“Powerhouse is playing!” So begins Eudora Welty’s classic story about an iconic jazz singer/piano player who brings his music to a small Mississippi town and causes a big-time commotion with his fans. But Welty’s story, as riveting as it is, does not come close to describing the hair-on-fire excitement of an actual rock concert in the South.
And nothing compares in Little Rock’s history with the Elvis Presley concert held on May 16, 1956. Not the Rolling Stones. Not Dylan. Not the Boss. That night, now more than 50 years ago, was truly unique. When the King strode out on the stage at Robinson Auditorium and struck the first chord of his new block-buster, “Heartbreak Hotel,” the earth as we knew it stood still.
I was 14 at the time and had lived in this city for about nine months. But I knew about Elvis. We all did. He was the sex-on-a-stick bad boy who had a penchant for pink Cadillacs, drove trucks when he couldn’t get a gig, got in fistfights and loved his momma. In short, he was one of us.
And he had changed the face of popular music. Gone were the simpering Hit Parade melodies. Enter black rhythm ’n’ blues mixed in a Deep South gumbo with a healthy dose of country whines and gospel moods.
Plus the sucker could dance—shimmy-shaking, up-on-your-toes, hip-swiveling, knee-shaking dance. It was not merely sexy. It was downright forbidden fruit.
So on that cool May Wednesday night, we all piled into a car with a chagrined parent driving, no doubt stopping en route for a root beer float on Broadway. Boys and girls in my crowd went separately. I could name names, but it would be pointless. We were all there.
Elvis was frustratingly late, but we didn’t care. We just wanted him to show. And when he finally did, in purple coat and black silk pants, it was bedlam. Here was Elvis, tall and mascaraed, hair combed suspiciously like that of a hood, with that shy, infectious grin about to let it rip. And he did.
I may have hard him sing “Well, since my baby left me,” but if I did, I know I didn’t hear much after that. A high-pitched screech like errant chalk on a blackboard blotted out all sound. And a girl, Edith Ax, began pounding the back of my seat or, intermittently, me with both fists in a fit of tribal ecstasy. But I didn’t mind because I was right there with her. The show was completely mesmerizing, and our teenage blood boiled.
I remember “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Money Honey” and “I Got a Woman” particularly because they were my favorites. And I remember the patented Elvis moves. And the girls rushing down the aisles to the stage. He closed the show by announcing that he had recorded a new song, which he wanted to sing for us. The song turned bedlam into pandemonium. It was “Hound Dog.” When he crouched and pointed to a group of girls on the front row and chanted “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog,” they jumped from their seats, shrieked and moved their hands on either side of their heads as if experiencing electric shocks. In a sense, they were.
We left exhausted but with a whole new repertoire of dance steps and a conviction that we had just witnessed a cataclysmic event. The car ride home was raucous as we came down from a teenage high. We bounced around, jabbed at one another and even sang some of his lyrics in tribute to the man, complete with Elvis’ hypnotic beat and mumbling:
“It’s down at the end of Lonely Street
It’s Heartbreak Hotel.
I been-a-so, been-a-so, been-a-so lonely, baby,
Been-a-so lonely I could die.”
Little Rock was never the same. Boy, it was a time.
– July 2006