Elvis Ignited

by Kealing, Bob;

  During overnight hours the show’s AM radio signal could span as far north as the Black Hills of South Dakota and south to the Florida Everglades. From Duke Ellington to Ella Fitzgerald to Charlie Parker, the comforting strains of late night jazz provided company to long-haul truckers, lulled restless babies to sleep in their cribs, and helped Elvis, Scotty, and Bill freewheel it down the road to the next gig. It was usually Moore or Black behind the wheel. “If you let Elvis drive, no telling where you might end up,” Moore laughed. “He didn’t have much of a sense of direction, so if he got on a road he pretty much stayed on it. We’d wake up and not know where we were.”

  Autographed 1955 promotional photograph. Courtesy of Travis Norby.

  In those days there was no shotgun-barrel straight Interstate 75 to take you right down Florida’s west coast. A 1955 Florida road map shows US 41, the Tamiami Trail—paved in some places, still dirt in others—winding through Sarasota, Venice, over Charlotte Harbor, through Punta Gorda and into Fort Myers. That was Elvis, Scotty, and Bill’s winding route to their second Florida tour in late July that year.

  Presley stopped in at WMYR radio on Hanson Street for an on-air interview with his biggest backer in southwest Florida, the local pied piper of rock and roll, disc jockey Brad Lacey, who promoted both of Presley’s 1955 appearances there. It was routine for young people who listened to Lacey to stop in at the little station by the railroad tracks and see in person whomever he was interviewing. Other fans like fifteen-year-old Diane Maddox had the radio on all day long at home.

  “Mom and Dad won a jitterbug contest the night before I was born,” Maddox laughed. She still has the ticket stub from Presley’s show on July 25, 1955, starring “Deacon” Andy Griffith. The nickname came from the pseudo preacher Griffith played on his hit parody monologue. He described the football as a “funny lookin’ little punkin.”

  “And I know friends,” Griffith expounded in an exaggerated drawl, “that they couldn’t eat it because they kicked it the whole evenin’ and it never busted.” That line always brought howls of laughter from live audiences. Like Minnie Pearl, June Carter Cash, and others who played cornpone southern characters, Griffith was intelligent and highly educated, and he rode his comedy acumen to success on Broadway, in films, and on television.

  It was the summer between ninth and tenth grade for Maddox, who attended the small town’s combination junior and senior high. The concert was a break in the summer routine, a change from hanging out at the Snack Drive-in near the Fort Myers police station or having a soda on the beach. “The town was so small you couldn’t find much trouble,” said Maddox. “If you did, news of it would make it back to your parents before you did.”

  At that evening’s show Presley played a longer set than on the first Florida tour, at least twenty-five minutes. According to Maddox an unusual thing happened: “I don’t remember any screaming.” Maddox recalls Presley including a couple of gospel numbers along with songs from his usual early repertoire: “That’s All Right,” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” After the show some of the boys from school went backstage to help the musicians pack up their equipment. They invited Maddox and her friend to join them: “C’mon, they’re playing music back there.” The fact that there was no security to stop them, no announcement that “Elvis has left the building,” is a reminder of what an innocent and far more accessible time this was for Presley as well as his fans.

  Maddox ascended the stairs that led behind the stage at the exhibition hall. In the hustle and bustle of people breaking down the equipment, Elvis, Scotty, and Bill had taken off their ties, loosened up their collars, and begun jamming before loading up and heading back to the Holiday Inn. As Maddox stood there taking it all in, Presley approached: “Come on let’s dance.”

  He took her hand. While others stood around or continued loading up the equipment, fifteen-year-old Diane Maddox fast-danced with Elvis Presley. Because he was not yet a major star, Maddox said she did not find those moments intimidating or all that awe-inspiring. He was still so young and approachable: “He could have been any other kid I hung out with at the beach or the drive-in.” It wasn’t until she saw Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show the next year that she regretted not having had a camera to record her time with him.

  Someone backstage handed Maddox a picture of Presley, which she asked him to sign. So that he wouldn’t risk damaging the back of the photo with a pen, Presley asked her to get him a pencil. Generations later, his autograph remains vivid: “Love ya, Elvis Presley.” The musicians asked their teen helpers to follow them over to the hotel to help unload the instruments. In a conservative small town like Fort Myers, it was out of the question for two respectable fifteen-year-old girls to join a group of men and boys at a motel for any reason.

  At a time when air-conditioned public spaces were a rare cause for celebration, in the middle of a Florida summer, arenas without it were almost unbearable. Regardless, on the next two nights after Fort Myers, fans braved a driving rain storm and navigated flooded streets to fill Orlando’s sweltering Municipal Auditorium for the Andy Griffith show. Perhaps because of the oppressive heat, Presley played only three songs: a cover of the current number 1 hit in the nation, Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” “Shake Rattle and Roll,” and “I’ve Got a Woman.”

  The headliner Griffith soldiered on, punctuating his comedy sermon with lots of smiles, crowd eye contact, and hillbilly twang. His beloved football monologue brought laughter in the sweat-soaked auditorium. After the evening show, Orlando newspaper columnist Jean Yothers caught up with Griffith backstage. The enthused responses Presley was generating weighed on the comedian’s mind:

  “That Presley boy purely fractures the people all to pieces,” Griffith commented in a voice you can imagine coming from his most famous character Sheriff Andy Taylor. The observant young writer Yothers noted that Griffith’s speaking voice departed from the exaggerated North Carolina drawl fans had come to know in the football record, coming across as the more educated man he was.

  At times “Deacon” Andy’s double entendres bordered on naughty: “The little mother’s club is having a meetin’ this week,” Griffith announced to the audience. “Any of you women interested in becoming a little mother, may meet with the preacher at 3 p.m.” Griffith admitted some misinterpreted his act as sacrilegious. Yothers assured her readers, part of central Florida’s churchgoing Bible belt of the mid-50s, “Andy’s preacher act is extremely comical.”

  It is hard to believe that at one point in American culture, someone as quintessentially all-American and wholesome as Andy Griffith had an act some that interpreted as risqué. Soon the same would hold true for Presley but in a far more magnified and reactionary way than for Griffith. Yothers cornered Presley before his set, admiring his blue lace shirt. “I’ll give it to you,” Presley told her. In her Friday “On the Town” column, Yothers noted that she was genuinely touched by the gesture but added, “I’m still waiting.” She was unapologetic for the effusive comments she had made in the newspaper when Presley played Orlando two months previously:

  “I fully realize many of you sneer at hillbilly music,” she wrote, taking on a confessional tone. Still smitten, Yothers declared Presley “the hottest thing to hit Orlando since the Avalon hotel caught fire.” Presley gave Yothers the same “love ya” autograph Diane Maddox collected in Fort Myers. Not yet twenty-one, Presley had become adept at using his sex appeal to court young female fans and reporters.

  What bothered the prescient young columnist was Presley’s hyper-energetic “house afire” performances: “Now it’s none of my business,” Yothers wrote, “but I think Elvis is pushing himself too fast. He’s wearing himself out giving customers more than their money’s worth. I just wanted to say to him, ‘Slow down boy … your fame won’t disappear.’” At that point though, Presley was famous only in the South, and there was no telling where his career might lead, if it lasted at all.

  Soon enough, Presley’s schedule would become eve
n more grueling at the hands of Tom Parker, who also felt a need to exploit Presley’s popularity for as much money as possible, in case the young performer’s fame should turn out to be fleeting. That anyone would even consider such a thing seems preposterous in retrospect. But he needed to expand his audience beyond the South, and Parker was just the man to help him do it. Meanwhile, the hint of controversy that Griffith and Presley generated on that tour was nothing compared to the widespread scorn awaiting in 1956.

  5

  July 28–29

  Jacksonville

  When the Andy Griffith tour moved on to Jacksonville, site of Presley’s first fan frenzy back in May, Tom Parker was determined to build on that momentum and make Presley’s two-night stand the biggest thing ever to hit northeast Florida. Parker called a meeting with Florida tour publicist Mae Axton and a couple of influential radio men in town. One of them, Glenn Reeves, a talented rockabilly musician, also appeared on the bill above Presley as an opening act on the Griffith tour. Like Axton, Reeves wore numerous hats in the local music business as musician, promoter, and radio and television host. Two others, Marshall Rowland from WQIK and Frank Thies, were also part of the Parker summit.

  After he told them how he wanted to promote the show, Parker made it clear they would be well compensated for helping make it a success. “Don’t worry, work hard and promote this great concert,” Parker assured them, “and the Colonel will take care of you.” Through his third-person reference we get a glimpse of Parker’s own brashness, drive, and ego. Those qualities were vital in growing Presley’s success, which Parker was already seeing as inseparable from his own.

  Rowland took to the streets blaring news of the show from a loudspeaker on top of his car; so loudly that a policeman threatened to arrest him. Axton took Presley to a local radio studio to record an interview, the only known surviving recorded interview from Presley’s 1955 Florida tours.

  Axton begins, “You’re more of a bebop artist more than anything else aren’t you?”

  “Well, I never have given myself a name,” Presley replies. “But a lot of the disc jockeys call me bopping hillbilly, bebop, I don’t know …”

  In some places the interview is inaccurately dated May 13, from Presley’s earliest Florida tour. In the exchange Presley comments on already having toured Florida and even complains about the limited distribution Sun is giving his records. Axton, taking on a motherly tone, reminds Presley that national distribution, like becoming a well-known artist, takes time.

  “We mustn’t forget Scotty and Bill who do a terrific job backing you up,” Axton comments.

  “They sure do, I really am lucky to have those two boys. They really are good. Each one of them has a style all his own,” Presley reflects.

  “What I don’t understand is how you keep that leg shaking at just the right tempo,” Axton chuckles. Presley, seeming a bit embarrassed, explains, “It just automatically wiggles.”

  In the days before Elvis, Scotty, and Bill had stage monitors to hear themselves perform, in the din of girls screaming the backing musicians had to rely on watching Presley’s arm and leg movements to know where he was in the song. Moore once joked to a reporter, “We were the only band in the world directed by an ass.”

  Besides the interview, Axton enlisted her whole family in promoting the weekend concerts. Axton’s high school–aged sons Johnny and Hoyt (who would go on to a successful acting and songwriting career of his own) put up concert posters all over Jacksonville. Mae also risked the ire of local police, riding in a rented sound truck making sure people knew it wasn’t too late to head over to the Dixie Music Shop or McDuff Hardware and buy a ticket for $1.25.

  That week Jacksonville was hit with what one writer called “the damnedest freak storm anybody could remember.” Trees were down, windows were broken, and record-setting rain deluged the city. Fire trucks had to be called to pump out the basement of the First Baptist Church. Workers formed a bucket brigade to get flood waters out of the Windle Hotel. Nonetheless, the baseball stadium dried out in time for the show to go on.

  Each night the gates opened at 7:00 p.m. and the show started at 8:15. By the second night fans had broken through the barricades in a replay of the May fan frenzy. Girls chased Presley across the playing field, through the dugout, and into the player locker room artists were using as a dressing area. “I just stood there laughing,” Marty Robbins recalled. “I knew then he was going to be big because people didn’t even know who he was, and they acted like this.”

  Tom Parker made sure the press was made aware of the fan reaction. Cash Box magazine reported: “Elvis Presley was recently presented with a new sports coat by Colonel Parker, to replace the one torn apart by fans in Jacksonville, Florida.” As Presley’s stage time slowly increased, bassist Bill Black often goaded him or made Presley the straight man in onstage antics:

  “Roses are red and violets are pink,” Bill proclaimed.

  “No, roses are red and violets are blue,” Presley assured him.

  “No, no man. Roses are red and violets are pink.”

  At that point Black produced a pair of pink panties from his back pocket for the crowd to see. “I know Violet’s are pink ’cause I got them right here.” Given the era, that kind of joke in front of a Florida country music crowd had to be considered R-rated. It was not the kind of material the ever image-conscious Tom Parker wanted associated with Presley, and no one, no one, was going divert the crowd’s attention away from his star.

  He also had to deal with Presley’s current manager Bob Neal, who frustrated Parker by making recording deals without his consent and failed to get him a bigger, better record deal to improve distribution and hasten Presley’s march to stardom. Disc jockey Marshall Rowland, who had played each star’s records for two weeks leading up to the concerts, wondered how well Parker would take care of them as he’d promised. “I was holding my breath at how much we were going to make,” he recalled.

  At the Roosevelt Hotel in downtown Jacksonville, Parker assembled his four promoters. “When he got to his room,” Rowland said, “Colonel Tom put a rubber band around four rolls of big bills and without hesitation threw them down on the floor.” Perhaps for his amusement, each of the four had to scramble to the floor like children to pick up their pay for helping make the concerts a success. Parker did not disappoint, giving them a thousand dollars each, a king’s ransom for 1955.

  In her memoir Axton heaped praise on Parker for his “inherent sense of rightness about anything he dealt with to make its operation smooth and successful.” She told Presley that Parker’s guiding hand was all he needed: “I’ll write your first million-seller,” she told him. “You continue to be you, and Colonel Tom will do the rest.” Axton, who was indeed a songwriter, said she was just being facetious about writing a million-selling song for him.

  Presley’s parents Vernon and Gladys were not as easily won over as Parker’s Jacksonville minions. Since Presley was not yet twenty-one, they would have to sign off on any plans Parker had to gain control of their son’s career. According to some accounts, Presley’s parents attended these Jacksonville concerts, and Gladys particularly was unnerved by all the screaming young girls tearing at his clothes. She needed convincing that Parker was not just some snake oil salesman looking to use her son, rather than protect him, as his first manager Scotty Moore had promised he would.

  As the Griffith tour wound toward its last two stops, Daytona and Tampa, Parker called on some of his longtime contacts to help raise Presley’s profile. The results were historic.

  6

  July 30–31

  Daytona Beach, Tampa

  On July 30, 1955, seven weeks after Elvis Presley made such a distinct impression on Daytona Beach teens like Doris Gurley and usher Holmes Davis, he was performing once again at the Peabody Auditorium. Although he was still an opening act, still trying to forge a career in the music business, on this second tour of Florida Presley’s pay was bumped up to one hundred dollars a night, twice a
s much as he had earned the first time around. The biggest advantage he had at this moment in time, though, was the former carny and Tampa dogcatcher now working to leverage himself to capitalize on Presley’s limitless moneymaking potential.

  “I never looked on him as a son,” Parker admitted in a telling moment of candor. “But he was the success I always wanted.” Presley’s legion of devoted fans won’t begrudge Parker credit for being instrumental in getting the hard-rocking, hip-shaking youngster to the top. But beyond that, one critic noted, “Parker is nothing short of evil incarnate: the moneyman who took him from Sun, to middle-of-the-road RCA, lightened and softened him until the former bad boy fit seamlessly into a string of mostly faceless and mediocre movies.” In the days before musicians could depend on their managers to chart a course for their career success, ultimately Parker saw nothing wrong with Presley making ridiculous films and cutting nothing but vanilla ballads, if they included eye-popping payoffs. His was a ruthless pursuit of cash with no consideration of what it was doing to his client’s credibility as an artist.

  During this early wooing stage, Parker paid for Mae Axton and her family to fly from Jacksonville to attend the show in Daytona Beach. That meant she could be there to help Parker land the biggest fish yet in his management career. Gladys and Vernon Presley traveled to Daytona Beach to see the ocean that had inspired such a sense of awe in their boy. Parker, still trying to edge out Bob Neal for sole control of Presley, made an obvious show of generosity to ingratiate himself with Presley’s mom and dad, already impressed by the oceanside environs.

  “Oh how proud they were,” Axton wrote, “when Elvis walked on stage with a sharp new outfit the Colonel had gotten for him.” The old carny’s seduction tactics were working; Parker was slowly winning over Gladys Presley, the most important and trusted person in her son’s life. By Daytona Beach, Axton declared, “Elvis was sold on Colonel Tom.” Soon, so were his parents.