Last Train to Memphis

by Peter Guralnick

  They left not long afterward: Interview with Ernest Tubb, 1976; also interviews with Justin Tubb, 1989, and Bobbie Moore, as well as the Ernest Tubb Discography (1936–1969) by Norma Barthel. According to Tubb and his son, Justin, Elvis wrote a note to Ernest afterward, thanking Tubb for his kindness and advice. It should perhaps be borne in mind that what Elvis said to Ernest Tubb, a childhood idol, might have been more in the nature of politeness, an unerring instinct for deference, or, as Marion said, never putting a foot wrong. It is not necessarily a statement to be taken literally, though Ernest obviously did.

  as good as it was “humanly possible”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Marion Keisker (MVC/MSU).

  the Shelton Brothers had originally recorded: The Shelton Brothers were originally the Attlesey brothers. The song is credited to the Attleseys and guitarist Leon Chapplear, but it clearly goes back to an earlier blues and “minstrel” tradition. The Attlesey lineage is spelled out in Billy Altman’s liner notes to Are You from Dixie? Great Country Brother Teams of the 1930’s, on RCA.

  With the last song of the session: This more or less follows the order suggested by Lee Cotten in All Shook Up: Elvis Day-by-Day, 1954–1977 (Cotten appears to have been working from RCA executive Steve Sholes’ notes), and Ernst Jorgensen’s definitive discography. It must be emphasized, however, that there can be no certainty as to order in the absence of a true recording log.

  To Marion Keisker it was like: Jerry Hopkins interview with Marion Keisker (MVC/MSU).

  Sam called Pappy Covington: This account is based on interviews with a myriad of sources, including Sam Phillips, Scotty Moore, Tillman Franks, Billy Walker, Frank Page, and Horace Logan. Unfortunately, there is nearly as much dispute over Elvis’ arrival at the Hayride as there is over his arrival at the Memphis Recording Service, or at the Opry, for that matter. According to Horace Logan, it was he who first contacted Sam Phillips (though Tillman Franks, with whom he fell out just around this time, played an unspecified part), and it was he who first introduced Elvis onstage. Both Slim Whitman and Billy Walker, who appeared on the bill at Overton Park, have suggested credibly in published interviews that they brought the news of the young Memphis phenomenon back to the Hayride, while Tillman’s story seeks credit for nothing but the need to find a substitute for Jimmy and Johnny on the Hayride bill. From talking with most of the principal players, I think the scenario I have presented is as logical a version as one might come up with, but that doesn’t mean it happened that way.

  The Hayride was a little over six years old: Background information on the Hayride comes from interviews with Horace Logan, Tillman Franks, Frank Page, T. Tommy Cutrer, Merle Kilgore, and Alton and Margaret Warwick, among others. Also the 1984 PBS documentary Cradle of the Stars and “Saturday Night Live” by Joe Rhodes in Westward (the Dallas Times-Herald magazine), October 10, 1982.

  He stopped by Stan’s Record Shop: Interview with Stan Lewis, 1990; also Robert Trudeau, “Stan the Record Man,” Upstate, December 8, 1983.

  He walked out on the stage: Interview with Horace Logan, 1991.

  He was wearing: This is a composite picture put together from descriptions of Elvis’ appearance that evening and contemporaneous photographs. I don’t know of a photograph from that first performance itself.

  Horace Logan was out onstage: Interview with Horace Logan. Logan fully described his working methods.

  “Elvis, how are you this evening?”: This dialogue, which prefaces performances of “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” appears on Elvis…. The Beginning Years, on the Louisiana Hayride/RCA label. Despite Horace Logan’s claim, the interlocutor appears to be Frank Page (though it’s always possible that Logan preceded Page). The tape seems to be authentic, and I don’t know any reason to question its dating (the dialogue is certainly awkward enough to signal a first appearance). In any case, it’s well worth a listen.

  The cheers that went up: Interviews with Sam Phillips, Merle Kilgore, Tillman Franks, Jimmy “C” Newman, Curley Herndon, et al., 1989–92.

  “I’d never seen anything like it before”: Interview with Jimmy “C” Newman, 1990.

  “I think he scared them”: Interview with Merle Kilgore, 1989.

  “My daddy had seen”: 1972 interview.

  He missed the Hayride for the next two weeks: There has been some debate over this issue. There is no question that Elvis returned to the Hayride and signed a contract on November 6, 1954, or that he missed the October 30 broadcast. I had believed from oral testimony, and from a story in “The Cashbox Country Roundup” of November 6, 1954 (which quoted Marion Keisker on the success of his second week’s appearance), that he played the Hayride on October 23. But he does not appear to have been listed in the lineup, and Scotty’s recollection is that there was at least a two-week gap while Sam was “negotiating the contract—not that there was all that much to negotiate, at twenty-four dollars a week or whatever it was.” Sam, meanwhile, recalls clearly that they did not return until at least three weeks later, after the contract had been arranged.

  That Friday night Bob Neal brought a visitor: This account of Oscar Davis’ discovery of a fresh young talent is based on several interlinked sources: Jerry Hopkins interviews with Oscar Davis and Bob Neal (MVC/MSU); a joint interview with both Colonel Parker and Oscar Davis carried out briefly in the aftermath of Elvis’ well-known interview in August 1956; Gordon Stoker’s recollections to me (and others) of meeting Elvis backstage at the Eddy Arnold show, long before Elvis had made his mark; my interview with Hoyt Hawkins’ widow, Dot Hawkins; ads and a review in the Memphis Press-Scimitar of Eddy Arnold’s October 31 show; and the documented fact that by early January the Colonel was well aware of exactly who Elvis Presley was.

  At the time of that first meeting, Oscar Davis told Hopkins, “Scotty Moore was acting as [Elvis’] manager…. They were somewhat excited about getting me in the picture with them, and we agreed to meet the following Sunday when Eddy Arnold would be in town and I would be in town.” In the 1956 interview Parker credited Davis with “introducing” him to the boy (he refused to acknowledge that Davis actually discovered him), though it is unclear whether he actually met Presley at the time, and Davis made a point to Hopkins that he tried to keep his find secret from the Colonel. Both Parker and Davis stipulated that an Eddy Arnold concert in Memphis was the occasion, and Davis declared that “I called him to the Colonel’s attention on the Sunday which we played [there].” The working out of this scenario has involved some guesswork, obviously, but the only discrepancy that I am aware of is that Davis remembered going to see Elvis perform at a little “airport inn.” The fact that Elvis was advertised at the Eagle’s Nest the weekend of the Eddy Arnold show seems to resolve the discrepancy.

  Background on Oscar Davis and Tom Parker stems from numerous interviews, including invaluable ones with Grelun Landon, Gabe Tucker, and Sam Phillips, as well as extensive documentation in Marge Crumbaker and Gabe Tucker’s Up and Down with Elvis Presley; Elvis by Jerry Hopkins; It’s a Long Way from Chester County by Eddy Arnold; Elvis and Gladys by Elaine Dundy; Elvis and the Colonel by Dirk Vellenga; and Elvis by Albert Goldman.

  he introduced him to Eddy and to Hoyt Hawkins: Interview with Gordon Stoker, 1989.

  they had enjoyed his singing, too: Jerry Hopkins interview with Neal Matthews (MVC/MSU).

  The following Saturday night: Interview with Horace Logan. The actual contract is available and has been widely reproduced.

  They stopped by the Chisca to visit: Elvis’ relationship with Dewey was documented in interviews with Sam Phillips, Dixie Locke, June Juanico, and Dickey Lee, among others, as well as by Jonnie Barnett’s extensive interviews with Harry Fritzius and Charles Raiteri’s exhaustive research for his fine screenplay on Dewey.

  So far as the issue of Elvis on Beale, this is an old, and much-debated, question. I have spoken with innumerable Beale Streeters, and read the testimony in Beale Black & Blue by Margaret McKee and Fred Chisenhall. Although Rufus Thomas has a
damantly insisted he never saw Elvis on Beale until the December 1956 WDIA Goodwill Revue, I don’t have any problem placing Elvis on Beale; it is just a question of when. From speaking with Elvis’ childhood friends, and considering the nature of the young man, I find it far more likely that he would start going down to the clubs once he had achieved a certain measure of confidence and respect, and if WDIA’s Professor Nat D. Williams was Beale Street’s uncrowned mayor, Dewey Phillips was something like a roving ambassador from another galaxy. There is nothing in the interviews with Beale Street habitués that I have conducted or read that would indicate a distinction in the mind of the speaker between a young Elvis Presley who had not recorded at all and a young Elvis Presley who had simply recorded locally but was not widely known, at least not in the black community. That, as I see it, is the cause of the confusion. Robert Henry, for example, who is quoted in Beale Black & Blue as having “taken him to the Hotel Improvement Club with me,” was cited in much the same role in the Press-Scimitar on Elvis’ death with one telling exception: “I met him through Dewey Phillips,” Henry said. You can read the interviews with Billy “The Kid” Emerson (Living Blues 45/46, spring 1980), Sunbeam Mitchell (by David Less, unpublished), and Calvin Newborn with this chronology in mind, and I don’t believe there is anything in any of them that would sharply contradict it. And when an even younger, even less well known white boy is recalled hanging out in the clubs at a presumed earlier date, the question naturally arises: How did you know it was Elvis? In the absence of an introduction, the presumption must be that the name was attached retrospectively. This is all, in other words, inductive (but not, I hope, circular) reasoning, and persuasive only to the point that it is actually proved, or disproved, by documented events. Putting the description in the form of a dialogue with Dixie is a narrative device, however: the conversation may have happened, but it is not a memory that I have gotten from Dixie, and it is simply a means of threading together a chronological story in a manner that seems to me reasonably plausible.

  Toward the end of football season: Jerry Hopkins interview with Red West (MVC/MSU); Red West et al., Elvis: What Happened?; Trevor Cajiao interview with Red West for Elvis: The Man and His Music 22, March 1994; interview with Buzzy Forbess, 1991.

  “He would look in the papers”: Interview with Guy Lansky, 1990.

  Ronnie Smith recalled running into Elvis: Interview with Ronald Smith, 1993.

  Sometimes old friends passed him: He speaks of this happening, at a later date, to Bob Neal in Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley Speaks!, p. 30.

  he didn’t know if they were laughing: He cites this fear in his Warwick Hotel interview in March 1956.

  In between shows at the auditorium: Interview with Maylon Humphries, 1991.

  With Merle Kilgore: Interview with Merle Kilgore.

  Sometimes they would go: Interview with Maylon Humphries.

  They worked one night: Interviews with Curley Herndon, 1991; Scotty Moore; D. J. Fontana, 1988, 1991; and Tillman Franks, 1991–93.

  Pappy called Tom Perryman: Interview with Tom Perryman, 1989.

  Scotty Moore confirmed how the connection came about and the nature of the relationship. “A lot of times,” Perryman recalled, “the boys would come by after the show. Elvis would look after our three kids when we took the baby-sitter home. Hamburgers and banana pudding.”

  On Thursday, November 25: Interview with Biff Collie, 1990.

  In addition to the quotes, much of the background material on Biff Collie comes from this same interview. Additional information on Collie from interviews with Tillman Franks and T. Tommy Cutrer, while the Eagle’s Nest incident was illuminated by Franks as well as by the story “The Notorious ‘Country’ Johnny Mathis” by Bill Carpenter, which appeared in Goldmine, May 28, 1993. The telegram was on display for a time at the Elvis—Up Close Museum, across from Graceland, and was published in Goldmine, August 10, 1990, in a story by Joe Haertel, “Retracing Elvis’s Memphis and Tupelo Footsteps.”

  Meanwhile, Bob Neal was looking on his new project: Jerry Hopkins interviews with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  “they didn’t know exactly how to take him”: This description of Elvis’ development as a stage performer is assembled from various points in Jerry Hopkins’ interviews with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  Sometimes Bill would come out of the audience: Interviews with Bobbie Moore, 1992, and Bobbie Moore and Evelyn Black, 1993.

  Elvis had already given himself: Elvis Presley Speaks!, p. 16; Robert Johnson, “Suddenly Singing Elvis Presley Zooms into Recording Stardom,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, February 5, 1955; Country & Western Jamboree, April 1955.

  a new song by a Covington, Tennessee, theater manager: Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins, Good Rockin’ Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll, p. 72.

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT

  All quotes from Sam Phillips, Marion Keisker, Scotty Moore, and Dixie Locke are from the author’s interviews, unless otherwise noted.

  “They did a lot of their harmony gospel songs”: Interview with Tom Perryman, 1989.

  In Corinth, Mississippi: Interviews with Buddy and Kay Bain, 1989, 1990, 1994.

  It was all like a dream: Elvis referred to this fear again and again, that somehow his success would turn out to be all an illusion, from his earliest recorded interviews on. “I think about things that have happened,” he told Edwin Miller in May 1956 (“Elvis Presley,” Seventeen, fall 1956), “and it’s kind of like a dream. A year and a half ago, I was nothing.” To Bob Johnson he insisted that, despite this dreamlike atmosphere, he would never forget “who I am and where I came from and my friends and how this all happened.”

  there was a full, four-column spread: Memphis Press-Scimitar, February 5, 1955.

  He was fascinated, too: Interview with Martha Carson, 1989; Dave Byers, “Martha Carson: ‘The Rockin’ Queen of Happy Spirituals,’ ” 1983.

  In between shows he and Scotty went across the street: Scotty recalled the experience in 1988, 1989, and 1992 interviews; Sam Phillips spoke of it in 1989 and 1990 interviews; the date in New Boston in early January has been confirmed by a January 24, 1955, letter from the Colonel to Robert Shivers, a promoter in Hope, Arkansas, in which the Colonel states: “Presley alone did over $500 in New Boston a few weeks ago.”

  The meeting at Palumbo’s: This account has been put together primarily from interviews with Sam Phillips and Scotty Moore, along with Oscar Davis’ colorful, if somewhat confused, description to Jerry Hopkins (MVC/MSU). Davis gives the most vivid account by far of the Colonel’s frontal assault, but both Scotty’s and Sam’s impressions of Tom Parker in the aftermath of the meeting, and the Colonel’s subsequent attempt to sell Tommy Sands, not Elvis Presley, to RCA as a harbinger of the new music, bear out the somewhat unfortunate contretemps that resulted, at least initially, from this meeting.

  Thomas A. Parker on first impression: Much of the specific background on the Colonel here comes from Marge Crumbaker and Gabe Tucker’s Up and Down with Elvis Presley; Dirk Vellenga’s Elvis and the Colonel; and Albert Goldman’s Elvis.

  Acuff, then known as: Elizabeth Schlappi, Roy Acuff.

  According to Oscar Davis: This description of Colonel Parker has been put together from various points in Jerry Hopkins’ interview with Oscar Davis (MVC/MSU).

  To Biff Collie, the Houston DJ: Interview with Biff Collie, 1990.

  Gabe Tucker, who met Parker: Interview with Gabe Tucker, 1990.

  “When Tom’s your manager”: Eddy Arnold, It’s a Long Way from Chester County, pp. 46–47.

  From now on, he told Gabe Tucker: Crumbaker and Tucker, Up and Down, p. 74.

  In 1953, in an episode: Jerry Hopkins, Elvis, p. 101.

  Arnold and Parker “were dissipating”: Crumbaker and Tucker, Up and Down, p. 71.

  making his office in the lobby: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bill Williams (MVC/MSU); the story is told in Hopkins’ Elvis, p. 102.

  By the spring of 1954: Billboard passim.

  “No o
ne knows very much”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Oscar Davis (MVC/MSU).

  “You have one fault”: Vellenga, Elvis and the Colonel, p. 126.

  As Gabe Tucker observed: Interview with Gabe Tucker.

  everyone else in the Colonel’s estimation: “Everyone has weaknesses,” Oscar Davis told Jerry Hopkins (MVC/MSU). “He’ll read you very quickly. Helluva guy.”

  Snow was bowled over by his first exposure to this kid: Interviews with Jimmie Rodgers Snow, 1990, 1993, 1994.

  A note on the spelling of Jimmie Rodgers Snow’s name. Snow was named, obviously, for his father’s musical idol. He came to identify himself, however, as “Jimmy,” both as an artist and, in later years, as a minister. Hence the discrepancy in spelling.

  One final note. Jimmy Snow believes that he played Lubbock with Elvis a month earlier than this booking, operating as a kind of scout for his father and Colonel Parker. After extensive interviews with Billy Walker, who headlined Elvis’ first, brief West Texas tour; Tillman Franks, who booked it; and “Pappy” Dave Stone, who booked the Lubbock gigs in both January and February (not to mention Bill Griggs’ article “Elvis Presley in Lubbock” in Rockin’ ’50s, August 1992), I have come to the conclusion that this is just a matter of the normal telescoping and expansion of memory—but I remain open to correction.

  “His energy was incredible”: Nick Kent, “Roy Orbison: The Face Interview,” The Face, 1989.

  “He was this punk kid”: Ibid.

  “There never was a country act”: Jerry Hopkins interview with Bob Neal (MVC/MSU).

  The trouble was: Robert Johnson, TV Star Parade, September 1956, p. 65.