".
 
THE PEANUT SHOP - Located at 134 and 24 South Main Street, in the 1950s and 1960s, there were   three Peanut Shops in Memphis, two on South Main Street and one on Summer Avenue.  As shoppers   hurried past the downtown stores, "Mr. Peanut", an iron statue of the familiar peanut wearing a monocle and top hat, would tap his cane against the window to attract their attention. To protect the window, a coin   was glued to it at precisely the point where Mr. Peanut's cane met the glass.
 
The store at 134 South Main Street was near the Loew's State Theater, and when Elvis Presley worked as   an usher there, he often stopped in this Peanut shop. The store at 134 South Main Street no longer exists.   The location is part of the Peabody Place office complex. The store at 24 South Main Street is still in  business. With "Mr. Peanut" tapping away on the window.
DECEMBER 24, 1952 WEDNESDAY
 
Elvis Presley performed in the December 1952 Humes High Christmas Talent Show. He sang his standard  repertoire "Keep Them Cold, Cold Icy Fingers Off Of Me" and "Till I Waltz Again With You". Elvis  Presley was the only act awarded an encore; he performed his good luck song, "Old Shep". 
 
Elvis Presley's  history teacher, Mildred Scrivener, remembers how nervous Elvis was performing in front of his  classmates. "He was standing on the edge of the stage, half-hidden by the curtain when I told him, it's  you, Elvis, go out and sing another song". Suddenly Elvis' stature and popularity hit a new high.
 
After  Christmas, as Elvis Presley sat outside Kay's Drive Inn on Crump Boulevard, his newfound confidence  was demonstrated in casual banter with close friends. Frequently ensconced at Kay's Drive Inn, Elvis  Presley got many invitations to perform at house parties. 
 
When he sang for friends at these dimly lit  affairs, he covered recent rhythm and blues tunes. These gatherings gave Elvis Presley a chance to  perform the rhythm and blues hits that he spent so much time listening. Yet, as we know, this was only  one form of music that interested Elvis Presley.
 
"Well, I had a nice red flannel shirt with white buttons and Elvis wanted to wear it on the show", recalled  Buzzy Forbess, "He had the shirt on a hanger and when he put it in the closet and closed the door, a small  hole was torn in one of the sleeves of the shirt. He was probably afraid of how I would react when I  learned of the hole in my nice shirt, so when he went on for his number, he had the sleeves rolled up and  before he began singing, he said, 'I want to dedicate this number to Buzzy Forbess".
 
"He was confident in himself, in his abilities", recalls Billie Chiles Turner, a classmate. "It seemed every  time we had a talent show at school, every year we had a school carnival, Elvis seemed to be one of the  performers. He seemed to always be involved in these things". "Each time Elvis would go on stage", she  said, "his classmates would whisper among themselves, 'Not again Elvis'".
 
MILDRED SCRIVENER - History teacher at L.C. Humes High School, located at 659 North Manasas  Street in Memphis, Tennessee, and Elvis Presley's homeroom teacher during his senior year. Scrivener  took a liking to Elvis Presley and later said that "Elvis always acted like a gentlemen". She put Elvis  Presley in the annual Minstrel Show on April 9, 1953, which she also produced.
 
"Elvis and I had several classes together at Humes", says Georgia Avgeris Scarmoutsos. She was a darkhaired  Greek beauty and her mother was one helluva cook. "After school he would walk me home a lot.  He never tried to entertain me during these walks. We would talk a lot. We were real good friends and I  always thought the world of him. In one of our classes, he was sitting in the back row and I was sitting a  couple of rows in front of him. He would throw wadded up gum wrapper foil at me in class to get my  attention. After school was out, we would often go to Garner's to get something cool; maybe some ice  cream or a cool drink. When he was working as an usher at Loew's State he had this flashlight so he could  guide people to their seats in the dark theater. He would always seat me to make sure I got a good seat. I  was a cashier down the street at the Malco theater and when he would some to the Malco, I would let him  in free and then I would seat him". Georgia Avgeris Scarmoutsos still lives in Memphis.

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