Entertainment
Inside the Historic 1954 Overton Park Shell Concert
Seventy years ago this month, “Ellis” Presley performed at the Overton Park shell.
That's according to today's edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar, the city's evening daily.
“In person, SENSATIONAL radio recording star Slim Whitman,” read the ad on page 23.
Beneath a photo of the country-and-western yodeler with the beaming smile and vibrant mustache was this addendum: “With Billy Walker, Ellis Presley and many others.”
If, in fact, the 19-year-old singer, nicknamed after Texas crooner Billy Walker, had been called “Ellis” Presley, you wouldn't be reading this article today.
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But, of course, the guitarist with the striped tie and shaky leg who took the stage on July 30, 1954, to perform “That's All Right” followed by “Blue Moon of Kentucky” was Elvis Presley, making his first billed public appearance.
Red, Hot and Elvis
Obviously, “Ellis” Presley was not considered the main attraction of the evening, especially by promoters who were indifferent even to the correct spelling of his first name.
But as guitarist Scotty Moore told Elvis' biographer Pierre GuralnickThe crowd of hillbilly music fans at the Shell went “wild” for the local sensation whose debut single “Sun” featuring the two songs he would perform at the Shell had been introduced to listeners just 23 days earlier by WHBQ radio DJ Dewey Phillips on his show “Red, Hot & Blue.”
The reaction to this “untried and inexperienced” performer exceeded the “wildest expectations” of Elvis’s friends and family, Guralnick wrote in his 1994 book “Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley.” In that sense, the Shell performance was a taste of the global response to the man who would conquer radio, charts, concert halls and movie theaters, eventually becoming known as the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll.” In other ways, Scotty’s guitar riffs, Bill Black’s bass licks and Elvis’s leg-shaking from that night resonate today throughout the culture in general and the Shell in Overton Park in particular, which in recent years has regained its status as a premier venue for live music.
“We’re honored to be the place where he gave his first concert and launched his career,” said Natalie Wilson, executive director of the Overton Park Shell. “It’s a space that has a legacy of nearly 90 years and we’re really leaning into our history.”
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Although established artists occasionally perform under the festooned bandstand (power pop mainstay Matthew Sweet will headline Aug. 31, with Memphis funk veterans The Bar-Kays onstage Sept. 28), “we really like to give emerging artists a stage,” Wilson said.
Elvis' story features prominently in the museum's style “Connie Abston Archives and History Exhibition” That's the subject of behind-the-scenes tours that take place daily at noon, 2 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. at the Shell, which was built in 1936 as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs designed to pull the United States out of the Great Depression.
Tours are usually led by Cole Early, head of content and archives at the Shell, who said the height of the old stage in 1954 meant that “Elvis was moving his hips at eye level, so everyone was screaming. It was completely radical and revolutionary.”
The “many others” referred to in the Press-Scimitar ad include an impressive list of hillbilly names: Tinker, Sonny, Sugarfoot and Curly. Specifically, they are Tinker Fry, Sonny Harvelle, Sugarfoot Collins and comedian Curly Harris “Laffs Galore with Curly Harris” promised in a July 25 ad for the show in The Commercial Appeal that touted Whitman as “America's Favorite Folk Artist” and Walker as a “new star” but made no mention of Elvis.
Meanwhile, longtime Press-Scimitar arts columnist Edwin Howard wrote about Elvis in a July 28 article promoting the show. “Elvis, son of Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Presley, 462 Ala., is a truck driver for Crown Electric Co.,” Howard wrote, while claiming that Presley's first single “promises to be the biggest hit the Sun has ever pressed.”
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Elvis to Lisa Marie
At the 1954 Shell concert ($1 general admission), “Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill,” as it appeared on the trio's Sun record labels, performed the single “That's All Right/Blue Moon of Kentucky” twice. Their second rendition of the songs was an encore, in response to enthusiastic applause from the audience. The two songs “virtually exhausted the group's repertoire,” Guralnick wrote.
They would know more songs when they returned to the Shell on August 5, 1955, headlining a dream bill of 22 artists that included Webb Pierce, Wanda Jackson, Charlie Feathers, Red Sovine, Sonny James and “the new Memphis singer Johnny Cash” (to quote The Commercial Appeal).
Despite his growing fame, Elvis was featured second only to Pierce in advertising (except in the promotional speech by WMPS disc jockey and talent agent Bob Neal, who organized the Shell “jamborees”). Newspapers did not cover the 1954 concert, but the Press-Scimitar ran a photo montage the day after the 1955 concert under the headline: “4,000 Jam Shell, Hundreds Turned Away Country Beat Fills City Park.”
Elvis returned to the Shell on June 1, 1956, but by then he was “too well-known” to perform there, Early said; instead, he came to provide moral support and pose for pictures with entertainers Cash, Roy Orbison, Warren Smith, Eddie Bond and Carl Perkins, described by the Press-Scimitar following Perkins' hit “Blue Suede Shoes” as “the second big local Memphis singing star of the past year.”
Although Elvis' music had broad appeal (his first RCA single, “Heartbreak Hotel,” in 1956, topped the pop and country charts, and reached No. 5 on the rhythm and blues chart), Early points out that Elvis's early days at Shell were not open to everyone.
The concert took place a decade before Memphis desegregated its public spaces. In 1954, the property around the Shell was fenced off, and black citizens were generally not welcome. But just as the venue is important to rock and roll, it also played a role in Memphis’ history of progress. In 1960, 13 black youths were arrested at an Assembly of God youth rally at the Shell, which was “whites only,” according to The Commercial Appeal. It was part of the sit-in protests in Overton Park that led to “Watson v. City of Memphis,” a 1963 Supreme Court decision that required the city to immediately desegregate all of its public parks and recreational facilities.
In a short time, the Shell hosted concerts by both white and black artists, including Rufus Thomas, Furry Lewis, the Allman Brothers Band, and ZZ Top. One show on September 21, 2013, is particularly notable: that night, the artist performing at the Shell in Overton Park was Elvis' daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.
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