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  ELVIS IGNITED

  UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA

  Florida A&M University, Tallahassee

  Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

  Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers

  Florida International University, Miami

  Florida State University, Tallahassee

  New College of Florida, Sarasota

  University of Central Florida, Orlando

  University of Florida, Gainesville

  University of North Florida, Jacksonville

  University of South Florida, Tampa

  University of West Florida, Pensacola

  Elvis at the Polk Theater in Lakeland, August 1956. Photo courtesy of Special Collections, Lakeland Public Library, Lakeland, Fla.

  ELVIS IGNITED

  THE RISE OF AN ICON IN FLORIDA

  Bob Kealing

  University Press of Florida

  Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton

  Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville

  Ft. Myers · Sarasota

  Copyright 2017 by Bob Kealing

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  This book may be available in an electronic edition.

  22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948257

  ISBN 978-0-8130-6230-3

  The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.

  University Press of Florida

  15 Northwest 15th Street

  Gainesville, FL 32611-2079

  http://upress.ufl.edu

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  PART I. 1955: HANK SNOW ALL-STAR JAMBOREE

  1. In Waves

  2. May 7–9: Daytona Beach, Tampa, Fort Myers

  3. May 10–13: Ocala, Orlando, Jacksonville

  PART II. ANDY AND ELVIS

  4. July 25–27: Fort Myers, Orlando

  5. July 28–29: Jacksonville

  6. July 30–31: Daytona Beach, Tampa

  7. A New Place to Dwell

  PART III. 1956: HEADLINING

  8. February 19–21: Tampa, West Palm Beach, Sarasota

  9. The Florida-Georgia Line, February 22–26: Waycross, Jacksonville, Pensacola

  10. The Promoter and Deserter: February 26, 1956

  PART IV. PRESLEYMANIA: AUGUST 1956

  11. A Tsunami Storms Ashore: August 3–4, Miami

  12. Home Away from Home: August 5, Tampa

  13. They’re Somebody’s Kids: August 6, Lakeland

  14. A Real Test: August 7, St. Petersburg

  15. Just for You: August 8, Orlando

  16. Boiling Over: August 9, Daytona Beach

  17. The Morals of Minors: August 10–11, Jacksonville

  PART V. 1960–1961

  18. Presley and Sinatra TV Special: March 1960, Miami

  19. Follow That Dream: July–August 1961

  20. Crystal River

  21. Weall House, Inglis, and Commercial Bank and Trust, Ocala

  22. A Fella Who Wiggled

  23. Hot Times Inside

  24. Yankeetown

  25. Weeki Wachee and the Mayor’s Daughter

  26. Inverness Courthouse

  27. Bye Bye Bird Creek

  28. Coming Back

  The Early Florida Tours and Venues

  On Sources

  Notes

  Index

  Introduction

  As a young performer, Elvis Presley forged a unique and lasting history with fans in every state in the American South, including Florida. His birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, welcomes a hundred thousand pilgrims annually from all over the world. Six times that many dedicated fans visit Graceland, Presley’s Memphis home for the last twenty years of his life and an enduring shrine to him many years after his death. Had Presley never made his way to the one man intent on finding unknown voices of any race—Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis (and to the secretary, Marion Keisker, who would not stop talking to Sam about the unknown kid)—none of it would have happened.

  The unfortunate truth, though, is that many younger people are familiar only with parodied Presley: cloistered behind the high walls of suffocating fame, well past his prime, and emerging only to fulfill an endless touring schedule, a bloated caricature performing karate chops onstage in a dazzling jumpsuit. His days on the decline evoke his struggle with prescription drugs and weight gain. To view Presley only at this stage is like thinking of America’s space missions only for how astronauts returned to earth, discounting each heart-stopping countdown, ignition, and adrenaline-filled, death-defying, jaw-dropping liftoff.

  Scores of southerners were fortunate to get to know the other Elvis, up close. The young and hungry Presley; the rising star, bursting onto stages large and small, sexy, controversial, brimming with talent and ambition. The shrieks of young fans at the sight of the young rockabilly god who fell to earth still ring in their ears, as do the time-stands-still memories of hearing his hit songs for the first time.

  In one memorable engagement in Lubbock, Texas, Presley performed with then unknown Buddy Holly. Other young stars on the rise like Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings saw Presley live in Texas. Seeing Presley perform in Waycross, Georgia, was a life-changing experience for nine-year-old Gram Parsons, who went on to pioneer the country-rock genre.

  The Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport became an important regional broadcast venue where Presley’s unique sound gained early acceptance. The more prestigious and formulaic Grand Ole Opry was lukewarm to him after his only appearance there in 1954. As a result, Presley maintained a regular appearance schedule on the Hayride into 1956.

  In Bono, Arkansas, the early reception for Presley was so rabid that part of the gymnasium floor collapsed. With the passage of time, no doubt, descriptions of events like this have grown more dramatic. Hyperbole has crept in, perhaps. Presley appeared in concert near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, years before it became the most prestigious small-town recording destination anywhere.

  Presley’s early barnstorming days between 1954 and 1956 focused primarily on Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, the Carolinas, and Florida. Local legends abound of Presley concerts in high school gymnasiums, nightclubs, radio stations, even shopping centers—no venue too small. He appeared at watermelon festivals, parades, and live remote broadcasts and received his fair share of boos and taunts for how he looked, dressed, and performed.

  By the time Presley was a national sensation in 1957 playing large venues across the United States, having made a big splash on the Ed Sullivan Show, he was already splitting time with acting; he was making millions, estranged from his legendary bandmates Bill Black and Scotty Moore, and bypassing the hysteria associated with touring. In 1958 he was drafted into the army and gone. Most of America got only fleeting glimpses of Presley during his most electric and influential period as a live performer. The American South—where Elvis Presley plied his trade, made his name, and fell in love again and again—remains the only exception.

  Still, historian Joy Wallace Dickinson points out, some southern places like Florida are often overlooked in discussion of Presley’s time in New York, California, or Nashville. In researching this book, I realized that her observation was dead on. Momentous events in Florida especially, tied to the ignition of Presley’s career, deserve closer attention and exp
loration: the iconic images and songs; the controversy; and the roles of one-time Floridians like Tom Parker and Mae Axton, without whom Presley’s career would have been far different.

  Looking at Presley’s early days in Florida from 1955 to 1961, we’re reminded how much has changed in American culture and celebrity. If we applied today’s standards of propriety, a Jacksonville judge’s 1956 threat to throw Presley in jail for obscenity is laughable. But as an unmarried, world-famous twenty-something actor in 1961, his tendency to gravitate toward and romance underage girls would draw much greater scrutiny today.

  As the years pass, young Elvis Presley’s history in Florida continues to fade like a forgotten back road advertisement. In this time capsule of words, pictures, and pages we savor Presley’s enthralling energy prior to his era of world fame, melancholy, B movies, and boredom. At the same time, we recognize and celebrate those prescient enough to see how special Presley was before the rest of the world caught on. Presley’s Florida journey begins on a beach.

  I

  1955

  Hank Snow All-Star Jamboree

  Sun Records in Memphis, where Elvis Presley made his earliest recordings. Photo by author.

  1

  In Waves

  On a warm central Florida day, perched on a beachside motel balcony, twenty-year-old Elvis Presley gazed upon the churning Atlantic Ocean. As the sticky-cool, salted sea air whistled through Presley’s dark brown pompadour, only the Atlantic’s vastness and the din of crashing waves could begin to compare with the tumult that awaited rock’s soon-to-be king. The darkened horizon off Daytona Beach loomed like his limitless potential; mysterious and awe-inspiring.

  At this snapshot in time, Elvis was not yet Elvis. On May 7, 1955, Presley was just ten months removed from the historic Sun recording sessions back home in Memphis, when visionary recording engineer Sam Phillips brought in Scotty Moore on guitar and his buddy Bill Black on bass to see what kind of talent this raw young singer had. This was his first professional recording session—if you want to call it that. Elvis Presley had never performed in concert.

  Nothing much happened in the audition until late that evening, when the trio started messing around with an up-tempo number. Phillips recognized, at the very least, that the sound of it was different. Then, as his biographer Peter Guralnick wrote, “The rest of the session went as if suddenly they all were caught up in the same fever dream.” The recording they made that night, the rockabilly version of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” with an up-tempo version of Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky” recorded soon after as the flipside, was to modern music what splitting the atom was to warfare. Presley had his first regional hit and staunch backer in Phillips, who employed an evangelist’s zeal to prove that his gut instinct about this kid was right.

  Elvis with Mae Axton, hired by Tom Parker to promote Presley’s 1955 tours. Courtesy of Heather Axton.

  In May 1955 Presley had yet to record the string of breakout national number 1 smashes with RCA Records that ushered in the rock and roll era for good, had a profound impact on American popular culture, and secured Presley’s status as a singer and entertainer for the ages.

  Nothing more than a working performer with less than a year of experience in a ragtag trio of journeymen musicians, not yet dying his hair jet black, Presley toured under the moniker the “Hillbilly Cat,” a hip-swiveling oddity stuck at the bottom of Opry acts on a country package tour. Neither success nor his career path was certain as Presley made his first tour through Florida. Just the thought of him pursuing a career in music was pure audacity. What dirt-poor kid from rural Mississippi via the inner-city projects of working-class Memphis dared to aspire to a life of fame and riches as a recording artist or actor?

  Most broad-shouldered young southern men of Presley’s time and social standing wouldn’t have been caught dead singing, dancing, or obsessing about garish pastel-colored clothes and cars. To most boys, stardom only went as far as high school careers lettering in football or basketball, then maybe college. During the staid, adult-dominated era permeated by the wholesome sounds of Mitch Miller and the McGuire Sisters, childhood dreams faded into reality’s far recesses; expectations moved on to marriage, children, and a workaday job like Presley had just a year previously; driving a pickup truck for Crown Electric.

  Sometimes great artists emerge from the most unlikely circumstances. Presley once said, “Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.” That engine stoked his desire to escape the life he’d known in the projects; often doing without; not getting much notice from girls at Crooms High School in Memphis, getting teased for daring to dress in original ways and look different. Ambition pushed Presley to pursue his dreams because, truth be told, there was no plan B. His natural talent and ambition, like a souped-up hot rod burning deep in his soul, were his only ticket out of poverty.

  Presley’s genre-bending voice heralded the dawning of rock and roll and America’s youth culture, borrowing from the African American strains of Beale Street in Memphis and church hymns echoing over the cotton fields of Mississippi. Via air waves and hand-held transistor radios, a developing teenage consumer culture devoured a new kind of music aimed only at teens.

  Sam Phillips, the non-musician most crucial to developing the soundtrack of this new era, did so with a conscious, colorblind motive; a determination to root out and record talent, black or white, from the poor sides of town and far out in the country. The voices of the ignored that stuck with him growing up on a farm in rural Alabama. He made it his mission to find perfection in the imperfect voices of unknowns like Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, and Johnny Cash; he dared them to discover their own essence no matter how long it took. In his efforts to excavate the soul of these hardscrabble but ambitious people, to give them a voice, Phillips was crowned “the man who invented Rock and Roll” by his biographer Peter Guralnick.

  In early live shows Presley writhed with a primal, sexual energy soon to draw an avalanche of contempt, criticism, and concern from the civic, religious, and law enforcement establishment. Columnists, reporters, even fellow musicians minimized and mocked Presley and his fans. The kids tuned it out, but adults already concerned about Presley’s impact on their kids denounced him. Pastors prayed for him. Presley wasn’t just a new teen obsession; to many adults he was downright dangerous. When he burst onto the airwaves with a voice belying his identity as a young Caucasian male, neither the segregated South nor its music could ever again be painted in black or white. Presley became America’s first rock and roll star; a teen idol and avatar of cool rebellion whose profound influence on young people is impossible to quantify.

  “To say that Elvis Presley has been mythologized into an iconic state of quasi-religious significance is not an exaggeration,” wrote British scholar Richard Parfitt. “Elvis belongs to an elite group of one.” What person in a developed country anywhere in the world with even a minimal knowledge of history and popular culture has not heard and been moved by Presley’s voice? Growing up on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior, Bob Dylan reminisced about the soul-stirring experience of hearing Presley for the first time: “I wanted to see the powerful, mystical Elvis that had crash-landed from a burning star onto American soil. The Elvis that was burning with life. That’s the Elvis that inspired us to all the possibilities of life.”

  John Lennon was more succinct: “Before Elvis, there was nothing.”

  The day of Presley’s first-ever Florida performance, a woman leaving her motel room noticed him at the railing. Forty-year-old Mae Axton was promoting the package tour in which Presley, Scotty, and Bill were playing a bit part. To supplement her income, the married Jacksonville schoolteacher and mother of two boys did public relations and writing on the side.

  Axton wore a dark bouffant typical of the time, had a warm southern way about her, and showed plenty of gumption to stand up for herself in the male-dominated music promotion business. Like the young showman she was promoting, Mae Axton had big dreams. The fact wa
sn’t lost on Axton that instead of thinking about the bevy of young beauties on the World’s Most Famous Beach, Presley was missing his mom and dad.

  “Miz Axton, look at the ocean,” Presley marveled.” “I can’t believe that it’s so big. I’d give anything in the world to have enough money to bring my mother and daddy down here to see it.” Soon enough Presley did just that and far more, moving Vernon and Gladys Presley out of the Memphis projects forever, buying them a big ranch house that even had a swimming pool; an unimaginable luxury in the days before their son embarked on a singing career. Presley’s sentiment struck a deep chord. “That just went through my heart,” Axton recalled. “All the guys looking for cute little girls, but his priority was doing something for his mother and daddy.”

  That vignette captures the character of young Presley. Though burning with his own desire to be a star, with a newfound freedom to pursue all the trappings road rules allowed a handsome young and unmarried performer, Presley remained a devoted, religious son; intent on lifting his parents from the poverty to which they had long become accustomed. His respect for adults was never an affectation; as is tradition in the Deep South, he often addressed older people as sir or ma’am, Miz or Mister.

  The Sunshine State hot-fueled Presley’s rise from hillbilly novelty act in 1955 to headlining megastar the following year. Appropriately, his moonshot began just north of the region soon to be known as Florida’s Space Coast, where so many daring dreams and seemingly impossible missions would soon take flight. Presley logged thousands of miles, grinding and glad-handing his way through one Florida town after another. Influential and astute disc jockeys like Ward Goodrich in Ocala, who went by the radio name “Nervous Ned Needham,” and Brad Lacey in Fort Myers, championed the unknown, talented young singer.