 On Monday, July 19, 1954,
hot off the presses at Buster Williams' Plastic Products
plant on Chelsea Ave. in Memphis, came the release of
Elvis Presley's first record. It was Sun record number
209 - 'That's All Right' backed with 'Blue
Moon of Kentucky'. Producer/Sun Records owner
Sam Phillips already had 6,000 local orders.
Peter Guralnick in his book 'Last Train To Memphis'
said, "Ed Leek, a Humes classmate who was premed at
Memphis State, described going down to the plant and
watching the first records come off the press with
Elvis, who was 'like a little kid at Christmas.'"
Scotty Moore and
Bill Black were the musicians who backed Elvis
and they were members of a band called the Starlite
Wranglers. They regularly played on weekends at the Bon
Air club on Summer Avenue in east Memphis. The Bon Air
was a bit rowdy and the clientele were hard drinking
lovers of hillbilly music. Elvis neither looked the part
nor sounded like anything they were used to. Elvis and
the boys played their two songs at the Bon Air a couple
of weekends that July. However, that didn't last long.
The Wranglers didn't take to Scotty and Bill's
involvement with Elvis' act, not only because his music
wasn't like their own, but because this act didn't
include them. Scotty and Bill soon left the Wranglers.
By August 1954 and continuing through October, Elvis and
the boys were a regular part of the weekend
entertainment at a club on Lamar and Winchester called
The Eagle's Nest.
The Eagle's Nest
was a part of the Clearpool Entertainment complex that
included a large swimming pool, ballroom, and restaurant
owned by the Joe and Doris Pieraccini family who also
owned the Rainbow Lake amusement complex down the
street, where Elvis' beloved Rainbow Roller Skating Rink
was located. Memphis country music dee-jay "Sleepy Eyed"
John Lepley and his band, fronted by Jack Clement,
played the main sets of western swing with Elvis, Scotty
and Bill as the intermission act. It was said that the
young people hanging out at the pool would rush in to
hear Elvis and then go back outside when the main act
came back on. Often in the audience would be Elvis'
parents Vernon and Gladys, Gladys' sister Clettes and
her husband Vester (Vernon's brother), as well as Elvis'
bosses from Crown Electric James and Gladys Tipler. All
were proud of Elvis and his newfound success.
The Louisiana Hayride
The week after Elvis's
October 2, 1954 appearance on "The Grand Ole Opry," his
record producer Sam Phillips arranged for Elvis to
appear on the Opry's main competition, "The Louisiana
Hayride." This radio program began on April 3,
1948 and was broadcast by KWKH from the Municipal
Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana. Admission to
the audience was 60¢ for adults and 30¢ for children and
the show ran three hours. All of it aired in the
region while parts of the show aired nationally on CBS
Radio and overseas on Armed Forces Radio.
Known
as "The Cradle of the Stars", the Hayride was the
springboard to fame for many country music stars
including Hank Williams, Slim Whitman, Webb Pierce, Jim
Reeves, Johnny Horton, Faron Young, Floyd Cramer, Kitty
Wells, Johnny Cash and George Jones to name just a few.
Many of the Hayride regulars toured around the region in
Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.
Elvis first
performed on the Hayride on October 16, 1954. On
November 6, 1954 he returned with his parents and, still
being underage, they signed his contract with the show
to appear weekly for one year. Elvis would receive
$18 per show with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist
Bill Black each receiving $12. Through the rest of
1954 and through 1955, Elvis would have to race back to
Shreveport each Saturday night from wherever he was
touring to fulfill this commitment. In
October 1955 the contract was renewed for another year
at a $200 per show fee. By the spring of 1956
Elvis's fame had skyrocketed and the constraints of his
weekly appearances on the Hayride made it very difficult
to schedule Elvis elsewhere. With the filming of his
first movie pending and the need to be in California,
Colonel Tom Parker
(who got involved with Elvis's career in 1955 and
officially became his manager in 1956) was able to buy
Elvis out of his contract for $10,000 and the promise to
appear on the special Hayride charity show on December
15, 1956. Elvis' last regular weekly appearance on
the Hayride was March 31, 1956.
It was on the
Hayride that he did his only product commercial.
It was a radio spot for one of the show's sponsors
Southern Made Doughnuts. Joseph D. Kent, owner of
the surviving tapes of the show said in a 2002 interview
that although he has a recording of Johnny Cash's
doughnut commercial, he doesn't have the one of Elvis'
as many of the tapes were reused and many others were
eventually thrown away. These commercial spots in
the program were not like modern commercials. Kent
went on to explain that a fresh hot box of doughnuts
would be delivered to the announcer on stage, who would
open it in front of the audience, and the announcer
would ask whichever act was setting up to perform next
to offer their opinion of the product. The
performer would then step up to the microphone and ad
lib a testimonial of how good they were. Kent said
about the Cash commercial, "...in this case they said
'Johnny Cash knows about Southern Made Doughnuts don't
you Johnny?' And he stepped up to the microphone and
said, 'Yeah man, they're the best in the world, you just
dunk 'em and slurp 'em, man they're fine, I think
they're just the best.'" Elvis's endorsement would
have been somewhat similar in nature.
James
Burton, who played lead guitar for Elvis from 1969
to 1977, is a Shreveport native. In August 2005 he
held the James Burton International Guitar Festival at
the Municipal Auditorium, former home of "The Louisiana
Hayride." The festival featuring many well known
guitarists was to help raise money for Burton's
foundation dedicated to providing musical scholarships
and instruments to children and young adults.
James appeared on the Hayride in the 1950s. On
August 21, 2005, James's 66th birthday and the last day
of his festival, a statue honoring him was unveiled in
front of the auditorium. It stands next to the
statue there of Elvis. Although the Hayride program
stopped in 1960, the Municipal Auditorium is still the
venue for various live entertainment events in
Shreveport.
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