Elvis Ignited
Page 21
In an interview marking what would have been Presley’s eightieth birthday, James Burton, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Presley’s lead guitarist the final decade of recording and performing, was asked if he could imagine Presley at eighty. “I can,” Burton said. “And I’ll tell you how I picture him: An incredible gospel singer, and I would say a great gift to the young folks today to bring them to Jesus, to encourage them towards the Christian way. That’s what I think.”
The indelible marks Elvis Presley left behind in Florida are all around us. We sense them in great theaters like the Olympia in Miami, the Polk in Lakeland, and the Florida Theater in Jacksonville where the threat of jail and Presley’s final utterance of the August 1956 tour were so memorable. In the century-old Inverness courthouse, Presley’s time there is remembered and celebrated day in and day out. We feel them in Tampa’s formerly forgotten Hesterly Armory, where a local photographer captured the defining image of those electric early shows, and in a small suburban home in Jacksonville where a parttime teacher and her journeyman musician partner composed Presley’s first million-selling single, “Heartbreak Hotel,” and convinced Glenn Reeves to record a demo version.
In St. Cloud a local developer tells the tale of getting a phone call from Elvis Presley’s people in the mid-1970s about a house he had built at 606 Sequoia Circle in the Pine Lake Estates. As the story goes, Presley hoped to buy the house, build a theater there, and use it as a Florida touring base. The zoning couldn’t be worked out, and Presley’s hopes of having a home near Walt Disney World fell through. Many locals familiar with the tale still talk about what could have been. It’s a plausible story, given that Presley toured Florida in 1975 and spent two days in Lakeland, just sixty miles away.
A wall is all that remains of the Copacabana Motel, destroyed in a hurricane. Photo by author.
After the nightmare of imprisonment in Pensacola in 1932, Tom Parker built a fictionalized persona in Tampa, caught on in carnivals, and built a career at the local humane society and then as a promoter and manager. Parker struck show-business gold in the person of young Elvis Aaron Presley and introduced him to Florida crowds again and again. He brought Presley back to the area to film Follow That Dream as an homage to his own journey. His influence on and over Presley remains a topic of endless debate.
Residents of Ocala and Crystal River cherish memories of seeing young Presley in concert and being part of his film career. Finally, Follow That Dream Parkway stretches all the way past the Bird Creek Bridge and ends where brilliant sunsets paint the Gulf of Mexico in a Technicolor sky. In Daytona Beach, girls chanting “We want Elvis, we want Elvis” outside his dressing room window live on in a remarkable radio interview, and the Peabody Auditorium still basks in the glow as the first Florida venue Presley played.
His early years in Florida could not have been preserved in such detail without the dedicated efforts of Mae Axton and journalists like Anne Rowe, Elvalee Donaldson, Jean Yothers, John Keasler, and Charles Trainor, who would not let the uninformed, preconceived notions of others jaundice their own memorable reportage.
On pre-interstate roadways like the old Tamiami Trail, US 1 and 441, State Roads 40, 19, 50, and 17-92, and a tapestry of others, there’s an old Florida spirit that lingers like early morning fog, damp and brooding, like an apparition just out of reach. In this back country, there’s something palpable about the spirit of young Elvis traveling these ghost roads day and night: blazing along in a pink Cadillac with Bill Black and Scotty Moore, in a lavender Lincoln with his spitfire Mississippi girlfriend June Juanico, or in a sparkling white limo with his awestruck co-star Anne Helm.
It’s worth it to take a trip through time just to see what history might be waiting at the end of a two-lane Florida road less traveled. At Daytona Beach where Presley’s Florida barnstorming days began, down a long beach approach past parked cars where the concrete ends, stands a retaining wall at the edge of a rolling stretch of vacant land reclaimed by low-slung weed growth and small yellow flowers. At its highest point, facing the ocean, the wall still bears the name Copacabana: the only remaining piece of the oceanfront swimming pool that scores of yesteryear tourists enjoyed, Elvis Presley among them.
Like a verse from the Marc Cohn song “Walking in Memphis,” the ghost of twenty-one-year-old Elvis lounges by the Copacabana Motel’s pool on a sultry August day in 1956, his pink Lincoln in the parking lot nearby. Like any other kid his age he flirts with pretty girls in bathing suits and cuts up with the ducktailed guys in white tee-shirts. This wasn’t just another stop on that historic tour; here at the Copacabana, Presley finally managed some real relaxation before facing the possibility of jail in Jacksonville the very next night. Already the tsunami of fame was overtaking him.
Thanks to his words and deeds, songs and shows, young Elvis will never die. On stamps and photographs, in YouTube videos dressed in gold lamé, in Google searches, and in endless Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram feeds, classrooms, and concert halls, he remains an American icon for the ages; a beckoning candle, a defining cultural reference point, and those who cherish his legacy are moths to an eternal flame. Just ask those lucky enough to have been in the vapor trails during Presley’s ignition and launch to superstardom; to a kind of immortality like no other.
THE EARLY FLORIDA TOURS AND VENUES
1955
THE HANK SNOW ALL-STAR JAMBOREE
May 7
Peabody Auditorium, Daytona Beach
May 8
Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa
May 9
City Auditorium, Fort Myers
May 10
Southeastern Pavilion, Ocala
May 11
Municipal Auditorium, Orlando
May 12
Wolfson Park, Jacksonville
WITH “DEACON” ANDY GRIFFITH
July 25
City Auditorium, Fort Myers
July 26–27
Municipal Auditorium, Orlando
July 28–29
Wolfson Park, Jacksonville (two shows daily)
July 30
Peabody Auditorium, Daytona Beach (two shows)
July 31
Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa (two shows)
1956
HEADLINING
February 19
Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa (three shows)
February 20
Palms Theater, West Palm Beach (four shows)
February 21
Florida Theater, Sarasota
February 22
City Auditorium, Waycross, Georgia (two shows)
February 23–24
Jacksonville, Wolfson Park
February 25
Louisiana Hayride, Shreveport
February 26
City Auditorium, Pensacola (three shows)
PRESLEYMANIA
August 3–4
Olympia Theater, Miami (seven shows)
August 5
Homer Hesterly Armory, Tampa (two shows)
August 6
Polk Theater, Lakeland (three shows)
August 8
Municipal Auditorium, Orlando (two shows)
August 9
Peabody Auditorium, Daytona Beach (two shows)
August 10–11
Florida Theater, Jacksonville (six shows)
ON SOURCES
Considering how long ago Elvis Presley burst into America’s consciousness, it came as a pleasant and most welcome surprise to find so many people willing to share their stories of seeing him live, coming into contact with him even.
One day I received a phone call from the 305 area code: “Mr. Kealing? Bob Graham. Tell me about Elvis.” That was my first interaction with Florida’s former governor and United States senator. I replied, “Well, hello Governor, I was hoping you would tell me.” Indeed, Graham was kind enough to share his memories and impressions of seeing Presley at the Olympia Theater in Miami when Graham was a nineteen-year-old freshman at the University of Florida.<
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Anne Helm, who co-starred with Presley in the film Follow That Dream, shot on location in Florida, provided a unique take on being romantically involved with a superstar who was still, in many respects, just a big kid. Helm also gave me an important insight on how innocently Presley started to use prescription medications. That aspect of her time with him is not a primary focus in this book exploring Presley’s early days as a performer, but it cannot be ignored.
Steve Binder, the producer-director of Presley’s 1968 television comeback special, did not come into contact with him until long after Presley’s early years in Florida. Binder nonetheless gave me important perspective on Presley’s domineering manager, Tom Parker. I’m indebted to him for the hours Binder spent with me. The late Jim Kirk, a beloved radio man and political figure in Ocala, also gave me some wonderful stories of dealing with Tom Parker and giving Presley his first headlining opportunity in Florida. I’m glad to have his first person insights in this book.
I want to thank the myriad teens of yesteryear, among them Ardys Bell, Doris Tharp-Gurley, Holmes Davis, and Linda Moscato. Through their eyes we see a talented diamond in the rough emerge as a star for the ages. I am deeply in their debt. Also, thanks to the many people in Ocala, Crystal River, and Inverness who shared their stories and photographs of coming into contact with Elvis Presley during the filming of Follow That Dream. When possible, I relied on these first person interviews.
I was fortunate to find the reportage of Anne Rowe, Jean Yothers, and Elvalee Donaldson in the archives of their respective newspapers. Donaldson’s daughter was kind enough to share her mother’s souvenirs of covering Presley in Lakeland. I also culled the archive of the Miami News for John Keasler and Charles Trainor’s memorable coverage of Presley while filming Follow That Dream. Thanks go as well to Tom Petty’s biographer, Paul Zollo.
To reconstruct the events surrounding Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden’s composition of Presley’s first national number 1 hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” I relied on interviews with Axton and quotes from her memoir Country Singers as I Know ’Em. I was fortunate to find an interview with Durden on YouTube from a Michigan television station. It was a revelation to find out the song was not only written but also recorded for the first time in Axton’s home in Jacksonville, the very same day. I confirmed Axton’s home address in 1955–56 through the St. John’s County Historical Society. Glenn Reeves’s original demo of the song is available on YouTube. Also on YouTube you can hear what is arguably Presley’s most candid and combative early interview, which he gave at the Polk Theater in Lakeland in August 1956.
There are excellent memoirs from Scotty Moore and June Juanico that I used along with their quotes from period newspaper and magazine articles. Scottymoore.net is a fine resource on early Presley tours and the indispensable role Moore played in Presley’s rise to fame. I relied on Alanna Nash’s biography of Tom Parker for some of the details on his imprisonment, diagnosis, and discharge from the army. Anyone searching for the definitive Presley biography need go no further than Peter Guralnick’s two-volume set, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley. For historical perspective I also consulted Guralnick’s biography of Sam Phillips.
Dedicated chroniclers of Presley history run many websites on the topic. Thanks to the remarkable database at Elvisconcerts.com, I was able to conclude that Presley played more live shows in Florida than in any other state during his most important and transformative year, 1956. The site 706unionavenue.nl is an excellent clearinghouse of Presley ephemera and well-researched information, as is Graceland.com. The Florida Memory Project provided historical materials, as did Elvis-history-blog.com. That is only a sampling of worthy websites dedicated to various aspects of Presley’s personal life, career, and legacy.
There was no substitute for taking to Florida’s roadways to absorb the vibrations of history remaining from Presley’s early barnstorming days. Just traveling Florida’s pre-interstate roadways evoked the spartan life of touring musicians of the mid-1950s. I spent time in the front room of Mae Axton’s old house in Jacksonville; my son Will and I ate at the Waffle Stop in Sarasota; I lingered in Presley’s small dressing room and stood center stage at the Polk Theater in Lakeland. I walked the grounds of the Hesterly Armory in Tampa; I interviewed Charlie Louvin inside City Auditorium in Waycross, where he and his brother Ira opened for Presley in February 1956. My children and I sat in the judge’s chair in the old courtroom of the historic courthouse in Inverness. In Yankeetown we tried to position ourselves along the Bird Creek Bridge guardrail at the very spot where Presley posed for Follow That Dream publicity photos. I walked through the bank building on Silver Springs Boulevard where interior scenes were filmed.
And this final note: one of the most memorable experiences was not only interviewing Jim Kirk but doing so at the Southeastern Pavilion in Ocala, where he haltingly moved Presley to headlining status in May 1955 at the behest of an insistent Tom Parker. Being with Mr. Kirk in that historic spot made the interview all the more meaningful and memorable.
Notes
Chapter 1. In Waves
“The rest of the session”: Peter Guralnick, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015), 212.
“Hillbilly Cat”: Presley’s nickname in myriad programs from his 1955 tours.
“Ambition is a dream”: www.elvis.net.
“The man who invented Rock and Roll”: Guralnick used this phrase in the title of his 2015 biography.
“To say Elvis Presley”: Richard J. Parfitt, “The Quasi-Religious Significance of Elvis, King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” theconversation.com, December 11, 2014.
“I wanted to see the powerful”: Douglas Brinkley interviews Bob Dylan, Rollingstone.com, May 14, 2009.
“Before Elvis there was nothing”: John Lennon, Graceland.com.
“Miz Axton look at the ocean”: Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (New York, Little, Brown and Company), 186.
“That just went through my heart”: ibid.
“Nervous Ned Needham”: Curt Synness, Goodrich Had Fascinating Musical Career, www.helenair.com, September 2, 2004.
“I don’t think there was a better time”: author’s interview with former Florida governor and United States senator Bob Graham, October 22, 2015 (hereafter cited as Graham).
“I knew he wanted to go out”: author’s interview with Steve Binder, producer and director of Presley’s 1968 NBC-TV show that has come to be known as his comeback special, April 20, 2013 (hereafter cited as Binder).
“The Colonel got him where he was”: Red West interview with Todd Slaughter (interview for EIN by UK official Elvis Presley Fan Club), 1999.
Chapter 2. May 7–9: Daytona Beach, Tampa, Fort Myers
“Biggest Jamboree of the year”: concert advertisement from Daytona Beach Morning Journal, May 7, 1955.
“Special Added Attractions”: ibid.
“Grand Ole Opry stars”: ibid.
“The way he sort of bounced around”: author’s interview with Holmes Davis, an usher at Presley’s first-ever Florida concert, 2013 (hereafter cited as Davis).
“I was there to see him”: author’s interview with Doris Tharp-Gurley, 2013 (hereafter cited as Gurley).
“Everybody there was speechless”: ibid.
“How do you think things are going”: Davis.
“Things seem to be going pretty good”: ibid.
“He was kind of innocent”: Marsha Connelly, quoted in Gary Corsair, The Boy Who Would be King, from a series by senior writer in the Villages Daily Sun, June 2008 (hereafter cited as Corsair).
“I didn’t pack the car”: Scotty Moore, Scotty and Elvis: Aboard the Mystery Train (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), 83 (hereafter cited as Moore).
“I was amazed at the reaction of the crowd”: Corsair.
“I used to tell him”: ibid.
“Well it’s goin’ over�
��: ibid.
“He did steal the show”: ibid.
“I said I don’t”: ibid.
Chapter 3. May 10–13: Ocala, Orlando, Jacksonville
“World’s smallest pony”: Fred Goodman, “Without You I’m Nothing,” New York Times, August 24, 2003.
“Doctor”: Alanna Nash, The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 88 (hereafter cited as Nash).
“The kid”: ibid. 117.
“He was a ball of fire”: ibid., 103.
“He was one of the rarest”: author’s interview with Jim Kirk, legendary Ocala radio pioneer and civic leader, February 17, 2014 (hereafter cited as Kirk).
“Just sit there”: ibid.
“This pink Cadillac”: ibid.
“I told him”: ibid.
“He choreographed”: ibid.
“I want it to center”: ibid.
“He’s not exactly country music”: ibid.
“I guarantee”: ibid.
“This kid is going somewhere”: Corsair.
“A mournful soul”: Curt Synness, Synness, Goodrich Had Fascinating Musical Career, www.helenair.com.
“Ned was a marvel”: ibid.
“I was worried”: ibid.
“Were cussing”: ibid.
“He was unbelievable”: ibid.
“It was quiet for a minute”: Kirk.