Elvis in Shreveport

Off to meet the King, maybe get healed

I was on the road for a story, from Memphis west through Arkansas to Little Rock and then south down into Louisiana. This was during my working days. The second morning out found me in Shreveport, with a few minutes between appointments, so I went to see Elvis. I do it every chance I get, wherever I happen to be. You'd think I’d get enough of Elvis in Memphis. Nu-uh. I had to go see him in Shreveport, out front of the Municipal Auditorium, where the Boy Who Would Be King made his Louisiana Hayride debut on Oct. 16, 1954. He’s seven-and-a-half feet tall, in bronze — larger than life; so, actual size.

The statue’s a beaut. Elvis’s guitar is strapped around his neck. His knees are bent and his arms outstretched, like he’s leading some rockabilly tent-show revival. His right arm holds the microphone and his left is palm down, fingers splayed, as if the healing has begun.

Bonus content: The opening riff from my novel LONG GONE DADDIES (John F. Blair, Publisher, 2013):

Elvis Presley was a mama’s boy grown up strange, a public housing scourge in pink with an oil drip. But he had those hips and he had that voice. Carl Perkins heard it from over in Jackson and he made fast for Memphis.

They all did. Memphis called out and they came. Memphis was a song on the radio and they wanted some. They came to Sun Records to see Mr. Sam Phillips, and their wide eyes met his wild ones, their pleas fell on his cocked ear. They were young and dirt-poor and not averse to a better life through song. It beat chopping cotton or driving a truck or whatever else they’d done to turn dimes to dollars.

So out of Arkansas came Johnny Cash, sounding like doom looked. He had a voice of deep, swaggering sadness and wanted to sing gospel, but it was train tracks and prison bars instead. Jerry Lee Lewis, all piss and high-test, strode up from Louisiana with a piano on his back, keys aflame, just to show all those guitar players it didn’t have to be wood to burn. There were others from elsewhere. There was Charlie Feathers, like Elvis a Mississippi boy. Charlie Feathers—where’d he pick up that name, the pawnshop? But he may have whipped them all with “Defrost Your Heart,” a spooky-sad country croon like something out of the Hank canon.

Memphis called out and they came. Memphis was a song on the radio and they wanted some. They came to Sun Records to see Mr. Sam Phillips. He took them in and together they cut records of uncommon scruff and joy.

Sun Studio. 706 Union Avenue, Memphis.