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Elvis rocked Buffalo's Memorial Auditorium 60 years ago
By Mark Sommer Mar 31, 2017

Elvis Presley stepped onto Buffalo Memorial Auditorium's stage 60 years ago, wearing a shimmering gold lamé jacket, black pants and gold shoes.

The Army drafted Elvis eight months later, and after his discharge, the rawness that characterized his early career would become more a flicker than a flame.

But not on April 1, 1957.

Elvis stepped onto the spotlit stage, gripped the microphone in his right hand and waited more than 3 minutes for the crowd to quiet down enough for him to begin.

"Elvis Presley – the stuff of which some teenage dreams are made – swept Buffalo like a whirlwind Monday evening," Buffalo Evening News reviewer Sylvan Fox's review began.

"For 30 minutes, the gyrating, grimacing guitarist-singer slumped and waved his way about the small stage in Memorial Auditorium, bringing his predominantly feminine audience to a fever pitch of excitement, which expressed itself in incredibly ear-splitting screams and a fervor of arm-waving," Fox wrote.

Robert L. Smith, a photographer for the Buffalo Evening News, captured the spectacle.

Smith took 26 photographs that night. One became the most iconic photograph of the young Elvis, reproduced on everything from posters and coffee mugs to Graceland shopping bags and Visa cards. The photo features Elvis singing, with a Gibson guitar under his right arm, left arm raised, toes bent and legs apart.

One of the photographs taken that night by Smith has never before been made public– until today, in the print edition of The Buffalo News. A microphone in his left hand, Elvis is on his knees, just out of the reach of an outstretched autograph-seeking teenager holding paper and pencil.

"I heard it was the only picture of Elvis kneeling on stage," Smith, now 86, said Friday. "After that concert, he wore tight-fitting pants, which didn't allow him to kneel down anymore."

Smith agreed to allow the photo to be published in the newspaper but not online, to avoid the image being pirated.

Tickets cost $2 to $3.50 that night to see "the King of Rock 'n' Roll," blocks from a movie theater where James Dean starred in "Giant."

The set list included "Heartbreak Hotel," "I Was the One," "I've Got a Woman," "Don't Be Cruel," and "That's Where Heartaches Begin."

"For a climactic close," the reviewer wrote, Presley performed "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog," in which he "moved violently about the stage."


Screams galore

It was hard to hear Elvis that night. Swiveling hips that caused TV networks to only show him from the waist up elicited loud screams and shrieks from the bobby-sox set.

"The turnstile count of the crowd was 10,375, and they were mostly teenagers screaming at the limit of their physical power," Fox wrote. "Elvis could barely be heard as he went through his repertoire of inimitable numbers ... but whether he could be heard or not didn't make too much difference.

"The thousands of young girls, and a scattering of boys and adults, had come not to hear a singer. They had come to see Elvis, to touch him if possible and to get his signature on a piece of paper to cherish always -- or at least until another idol comes along."

Later, the reviewer referred to Elvis' performance as a "vast emotional catharsis for thousands of teenagers who have found in this 22-year-old former truck driver something that answers in a vague and ephemeral way, their longings and strivings."

Before the concert, Elvis held a press conference backstage. He was dressed in a red jacket, frilly silver shirt, dark pants and the gold shoes he would wear onstage.

Elvis answered most questions with 'Yes, sir" and No, sir."

In response to a reporter's question, Elvis, sitting on a table with one foot dangling, was asked if he had an adverse effect on his fans.

"I don't think I'm causing them to do anything wrong," Elvis said. "They scream and yell and have fun."


At the right place

Smith, then a 27-year-old photographer, was there that night at the invitation of a Buffalo police detective. He was asked to take backstage photographs of the detective's nieces, who were among a few dozen contest winners picked to be photographed with the rock 'n' roller.

"I said, 'Who the heck is Elvis?' Smith recalled. "I had no idea who he was. I sure found out later."

Smith brought his two teenage sisters-in-law with him to also pose for pictures. Some girls left lipstick marks on Elvis' cheeks, the reviewer reported.

Smith only had 13 holders for his "standard press photographer's camera," which allowed two pictures for each. That limited him to 26 photographs. After the backstage photos, and several shots of teens erupting with screams after getting glimpses of Elvis before the show, that left eight unused photos.

Then something unexpected happened.

"Elvis came up to me, and asked me if I would like to photograph him up on stage," Smith said.

"Sure, I would," he answered.

"At that point, I was just starting my career in photography. I was excited. I had never seen anything like this before -- I had never been to a concert before," Smith said.

The photographer stood on the edge of the stage, directly in front of Elvis, for two or three songs, he recalled.

"I remember the screaming," he said. "The girls were on the edge of the stage, reaching up for autographs, and I'm up there, in front of Elvis."

Smith said he would like to be able to say he knew he had the iconic photo in his sights when he took it. But that wasn't the case.


Darkroom surprise

It was only when Smith went to the paper to develop the film that he knew he had something exceptional.

"I could see it was a good photograph, and I wanted to share it with somebody. So although I wasn't assigned to the job, I turned it in and they used it in the next day's paper," Smith said.

He sent a print with his copyright stamped on the back to Col. Tom Parker, Elvis' manager, hoping to sell him a copy. Smith never heard back from Parker.

Fast forward 43 years.

That's when a friend of Smith's -- an Elvis fan -- saw a blow-up of the photo in Smith's office. The friend said it was a widely used image, which led Smith to visit and eventually negotiate a payment from Elvis Presley Enterprises, which manages Graceland, where Elvis lived.

The settlement for using the photograph was in the "hundreds of thousands of dollars," Smith said.

The agreement also allowed him to sell autographed posters of the famous image.

Around the same time, Smith saw a blow-up of the photograph upon entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The plaque said the photographer was unknown. After Smith offered proof he had taken the photo, the text panel was changed within a week to include his name.

The photo was a major achievement for the photographer, whose career at The News spanned nearly 40 years. He was also chief photographer for the Buffalo Bills. In 2015, Smith became the first photographer to be inducted into the Western New York Sports Hall of Fame.


After the show

After Elvis finished his last song at the Aud, he left the stage, ran down a ramp and into a waiting car, disappearing from view.

The rocker left behind "hundreds of disappointed fans," Fox wrote, many wearing "Elvis" buttons and shirts with his name on them.

"Some of the more than 175 police and auxiliaries managed to hold back the screaming girls who would not reconcile themselves to his disappearance," Fox wrote about the scene.

"One shouted to another, 'Did you touch him?'

"Another pointed out to a conference room and said, her voice tremulous, 'He was in that room.' "

Toward the end of his career, Elvis would return to Western New York a handful of times, returning to Memorial Auditorium on April 5, 1972, delighting fans in Niagara Falls on June 24, 1974, and again for two shows on July 13, 1975 at the International Convention Center, and a final time at Memorial Auditorium on June 25, 1976.

Fourteen months after that show, the King died at his Graceland mansion in Memphis.


https://buffalonews.com/news/local/elvi ... 2bdf6.html

[Private Presley]

Photos from http://scottymoore.net/buffalo.html

[Private Presley]

Posted by Robert van Beek on Elvis Pictures Facebook Group

[Private Presley]

Sixty years ago in Buffalo, Elvis Presley held her hand
By Sean Kirst
Updated Aug 3, 2020

Montez Billquist had it all mapped out. On an April evening, long ago, the 15-year-old was on a quest with three teenagers from Jamestown: There was Montez's best friend, Ann Meurer, and Ann’s younger sister Pat, and Karen Sampson, another teen Pat asked to come along.

Roy Meurer, Ann’s father, dropped them off in a parking lot at the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. He worked as a draftsman in Buffalo, and he’d provided them with this chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime concert they never thought they could attend. Roy told his daughters they could each invite a friend. Ann brought Montez, a companion in mischief. Anytime they were together, those around them knew they'd better brace themselves.

n the parking lot, Montez decided she could find a better view than the one promised by the $1.75 ticket in her hand. She said to the others: “Come on. Let’s sneak in.”

While the younger girls declined and went to their seats, Ann Meurer immediately decided she'd take part. For Montez, it was a fateful choice. It would cost her a boyfriend but it would earn her a place in legend.

That was April 1, 1957, exactly 60 years ago this weekend.

The performer they went to see:

Elvis Presley.

Before the show was over, he’d reach out from the stage to hold Montez's hand. She'd turn into a central figure in some unforgettable photographs that captured Elvis on his knees, singing directly to Montez during his final song of the night.

“I never saw him again,” Montez said. She describes herself as someone who rarely looks back, who prefers to confront the world as it comes toward her, but she called that concert "a positive highlight of my life.”

Her name today, at 75, is Montez Cusimano Thalman. She moved to California in the early 1960s. Her own parents divorced when she was a little girl, “before many people divorced,” and much of her childhood in Jamestown involved struggle. She remembers children at school who were not kind to her, who were not allowed to play with the daughter of a divorced woman. Her family, she said, never had much money.

She took comfort in the loyalty of her best friend, Ann Meurer – now Ann Shea, of Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. Montez lived on Fairmount Avenue in Jamestown. Ann's family had a house on the far side of the backyard. They walked to school together. As teens, they’d go to Perry's, a soda fountain in Jamestown that is now called Lisciandro's, and listen to Elvis on the jukebox there.

This was not the older Elvis of the Las Vegas years. This was the sneering, swivel-hipped, hooded-eye musical dynamo who seemed to embody teen rebellion. He terrified many parents and electrified their children.

The girls figured they had no chance of being there when he performed in Buffalo. But one night in 1957, at the dining room table, Roy Meurer calmly told his daughters he’d bought four tickets. He offered to drive them if they wanted to go.

“We were ecstatic!” Ann Shea said by telephone Saturday, from Idaho.

Their tickets were for seats deep in the arena. On the night of the show, once the girls saw Roy drive away, Montez and Ann got moving with their plan. They were already guerrilla veterans at the art of “sneaking in.” When Lucille Ball and her then-husband, Desi Arnaz, visited Jamestown for the premiere of the film, “Forever Darling,” the girls found a way into a hotel where the couple was staying. They came upon Lucy in a housecoat, and asked for her autograph.

Lucy signed for them, then told them to leave.

She was not pleased.

Elvis represented a whole new level of triumph. Before the show, Montez and Ann ran through a parking lot and scrambled up a ramp behind the stage. No one stopped them. Inside, stunned, amid a flood of distracted musicians and other adults, they realized they were just outside his dressing room. Elvis emerged, wearing a glittering golden jacket as he hurried toward the stage. The girls, without hesitation, followed him.

"All anyone could have done," Ann said, "was to kick us out."

No one did. Montez and Ann pushed up to the stage, shouldering for a spot alongside police officers, photographers and stage hands. They watched as Elvis triggered a shattering explosion of noise that Sylvan Fox, a Buffalo Evening news staff writer of the time, described as “incredibly ear-splitting screams and a fervor of arm-waving” from more than 10,000 in attendance, primarily teens.

Occasionally, Montez recalls, Elvis would look down and catch her eye as he sang. She kept holding up a piece of paper to him, hoping he would pause to sign it. Yet what he did for her, in the big picture, was far more memorable. Indeed, this is how Fox described her role during the climactic version of “Hound Dog” that ended the 30-minute show:

Elvis, Fox wrote, “moved violently about the stage, clasped the hand of excited Montez Bellquist, 15, of Jamestown, threw himself to his knees in an impassioned gesture, ended the song and dashed from the stage. He ran full stride down the ramp, into a waiting auto and was gone.”

Robert L. Smith, a photographer for The News, captured the moment when Montez reached toward Elvis, when he dropped onto his knees and sang for her. After the show, back in Jamestown, Montez wrote to Smith and asked for a print of the image. The photographer obliged as an act of kindness, she said, and a copy of the photograph – which ran on the front page of Saturday's Buffalo News –still hangs on her wall.

From the instant Elvis sang to Montez, her life was never exactly the same. She said she was mobbed by fans in the parking lot who wanted to touch the hand that Elvis held. Back in Jamestown, she received so much attention in high school, and from the regulars at the jukebox stop, that her boyfriend – who felt he could not compete with Elvis – broke up with her.

As a young woman, she married Dave Cusimano, who worked for her father’s cab company. But the company went broke, and Cusimano moved to California. Montez followed with their three children “and a suitcase packed with toys.” The marriage eventually crumbled. Montez "worked a lot of jobs" to support her family before she married the Rev. Norman Thalman, a Lutheran minister who died seven years ago.

In retirement, she finished a book, “Just in Time,” which is about loss, alcoholism and “rekindled love.” Parts of the story, she said, are “pretty much true.” Her greatest accomplishment, she said, was fighting through many difficulties to raise three hard-working, loyal children. That parenting demanded a certain self-belief, and for that – at least on some level – she gives thanks to Elvis.

She never saw him perform again after the show in Buffalo. “But I felt really close to him," she said. "I came from a troubled family, and his music always soothed me.”

Montez sensed a connection. She knows Elvis had almost nothing as a child, that he was raised amid harsh times in Mississippi. She hangs onto the photograph that shows her reaching toward him as he sings, as well as a pencil drawing of his face that she bought years ago. On the day he died – the 40th anniversary will be this August – she felt a sense of grief almost akin to losing family.

In a way, maybe he was. Montez finds a certain lasting power in the idea that in Buffalo, in a hall filled with more than 10,000 people, at a time when she believed she had no status in the world, the king of rock 'n' roll made a statement on her worth:

He took her hand, fell on his knees, and he sang for her alone.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/buffalonew ... d.amp.html