CONTAINS
1948-1952 MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
"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
MEMPHIS,
TENNESSEE (1948-1953)
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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