9th December 1955, Friday

[Graeme]

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[Private Presley]

December 9, 1955

Elvis was now under contract with RCA and his singles were selling well but he was still waiting to have his first billboard #1 hit. In the meantime, he would still go on tour and on December 9, 1955 he was in Swifton, Arkansas.

Located about 17 miles north of Newport, AR along the Rock 'N Roll Highway US 67, Swifton, AR was (and still is) a quaint little farming town full of hard-working folk. Elvis and his troupe rolled into town there on December 9, 1955 to play a couple of gigs.... one at the Swifton High School Gymnasium with Johnny Cash as the opening act, and a later performance at the B & I Club.

As Elvis Presley was warming up for his performance at the Swifton High School gymnasium, 13-year-old Tara Chapman snapped the photograph posted with her Brownie camera! Later, her father took her to Elvis’s pre-Graceland house in Memphis, and the King came out and sang to her in his yard, giving her a change to snap more shots. Tara keeps her Elvis images in a bank vault.

Ask almost any area resident of Swifton, they likely will know of the B&I club near the railroad tracks between farmland and flatland along state Highway 67. The ‘members only’ club was owned by Bob King and was known as the little “King of Clubs”. Although located basically in the middle of nowhere, in its heyday, it was one of the breeding-pens for rockabilly, a rough-and-ready mix of blues and country that provided great influence on later generations of musician’s like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

Elvis performed there in the evening of December 9, 1955 with his opening act, Johnny Cash. Cash only performed 3 songs, but he was so good the manager paid him $20 instead of $10. Elvis, who was by then already a rising star, was paid $450 and drew such a large crowd that no more people could get inside the building and more stood around outside in the gravel parking lot. Elvis Presley performed “Heartbreak Hotel” and declared that “It’s gonna be my first hit”!