- Photograph by Kay Wheeler.
Set lists for the Texas Tour:
While it is not known precisely what /Elvis sang at each of the shows,, some scant information does exist, drawn mainly from either newspaper
reports from the time, or from the recollections of those fans who attended the shows. However, there were no surprise inclusions and certainly
he did not seem to perform any songs that he had not already recorded — and released. ‘Love Me Tender’ was already a big hit, though the film
was yet to be released.
The set was, therefore, quite predictable and repetitive — though by now Elvis had an increasingly bigger pool of material to draw on, so there
were minor changes from night to night. It is also known that while there are no official recordings from these dates, a couple of very poor
quality audience-recorded songs are in circulation.
Elvis chose his material from the following list of songs: ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, ‘Money Honey’, “I Got A Woman’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, and, with The Jordanaires, ‘Love Me’, ‘I Was The One’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘Love Me Tender’, and ‘Hound Dog’. If it was needed, Jordanaire
Gordon Stoker played the piano.
KAY WHEELER: Mr. Sideburns! 1956 - I took this photo (above left) of Elvis on October 11, 1956 - right before he went out on the field at the
Cotton Bowl where 26,500 paid tickets. I, and the fan club, set up this concert in Dallas, not Parker! We had a write-in campaign to Radio
Station KLIF, and they sponsored it. Love that blonde ducktail. (Above centre) Elvis alone (I had him trapped) before the huge Cotton Bowl
show. I managed a photo with the Brownie camera. (Photo above, far right)
My mom Vivian, meeting Elvis at the Cotton Bowl press conference in Dallas on Oct. 11, 1956. He told the Col. when he tried to make Elvis
leave... “Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm gonna sign this for Kay’s mama.” Just how sweet and cute was that! I'm so thankful that she got
to meet him as she really was a number one fan and actually painted an oil portrait (the first ever done) of Elvis that hangs in Graceland
until this day. Photos by Kay Wheeler.
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Backstage, Elvis signing autographs |
Elvis and disc jockey Paul Berlin, pictured
backstage at the Cotton Bowl. Berlin was also
from Memphis but moved to Houston radio
station KNUZ-AM in May 1950. |
KAY WHEELER: His jacket was green. I took
the shot. He looks tired and he mentioned
that he had gotten very little sleep. |
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KAY WHEELER: Me with Nick Adams of Rebel Without A Cause, Oct. 1956. He was with Elvis
in Dallas. Nice guy. As a teen watching the movie, I never thought 1 would ever meet one of
the actors in the iconic film. In fact, it really did not dawn on me until today that I had a little
brush with the Rebel movie in a closer way. I love it when I think of these things that I never
thought of before. |
KAY WHEELER: The only color shots of Elvis at the press conference before the Cotton Bowl performance. The green coat got center stage.
I was smart enough to know that I was just gonna have to stand back and watch him take off like a rocket in 1956! I knew in 1/2 second
that he was not the marrying kind, but I was still in love with him like every other normal teenager!
Elvis walks in the room with the GREEN COAT on; and I say, “Elvis, I just love that GREEN COAT!” He responded: “Honey, you will probably
have it before the night is over!” I almost burned his sideburn with my 50’s flash camera! Yikes! “Kay, don’t burn my sideburns!”
The Monroe News-Star
Louisiana
October 15, 1956
ELVIS SERVED WITH SUIT — Elvis Presley, centre facing camera, is served with a
$38,000 breach of contract suit as he entered the Cotton Bowl in Dallas for a
personal appearance. W.R. Pike, left, a Dallas deputy sheriff, serves the paper
as Nick Adams, right, Presley’s body-guard looks on. The suit was brought by
R.G. McElyea, Fort Worth promoter, who claimed the Roll ‘n’ Rock singer ignored
alleged contract terms for four appearances in Fort Worth last March. Later it was
announced that Presley and McElyea had agreed on two Fort Worth appearances
before Dec. 5 and that the suit would be dropped. (AP Wirephoto) |
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Presley Invades Cotton Bowl, Pulls Audience of 25,000
McComb, Mississippi
Dallas (AP) — Enterprise Journal
October 12, 1956
Elvis Presley rolled into the Cotton Bowl last night and 26,500 teen-agers and a few moms and pops went wild. It was the second largest
crowd the Memphis Flash ever drew. He pulled 40,000 persons into a fair at Tupelo, Miss., where he was born, he said, Elvis rolled through
the Cotton Bowl ramp — where Saturday’s gridiron heroes appear — in a convertible. Hundreds of flash bulbs from teen-agers’ cameras
lighted the stadium. He climbed on an improvised stage surrounded by 10-foot fence to keep the fans away. For a half hour he enthralled
the teen-agers with such hits as “Heartbreak Hotel.” With each whisper of the rock ‘n’ roll voice, the shots of the multitude drowned out
the song. The sound of 26,500 voices vibrated around the bowl when Elvis went into his peculiar knee twitching, hip swinging dance to
accent pauses in the music. A hundred or so high priests of the Presley cult and newsmen were led through dark tunnels at the State Fair
Auditorium for an interview. The most vocal of the Presley fans was Kay Wheeler, 17, a Dallas secretary and president of the National Elvis
Presley Fan Club. Kay set off a flash bulb a foot from Elvis’ profile and Elvis cried: “Don’t burn the sideburns!” Kay, a striking brunette
with an Italian hairdo heavily accented eyelashes and eyebrows, soberly explained the Presley cult this way: “He’s different. The younger
generation needed something different. We needed him.”
A Texas Elvis fan remembers: In 1956, my two sisters and I went to see Elvis Presley in concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. He had a
stand up microphone, and he made the girls swoon even more, when he fell to the ground, mic and all. He was a sight to see, and he gave
a great performance that we will never forget.
Big Cotton Bowl Rocks‘n’Rolls To Memphis Flash
Texas
The Daily Journal, Texas
October 12, 1956
DALLAS (AP) — The Cotton Bowl rocked and rolled last night as 26,500 teen-agers and a scattering of moms and dads turned out to hear the
Memphis Flash — Elvis Presley. The vice president of the State Fair of Texas, Charles Meeker, said it was the biggest crowd ever to attend
the Cotton Bow! for such a show. Presley, in a green jacket and black pants, came into the stadium through a ramp used on Saturdays by
football players. The crowd became hysterical when he appeared, sitting on the back of an open convertible. Throughout the fair grounds,
the sounds of the screaming teen-agers could be heard as he sang the songs that have made him a national sensation.
Fan Likens Him To Adonis’
Boyish, Sideburned Elvis ‘Appealing’ to Interviewer
By Judy Bonner
Times Herald Staff Writer
“It’s absolutely fantastic,” the teen-age girl beside: me murmured in adoration. “He looks exactly like Adonis.” Gazing into Elvis Presley’s
boyish, heavy-eyed, sideburned face, I didn’t exactly share her impression of a first-hand interview with the mythological god of manly
youth and beauty. Yet I had to admit there was something decidedly appealing about the guy. Maybe, it was the fact that he looked so
much like a boy.
Reporters had to sandwich their questions between sighs of “Oh, Elvis looked straight at me,” and “Please, just one more autograph.”
Photographers had to contend with popping flashbulbs from dozens of amateurs’ cameras. Presley was generous with everyone. He
answered questions from reporters and teenagers alike with easygoing confidence, in his soft Southern drawl.
At one point he chided a fan “Careful with them flashbulbs. Hey honey, you’ll burn mah sideburns off!” |
He admitted he was “nervous as a kitten” and “sick to my stomach” before every show but that he’s “all right when Ah get goin’ good.”
26,500 MOAN ADMIRATION
Elvis Presley Disturbance Surely Hit Seismic Scale
By Frank X. Tolbort
The Dallas News
October 12, 1956
If that earthquake-recording machine out at SMU didn’t register the Elvis Presley disturbance in the Cotton Bowl Thursday night then they’d
better swap it in for a new one. Elvis came to sing, but his 26,500 frenzied aficionados, gathered on the eastern slope of the 76,000-capacity
bowl, kept up such a continuous, soprano din that the Presley voice was lost in the troubled air most of the time.
Before his recital, the six-foot, 190-pound singer had a brush in the Cotton Bowl tunnel with a process server which contained more action
than some football games between conservative teams using the Split — TW.R. Pike, a Dallas County deputy sheriff, was waiting at the tunnel
gate to serve Presley with the papers on a $38,000 suit in which it was alleged that Elvis’ management broke a contract with R.G. McElyea of Amusements Enterprises, Fort Worth.
Pike thought he had his man when a car came up to the tunnel with whining police escort and a
young man with sideburns like those of the Civil War general, Ambrose Burnside, got out of the
car. The young man also wore a bright green jacket, which fitted the sheriff’s description of Elvis.
Turned out that the man in the green jacket was a decoy, Gene Smith, one of Elvis’ bodyguards.
Smith refused to accept the summons and hurried down the tunnel, accompanied by another
Presley friend, movie actor Nick Adams. Pike, in the blaze of lights and flash bulbs, may have
suspected that Adams was Elvis in disguise for he went at a high lope down the tunnel and tried
to give the summons to Adams. Adams refused it.
About then, the real Presley, also in neon-bright green jacket, showed up at the tunnel gate in
another car and the deputy sheriff raced back up and tried to hand Elvis the papers. The summons
were dropped on the ground. Sheriff Bill Decker said that this constituted serving the papers.
Earlier at 6.10 p.m., the hardworking Pike had met Thomas A. Parker, Elvis’ manager, at the Cotton
Bowl Gate No.2 and served him with a summons. |
- Cotton Bowl Stadium, Dalls, Texas
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Presley apparently knew nothing of the Fort Worth suit and he was puzzled by the whole performance in the tunnel. Pike left and Elvis and
his friends were hustled down onto the football officials’ quarters. There, Elvis told Nick Adams, “I turned my ring around. I thought that
the guy was going to jump on you.” With the stadium darkened reverently, Elvis made his entrance in an open car with a spotlight following
his progress around the field and up to a platform on the 50-yard line. At his first appearance those incredible, high pitched, ear-splitting
screams began and never let up until he was suddenly whisked away, again in the convertible, after he'd writhed and war-danced through
half a dozen numbers.
There were 93 policeman in the bowl and Elvis’ admirers were restrained by an 8-foot high fence. Some of the cops moved about in the
crowd flashing lights in the faces of patrons who were standing up and waving and seemed to be having convulsions in the aisles. Several girls
were treated at the Cotton Bowl emergency room for bruises and hysterics immediately after Presley’s part of the show. Presley started off
with “Heartbreak Hotel”, doing a staggering, shuffling footed dance with the microphone, Sometimes, he went into a really classical Indian
war-dance. Other times it was sheer voodoo acrobatics as he threw his famous pelvis from the 50-yard line to the 35. When he was going
through his “Hound Dog” finale he came down off the platform, got on his all fours, and seemed to be gnawing at the turf like a sensitive
football coach whose team was being murdered.
The stadium was dark except on the platform. Yet the photographers ran around like panting hound dogs, sometimes shooting onto the
crowd behind the 8-foot-high restraining fence with those brief flashes of light showing you the strained faces of young girls. Some of them
had screamed themselves so hoarse that the could only sit and weep and moan; “Oh Elvis! Elvis! Elvis!” The crowd of 26,500 paid customers
was estimated at the figure by both Gordon McLendon of Radio Station KLIF, who sponsored Presley’s appearance, and Arthur K. Hale, the
State Fair’s ticket manager. Before the show in the Cotton Bowl, the singer had a press conference. Newspaper, radio and television people
gathered in the Fair Park Auditorium office, then were conducted to rendezvous with Elvis in the back of the building. “This is the darnest
thing I’ve ever been mixed up in,” said McLendon, ‘I’m sponsoring the boy yet I haven’t met him yet.”
Elvis came in, looking sort of sleepy. He said he hadn’t gotten but four hours sleep in the last 48. Some of the teen-age elite of his fan clubs
got into the press conference. They seemed to be playing a kind of game, in which they'd try to look Elvis squarely in the eye. One pretty
blonde reeled back after gazing into Presley optics and screamed: “Did you see that look he gave me? Did you see it?” The reporters mixed
up in the fan club scrimmage and asked Elvis occasional questions. One was: “Why are you so humble, Elvis?” Presley replied: “I know that
the Lord can give and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.”
Besides the green tweed jacket, he wore white bucksin, high-topped shoes with red heels, a blue tie, a white raw silk shirt with pleats, and
charcoal trousers. During the interview, he had a nervous habit of feeling of his front teeth, as if he were afraid they might be loose. Miss
Kay Wheeler, president of Elvis’ 5,000-member Dallas fan club, was at the press conference to present him with an oil portrait (of Elvis, of
course) and some cuff links.
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KAY WHEELER: Elvis’ show at the Cotton Bowl Stadium on Oct. 11, 1956, with 26,500
teens attending, was the largest crowd he played to for over 20 years. Our fan club did
a write-in campaign to bring Elvis to Dallas. So, guess what, Elvis cancelled his
Ft. Worth show and came to Dallas instead; and Ft. Worth Northside Coliseum sued him.
(How great is that!) This was a good night for Elvis and so much fun for me. I wish I had
more good photos, they got away over time. I gave Gladys the best one of Elvis and me
and the oil portrait my mother painted of him that I presented to him. It hangs in
Graceland today. What a night!
Elvis turns to look at the camera on stage in front of 26,500 fans at the Cotton Bowl
Stadium, Dallas, Texas. In the background, fan club leader Kay Wheeler can be seen,
with her camera, sat on the grass talking to another photographer. |
KAY WHEELER: That is me on the ground to the right. I was the only teenager allowed on the field that night. What an honor. I think it was a
reward for putting together/originating the Elvis appearance.
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