Elvis Presley Performance at Tacoma's Lincoln Bowl
STORY 1 Researched by Lea
Don Duncan, the man who covered the actual event for the News Tribune.
Here's the e-mail he recently sent me about that historic event:
Do I remember Elvis Presley’s visit to Lincoln Bowl in 1957? How could I forget?
Among the 6,000 people in Lincoln Bowl when Elvis made his first appearance in
the Pacific Northwest were two young employees of The Tacoma News Tribune –
Wayne Zimmerman, photographer, and Don Duncan, a general-assignment reporter who
had cleverly switched days off with the paper’s newest reporter so he could do
the story.
Because Elvis and his high-powered agent, Col. Tom Parker, were moving on to
Seattle later in the day, we were the only news representatives on hand. “Media”
had yet to be invented.
The air was electric as the crowd, many on folding chairs, awaited Elvis’s
arrival. Many of the young women seemed to be in a state of near-delerium, not
unlike the bobby soxers who swooned over a bow-tied Frank Sinatra in the ‘40s.
Many of the older members in the audience (I was then 31), were in a show-me
mode.
Elvis was fresh off the Ed Sullivan show, where he’d been photographed from the
waist up, to protect America’s youth from his pelvic gyrations and, perhaps,
little old ladies from leaving their husbands. How humorous it all seems in
retrospect. Elvis’s pelvic thrusts are tame compared with the routines of
today’s junior-high cheer leaders.
As I recall, Elvis entered from a trailer parked next to the stage. He bounded
on the stage with athletic grace and caressed the microphone, which was mounted
on a tall pole. A chorus of high-pitched shrieks welled up from the audience,
swelling to near vocal pandemonium at times, not ending until Elvis left the
stage half-an-hour later.
Elvis had his trademark sideburns, and was dressed in tight-fitting black pants,
a dark shirt unbuttoned to the breastbone and a sequined gold jacket. He lightly
ran his fingers over the strings of the guitar slung over his shoulder. I don’t
think he played more than a couple of chords during the performance, leaving the
heavy work for his band. When a girl a few feet away let loose an ear-splitting
scream, Elvis curled his lip and flashed that familiar pouty smile.
“I’ll take care of you later, baby,” he said. And “baby” led another chorus of
screams. He was, after all, only 22 and unattached, and one couldn’t blame a
girl for fantasizing.
Enough foreplay. Elvis began to sing in a pleasant baritone. As he did so, he
began a slow rhythmic movement in his pelvic region. His legs began to vibrate,
and his upper torso alternately swayed and shimmied. The man oozed s-e-x appeal
at a time when that three-letter word rarely was spoken in polite society.
Elvis sang at least a dozen songs. Among them: “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Don’t Be
Cruel,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” before climaxing the show with a
frenetic, whirling-dervish rendition of what he called “The Elvis Presley
National Anthem.”
Everyone knew what was coming, but by the time he was halfway through the first
verse – “Hew hain’t nuthin’ but a houn’ dog, cry-hy-in all the time. . .”
pandemonium reigned. Elvis strutted like a duck, hands dangling loosely in front
of him. He fell to his knees in an attitude of prayer, taking the slender
microphone pole with him. And he concluded with a burst of shimmying that left
him limp, his black hair hanging over his eyes, sweat poring from his pancake
makeup.
Elvis leaped from the stage like a gymnast and bolted into a waiting limousine,
which pulled away in a cloud of dust.
Girls, pulling unwilling boys by the hand, rushed to the place where he had
stood and scooped up dirt, which they poured into their purses. Then these wives
and mothers of the future raced off to buy Elvis Presley memorabilia. Do they
still have it? One can only wonder.
When Elvis left, the spell was broken. I realized that I – despite my vows of
impartiality – had been totally captivated by what I had seen and had made only
a few scribblings on my notepad. Not to worry, Wayne, toting his heavy Speed
Graphic camera, and I, with my near-empty notepad, were soon approached by a man
in a big cowboy hat and a huckster’s smile to match.
“Hi boys! Col. Tom Parker’s the name. Elvis’s agent. You want an interview?” We
nodded. “Well, soon as he showers and changes clothes he’ll be with you.”
The cowboy hat seemed to fit Parker. So did “colonel.” Some years later we
learned that Elvis’s svengali had been born in The Netherlands, christened
Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk, and had acquired the honorary “colonel” title from
the governor of Louisiana. He had made his first fortune selling Hadacol, a
patent medicine favored by many a Women’s Christian Temperance Union devotee
until she learned that the reason it made her feel so good was its main
ingredient – alcohol.
Elvis arrived shortly, as promised. Up close, he was even better-looking than on
stage. Trim, about six-feet tall and looking very comfortable in a casual blue
shirt, dark slacks and loafers, he shook hands firmly and was the essence of
Southern politeness, prefacing or ending each statement with “Suh.”
Wayne and I had expected a rock star. We found ourselves with a young gentleman
straight out of “Gone With the Wind.”
Yes, he’d played a little football in high school, Suh. Modest chuckle.
Third-string!
Yes, he’d grown up singing gospel songs in the Baptist Church, and it had
influenced his singing
Oh yes, it was true that he liked to collect things. So far, four Cadillacs, a
Messerschmidt, a Lincoln, a Mark II and two motorcycles. Again, the aw-shucks
smile, followed by “I’m also trying to save my money.”
Being a patriotic young man, Elvis said, he would go into the military service
if his nation called. (True to his words, he did go into the Army in 1960, an
event memorialized in the Broadway musical Bye Bye, Birdie.
Did it bother Elvis that Ed Sullivan had chosen to film him above the waist
during his recent appearance on the show? Answer: “I’d never do anything to
shame my mutha, Suh!”
The last quote would be the one I took from the interview and still repeat at
dinner parties. The truth is, I think he tried to live up to it.
Before long, Wayne was busy shooting pictures of young ladies flocking around
Elvis. One wanted his signature on her forehead, vowing never to wash her face
again. When Col. Parker asked if I wanted my picture taken with Elvis, I was
tempted. But, fearing that fellow reporters would laugh, I declined.
Back in the old TNT newsroom on St. Helen’s, I wrote my story on another
antiquity, a Royal typewriter. The next day Catherine Hunt, a fellow reporter,
brought me a cheap purple sofa pillow bearing a photograph of Elvis and a
guitar, along with his printed signature. She also handed me a 45 rpm. recording
of Hound Dog on the A-side, Heartbreak Hotel on the flip side. I still have both
pillow and record.
I saw Elvis second-hand a few years later, when they were filming “Take Me to
the Fair,” during Seattle’s ’62 World’s Fair. There was one interview with a
pretty young Seattle girl he “dated” for the week. As I recall, she got to sit
with him on a sofa, watch TV and eat popcorn and drink root beer, while
half-a-dozen of his bodyguards/hangers-on stood nearby. The other interview was
with a 70-year-old woman, Patricia Maude Patterson, who headed one of the
world-wide Presley fan clubs. She had taken care of him when he was a small boy
in Mississippi and she invited him to her Queen Anne home, “where I played the
piano and he sang for me.”
Funny thing about “looking back” stories. Post-Watergate only 20 percent of the
voters admitted voting for Richard Nixon although he’d been elected by a
landslide in the last election. Same with Elvis. If all the people who say they
were in Lincoln Bowl that day in ’57 showed up, they’d probably fill three
Lincoln Bowls.
Well, I really didn’t vote for Nixon. And I really did see Elvis.
Don Duncan was a general-assignment reporter for The News Tribune from 1953 to
1958. He returned as managing editor from 1973 to 1979. He is now 81 and living
in Kirkland.
*****
Posted: Sep 9, 2007 10:15 PM STORY 2 Researched and posted by Lea Sept. 9
2007
The King and us
Fans share their memories from the day Elvis played Tacoma in 1957
ERNEST A. JASMIN; The News Tribune
Published: August 15th, 2007 01:00 AM
THE NEWS TRIBUNE FILE
Sideburns, smooth moves, flashy duds – that’s Elvis, all right, Sept. 1, 1957,
at the Lincoln Bowl.
WAYNE ZIMMERMAN/THE NEWS TRIBUNE FILE
Diane Steinke, 15, now Diane Perreault, gets an autograph on her forehead.
THE NEWS TRIBUNE FILE
Judi Zenk, left, joins in the screams of adulation for the King that day in
concert in Tacoma.
Related stories
• Presley rocks ’n rolls Tacoma teenagers into frenzy at bowl
The King was here. Elvis Presley’s diehard fans will dust off old “Hound Dog”
records and sip Blue Hawaiis on Thursday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of
his death. But another anniversary looms larger for local fans. They remember
the day Elvis, the most iconic figure in rock ’n’ roll history, came to Tacoma
and made them true believers.
On the afternoon of Sept. 1, 1957, Presley donned a gold lamé jacket and
delivered “Don’t Be Cruel, ” “Heartbreak Hotel” and other early hits from a
makeshift stage at the Lincoln Bowl. The Tacoma Dome was more than a quarter
century from construction, and most cite his performance as the first major rock
event to hit this area. An estimated 6, 000 fans screamed at each wiggle of the
King’s hyperactive hips.
And imagine one of today’s chart toppers trying this: Presley also headlined a
second show that night at Seattle’s Sicks Stadium, attended by 16, 200 more
ecstatic fans.
Using the memories of local fans, The News Tribune reconstructed the King’s
historic Tacoma visit.
Fans remember Elvis from ’57 Tacoma show
Fans remember the historic day of Sept. 1, 1957, when Elvis Presley played
Tacoma. Some 6, 000 people caught the King at the Lincoln Bowl, prior to an
evening engagement at the old Sicks Stadium in Seattle. Here’s some of what they
remember:
CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE
Kent Morrill of Tacoma garage rock legends the Wailers: “It was the beginning of
the phenomenon of big concerts and all that kind of stuff. There was nothing
before that. There were no bands to speak of. I think the Blue Notes were
probably playing at that time. Gorgeous George wrestled once in a while. That
was about it.”
Carol Norman, 61, of Tacoma: “Elvis had been trying to come to Seattle and
perform (in 1956), but the council had rejected him because they said the youth
were gonna tear up the seats or whatever. So I wrote a letter to (Seattle
Councilman David Levine) and he wrote me back. It was a very nice letter saying
how when I grow up I could understand why they could not let an entertainer like
Elvis perform in their facilities.”
Phylliss Rose, 67, of Tacoma: “All the excitement reminded me of the first time
I saw him on television on the Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey show. I asked all my
friends if they had seen Elvis Presley, the singer, who was so handsome. They
did not even know who I was talking about and said, ‘What a weird name!’”
Arlene Heldreth, 68, of Puyallup: “(Ed) Sullivan had him on, and they only
filmed him from the waist up. We all giggled about that. I can remember lying on
the floor in the living room watching that and my dad just howling. And my
mother was just having a fit because I was watching him do these things. My
mother was having a cow because I was going to go to this thing. And (to) my
boyfriend at the time I said, ‘You know, you gotta get those tickets or we won’t
be boyfriend-girlfriend any more.’ He got the tickets wherever he got them.”
Sandy Rice, 67, of Puyallup: “My girlfriends and I were so excited when we heard
Elvis was coming to Tacoma. I was working at Puget Sound National Bank as a
messenger earning $75 a month before taxes. So $5 to see Elvis represented quite
a lot, but we would’ve paid almost anything to be able to see ‘the King’ in
person.”
Kristi Pedersen Winters, 67, of Puyallup: “My friends and I attended the concert
on Sept. 1, 1957, but only after we promised her boyfriend (the one that got the
tickets) that we wouldn’t scream during the concert. Believe me, this was one of
the hardest promises I had to keep.”
Jim Groves of Gig Harbor: “We were true rock ’n’ rollers back then; malt shops,
pegged pants, wedged shoes, DA’s and coolness. Elvis was a cool guy and put on a
great show.”
ALL SHOOK UP
Janet Meyer, 66, of Leavenworth: “We lived in Morton. So we left home at like
5:30 in the morning because we wanted to be first in line. The concert was at 2,
we got there at 7, and we were not first in line. We were second.”
Morrill: “I was in high school. We wouldn’t go to see Elvis because all the
girls were crazy over him and we were jealous. We went and we climbed up and
used binoculars, and we watched the show from high above in the woods back
there.”
David Hebert, 79, of Tacoma (then a partner in J&M Concessions): “He was selling
banners and pendants and pillows. If I remember right, to purchase every item he
had was around $30, which was a lot of money in those days, 50 years ago. These
kids came there from the berry fields of Puyallup, and they spent their
raspberry and strawberry money.”
Walt Kaplin, 70, of Gig Harbor: “I purchased a photo booklet of Elvis from a
vendor. And as we were going into the stands I saw my uncle, Jim Steele, a
police officer with the Tacoma Police Department.
“I asked him to have Elvis sign one of the photos in the booklet. My uncle went
into the small building and within a minute came back out and waved me over to
the door. I was admitted in to personally meet Elvis in private. I was alone
with ‘the King’ for about five minutes, just the two of us. It was a wonderful
experience. Elvis signed one of the photos in the booklet, which I still have to
this very day.”
Hebert: “There was probably eight or 10 other people in that locker room there,
talking to him and things like that. He was sitting there on the bench, and he
wasn’t dressed out of the ordinary. He just had regular clothes on. People were
talking to him about his life. So the question was brought up about, ‘You think
this is gonna keep up? Are you gonna get more famous?’
“This is really something, I tell you. We got kind of a laugh out of it. He took
out his wallet and took out his membership in the Teamsters Union. And he said,
‘You never know when the bubble’s gonna burst, and I’ll be back driving a cement
truck.’
“(It) was just man-to-man talk down there. It wasn’t much of a ceremony. But it
did stick in my mind that I did meet the guy, talked to him and shook his hand
and stuff.”
Bill Nelson, 65, of University Place: “All the DeMolay kids, the Masonic kids,
from all around the area here were asked to be ushers. Our jobs as ushers
actually consisted of standing between the hordes of screaming young girls and
the stage. [Laughs] We were the first line of defense, I think.
“We had to wear a white shirt and a tie, and we got there ahead of time. And it
was with great anticipation that we were just kind of hanging out. And then here
comes the entourage down into Lincoln Bowl.”
Beverly Ahnert of University Place: “My daughter was 10 years old and not quite
as enthusiastic as my friend Barbara and I were. I also took the 12-year-old
neighbor girl so it could look like we were going to take the kids.
“Soon a black limo of some kind roared out on the football field, and out jumped
Elvis, in black pants and a gold lamé jacket. (He) jumped up on the makeshift
stage, ran his fingers through his hair and sang ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ I jumped up
and down, yelled and yelled some more, enjoying each note Elvis sang. Well, my
daughter and her friend were almost embarrassed to tears to see me making such a
spectacle of myself and sat down on the floor of the stadium seats so that no
one would know they were with us. But we did not care one bit.”
BURNING LOVE
Winters: “He had a natural and perfect timing and was a real tease. The audience
was in the palm of his hand. He would stand perfectly still one minute, and they
would go silent, and he would get a gleam in his eye and then snap his fingers,
and the entire bowl went crazy with screams. Then he would laugh and continue to
sing.”
Nona Stephenson, 83, of Eatonville: “We hadn’t been seated too long when I
borrowed (my friend’s) binoculars and put (them) on Elvis’s face. … And you
could see he was just having a ball. I’d never forget that vision.”
Winters: “At one point, he stepped off the stage onto the ground, and a girl
scooped up the dirt where he had stepped and put it into her purse!”
Meyer (photographed scooping Elvis dirt by The News Tribune): “They had a
barricade set up in the front, and they had some young men in black pants and
white shirts. And for some reason my girlfriend and I went right through the
barricades. And what I was doing when they took that picture was I was picking
up some dirt from where he walked for a girl who was on the other side of the
barricades. She had a baby food jar.”
Heldreth: “Most of us had these fruit jars or napkins or whatever they could
gather to scoop up this dirt that he walked on. And at that time, girls wore
skirts that were full circle – and they were cut out of felt. The poodle skirts,
and you wore all those petticoats underneath them. So here you’re down on your
hands and knees scooping up dirt in a skirt you can’t wash, you have to dry
clean. So we had to go home and have our mothers look at us like we’d been
scrambling in the mud or something.”
ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
Ahnert: “I did not realize that it was a historical and hysterical moment, and
have always been glad that I got to be there and see young Elvis at the
beginning of his huge career. How could we know that he would be the King for so
many years? I did see Elvis two more times, once in Las Vegas and once in
Hawaii. But it was never, ever as exciting as that first time.”
Rice: “Elvis was a great entertainer, and I was always glad we had gone to see
him. I still listen to his CDs almost every day and enjoy them every bit as much
as I did 50 years ago.”
Norman: “When you go to Graceland there’s always reporters there. And they just
randomly pick people. (Once) I told them about my jar of dirt and how one day
when I was moving it fell off the shelf in the cupboard and my husband sucked it
up with a vacuum and I was devastated. Goodness sake, it probably lasted 20
years. To everyone else it was just dirt in a mayonnaise jar. But to me it was a
treasured footprint.”
Ernest A. Jasmin:
******
Posted: Sep 9, 2007 10:17 PM Story 3, Researched and posted by Lea on Sept. 9
2007
Elvis shakes up Seattle on September 1, 1957.
HistoryLink
Printer-Friendly Format
On September 1, 1957, rock star Elvis Presley performs at Sicks’ Seattle
Stadium, drawing an estimated 16, 200 people (90 percent of them teenage girls)
-- the biggest crowd for a single performer in Seattle up to this point.
He Shook, He Shivered...
Presley, backed up by the Jordonaires quartet and by a drum, guitar, and bass
trio, “shook, shivered, slumped, slouched and staggered” though a 45-minute set
that kept the crowd on its feet and screaming from the first note to the last
(The Seattle Times). What would prove to be his only performance in Seattle was
preceded by one earlier that day in Tacoma and by concerts in Vancouver, British
Columbia, and Spokane the day before.
The show began with “Heartbreak Hotel” and ended with “Hound Dog.” Presley
introduced "Hound Dog" as “the Elvis Presley national anthem, ” sang two
choruses, and shot off the stage while his guitarist played eight more bars.
Almost before anyone knew it, the tail lights of his rented Cadillac had
disappeared through a gate in the right field fence.
Police described the crowd as reasonably well behaved. The only report of damage
was the theft of a tail light from a convertible that someone mistook for
Presley’s.
HistoryLink staff historian Cassandra Tate (b. 1945) recalls a memorable
encounter with Elvis Presley at Sicks’ Seattle Stadium in Rainier Valley, on
Labor Day weekend, 1957.
Elvis and Me
On September 1, 1957, at Sicks’ Seattle Stadium, my friend Frances Bragg
introduced me to Elvis Presley and changed my life forever.
I was 12, claiming to be 13, and of course my world was already changing, with
or without Elvis. My family had moved that summer, from the “projects” at
Rainier Vista to a house of our own at 45th Avenue and Ferdinand Street, still
in the same neighborhood -- Columbia City -- but on the other side of a psychic
ravine. I would be going to a new school, Caspar W. Sharples Junior High, in a
few days. Frances, my best friend, would stay at Asa Mercer Junior High. We
would quickly lose touch with each other.
The seeds for even greater changes were being planted in the world that lay far
outside my personal boundaries. A Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr.
was organizing marches, boycotts, and demonstrations in Montgomery, Alabama. The
governor of Arkansas was vowing to use force to prevent the integration of a
high school in Little Rock. The wicked Communists in the Soviet Union were
preparing to launch the first satellite into space -- Sputnik -- a feat that
would reinvigorate the sales of basement bomb shelter kits and increase the
number of bomb drills we had in school. Out on the Nevada desert, the United
States Atomic Energy Commission was detonating nuclear bombs more powerful than
those that had cremated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in explosions that could be seen
and felt in Los Angeles, 250 miles away.
But I knew nothing of those matters. For me, that summer was defined by a
personal trajectory: up and down the steep incline of Ferdinand Street between
Rainier Avenue and Lake Washington Boulevard, over and across the business
district of Columbia City, roaming freely from morning until dark, with brothers
and sisters or friends or by myself.
My orbit took me down to the lake to swim, back up to the house to either
deposit or collect the younger siblings I sometimes had to care for, down to the
COLVMBIA BRANCH of the SEATTLE PVBLIC LIBRARY (where no one could ever explain
why “V” was carved into the building instead of “U”), over to the Tradewell
store next door or to the bakery down the street for cookies and chocolate milk,
across to the vacant lot to pet the pony I pretended was mine, over to the Five
and Dime store to look at the science fiction magazines, up to the drug store at
Rainier and Hudson for a cherry Coke, down to the dump at Genesee (now more
sanitary and perhaps less interesting as a park).
We rarely had adult escorts, although we were not without adult supervision. The
people on the street, the clerks in the shops, the neighbors on their porches:
there were watchful eyes all around us, and more than enough adults who
corrected our minor transgressions on the spot and reported any major
malfeasance to our parents. We were warned not to take candy from or get into
cars with strangers, but no strangers ever offered us treats or rides. We lived
in a world that felt safe.
It was on Labor Day weekend, the actual if not the official end of summer, when
Frances spotted the advertisement that promised “TOMORROW Will Be Seattle’s Most
Exciting Day!” Elvis Presley “and his all-star stage show” would be appearing
Sunday, the next day, “IN PERSON, ” at Sicks’ baseball stadium, tickets $1.50,
$2.50, and $3.50. We had been planning to go to a movie, and were looking at the
newspaper to see what was playing at the Columbia Theater. Elvis won out over a
double feature -- Jimmy Stewart and Sheila Bond in “Spirit of St. Louis” and
Bruce Bennett and Lon Chaney in “Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer, ” admission 25
cents for kids 12 and under.
Elvis Presley was a certified teen idol by 1957. He had recorded half a dozen
hit singles, starred in three movies, and stunned parents everywhere with his
pelvic performances. Frances knew all the words to all his songs. She was a year
older than me and more socially advanced. She was sneaking her mother’s
cigarettes and browsing through the cosmetic counters at the Five and Dime while
I was still building forts in the woods. I was eager to prove that I could be as
much a teenager as she was.
I dressed carefully for my meeting with Elvis: gray felt circle skirt with a
pink poodle appliqued on one side; enough crinoline petticoats to make the skirt
stand out almost perpendicular to the ground; pink sweater, enhanced with the
strategic use of tissue paper; new loafers with shiny pennies in the flaps; my
hair in a ponytail. It pleased me to think that I looked like any other teenage
girl, walking down the street on her way to someplace interesting.
About 15, 000 of us waited for Elvis at Sicks’ Stadium that night. Frances and I
sat in the top row of the bleachers -- the best seats we could get for $1.50 on
the day of the show. We couldn’t see much of the stage, which had been set up on
second base, but we had a good view of the crowd. I had never seen so many
people in my life. The promoters said later it was the biggest crowd ever for a
single artist in Seattle up to that point; of the 16, 200 people who went
through the gate, 90 percent of them were teenage girls.
Elvis had performed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and in Spokane the day
before; and his Seattle appearance was preceded by one the same day in Tacoma.
The show was supposed to begin at 8:30 p.m. but it was well past 10 p.m. when he
finally took the stage. We entertained ourselves meanwhile with walking up and
down the aisles, going back and forth to the restrooms, and looking over the
things we could have bought if we had any money: Elvis Presley hats, Elvis
Presley buttons, Elvis Presley souvenir books, Elvis Presley photographs, and
Elvis Presley ice cream bars, among other things.
There were other acts -- the “All-Star Stage Show” included singers, dancers,
comedians, jugglers, and marimba players -- but we didn’t pay much attention to
them. For one thing, the stage was so far from our seats that it was hard to see
or hear anything. Besides, every once in a while someone would shout “There he
is!!!” and we’d all scream, jump up, search the baseball field for evidence of
Elvis, then settle back down until the next flurry of excitement and
distraction.
Finally, a cordon of policemen appeared around the stage, the crowd began to
scream in earnest, and Elvis walked out from the dugout. A girl sitting next to
me fainted.
He wore a dark shirt and slacks and a gold lame jacket that shimmered in the
lights. When he leaned toward the microphone, the tsunami of noise from the
audience reached a shrieking crescendo. Frances clutched me and screamed. I
watched the ambulance crew strap the girl who had fainted to a stretcher and
carry her down the stairs and out of the stadium. She hadn’t been able to hear
even one song.
The adult critics didn’t much like the show. Seattle Times writer Marjorie Jones
went into alliterative overdrive in her report on the “writhing, wiggling…sexy,
side-burned, sullen-eyed Southerner” and his “shrieking, screaming mass of
‘tingling’ teen-age worshippers.” She added that “Vulgar is the kindest way to
describe Presley’s pulsating gyrations.” John Voorhees, in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, concluded that “Elvis’ movements seemed to delight the
onlookers much more than the singing -- which could mean burlesque is on the way
back.” My mother, who didn’t see the show but read about it in the newspapers,
thought that people who went to concerts and then screamed so much they couldn’t
hear the music were foolish.
Toward the end, Elvis stood quietly before the microphone and announced that the
next number would be the National Anthem. He burst into “Hound Dog” instead.
Voorhees said the scream from the audience sounded like “12, 000 girls all
having their heads shaved at once.” I was one of them by that point, having
become a full-fledged acolyte in the Church of Elvis. He sang two choruses and
then he was gone, without even a wave or a bow, vanishing through a gate in the
right field fence. A few girls slipped down to the stage and scooped up dirt
from around second base before the police shooed them away.
Frances and I walked back to Columbia City along Rainier Avenue, a good
half-hour walk from the stadium at Rainier and McClellan Street. We sat on the
curb in front of Tradewell for a while, not saying much of anything. The evening
had been an untrammeled success. We had seen a rock and roll star, and a car
full of boys had honked at us as we walked home. We took it as a sign of
validation. We had crossed over a bridge, and left our childhoods behind.
It hardly mattered that I wouldn’t be able to get into the local movie house for
only a quarter for much longer