Saturday, August 16, 1997
Abilenians remember when the King came to town
By GREG JAKLEWICZ / Abilene Reporter-News
Kathy Swaim was in line for tickets to Elvis Presley's concert
here in 1974 at 4 a.m. Tickets sales were to begin six hours later.
Crazy? A hundred others already were in front of her. Tickets
23 years ago cost just $10 each. For the best seats.
Swaim waited and waited and waited. Finally, the box office
opened and the line inched forward. Suddenly, she saw a figure
in another box office and ran to the window.
"I broke out in a sprint for the ticket booth," Swaim,
a receptionist at West Texas Rehabilitation Center, recalled this
week.
She cashed in on her mad dash, securing six tickets to the
first show in Abilene by the King of Rock 'n' Roll in 19 years.
Fifth row.
The wait - and the run - was worth it.
"It was great ... it was super," she said of the
concert she thought she'd never see. "I was more of an Elvis
fan than they were. My sister (Tommy Waggoner) asked me once what
was wrong with me because I was just sitting there in awe. It
was such a thrill."
"They screamed all night," Gerald Waggoner, Swaim's
brother-in-law, recalled this week. "My ears rang after the
show."
"He came on stage and did this," Waggoner said, mimicking
Elvis strumming his guitar once, "and they went crazy."
The crowd of 8,606 for the Oct. 9 concert broke the record
for a concert at the five-year-old Taylor County Coliseum. Ironically,
the record was just seven months old; band leader Lawrence Welk
attracted 8,331 in March.
Only two concerts by the rock group KISS in 1978 have drawn
larger crowds in the 23 years since.
Elvis returned to Abilene in late March 1977, attracting an
estimated 7,500 fans. Premium tickets had skyrocketed to $15 each.
Five months later he was found dead at his home, Graceland,
in Memphis. He was just 42.
Ironically, the "Reporter-News" reviewer at the show
noted how relaxed and healthy the King looked on his last visit
to Abilene.
Swaim chose not to go.
"By that time," she explained, "he had gotten
so big. I wanted to remember him when he was young and active.
He never slowed down that night."
The 1974 and 1977 concerts were Elvis' third and fourth in
Abilene. The first two were in February and October 1955, a year
before Elvis did his first show in Las Vegas where he was called
a flop.
In his book "Did Elvis Play In Your Hometown," Lee
Cotten notes Elvis also was scheduled to play Fair Park Auditorium
on May 30. However, advertising in the "Reporter-News"
for that date lists only wrestling (featuring world champion "Gentleman"
Ed Francis) as entertainment for that evening.
Now who's more famous?
West Texas long held a fondness for Elvis. Joe Specht, McMurry
University librarian and local music authority, said that broadcasts
of the "Louisiana Hayride" program by Shreveport station
KWKH could be heard not only here but on into New Mexico. Thus,
in 1954 and 1955, before "Heartbreak Hotel" became the
first national hit for the 21-year-old singer from Tupelo, Miss.,
Elvis already had established a fan base in this area.
"As far as Elvis making it," Specht said, "West
Texas had a lot to do with it. His records were selling here and
people were reacting to him. No one had a chance to see him unless
it was in person."
In 1955, the King performed in Sweetwater, Big Spring, Breckenridge,
Brownwood, De Leon, Snyder, Stephenville and Sweetwater. He also
made it up to Lubbock where he performed on the same bill as a
young rock 'n' roller named Buddy Holly (as part of an act called
Buddy and Bob). Holly would hit the charts a year after Elvis.
Mae Masters remembers Elvis coming through Big Spring on a
train in 1955. While Elvis performed there that year, he only
passed through this time on the train.
"There must have been a thousand people out there to see
him," she said. "I ran the drive-in theater and all
the kids told me I had to come see him. All I saw was his feet.
He must've been tired."
Was he wearing blue suede shoes?
"I can't remember," she said.
Sweetwater's Anne Kearney remembers. Only 15, she attended
his concert there with a young man named Carroll Kearney whom
she "convinced to take me and two friends, I don't know how."
"It was different, it was strange," she said this
week.
It also was sneaky. She knew how to get backstage through the
orchestra pit and the three girls left Carroll all shook up and
sought out Elvis. They found him sitting on some steps and talked
to him.
"He was soft-spoken and very good to look at," she
said. A friend, Sue Hudgins, had a new 1955 Crown Victoria, and
they "begged" Elvis to go cruising. He almost consented
until he figured out they weren't even 16 yet.
"I guess he thought we were just silly," she said.
He did autograph a picture which Anne hung on her bedroom wall
until Carroll made such a big deal about it, she threw it in the
trash.
"My children have ridden me about that," she said.
Fortunately, Carroll has lasted longer; the couple has been
married 41 years.
The next time she saw Elvis was on "The Ed Sullivan Show."
"We said, 'Well, we saw him do that here - what's the
big deal," she said. "Years later he repulsed me, but
that night in Sweetwater, Texas, he was the hottest thing going."
Don King (no relation to the King or the boxing promoter) was
8 when Elvis came to Sweetwater. What he remembers most, because
he didn't get to go to the show at the Municipal Auditorium, was
that local radio station KXOX wouldn't play Elvis' songs.
"They said it was bad news for kids," King said.
Years later - in fact at the time Elvis died - King worked
with Don Brooks at radio station KHEM in Big Spring. Brooks had
been a deejay at KXOX when Elvis came to Sweetwater. Had he changed
his tune?
"Sort of ... yeah," King said, laughing.
Adding to the irony is that before KXOX went country in January,
it broadcast an oldies format. Playing, of course, golden hits
by Elvis Presley.
Where did Elvis play when he first came to town?
Fair Park Auditorium in those days was Abilene's entertainment
center before it was demolished when Fair Park became Rose Park.
A story told time and again around town has been that someone
scratched Elvis' new Cadillac parked outside the building. It
infuriated Elvis so much he vowed never to return. It was millions
of records and almost 19 years between concerts.
Pat Garren, a Realtor with Senter & Senter, wasn't familiar
with that story though she was there for Elvis' February show
in 1955.
A sophomore at Abilene High, she was one of a carload of girls
who went to see this "extremely good-looking boy" in
a ducktail. Garren described herself as a "closet hillbilly
music" fan who listened to Hank Snow and Hank Thompson on
a Coleman station on the car radio or under the sheets at night
so her parents wouldn't hear.
"It was full of screaming teen-agers, like it was later
when the Beatles came (to New York City)," she recalled.
Her biggest impression, one that "embarrassed me greatly,"
was Elvis' gyrating.
"I was naive. I never had been exposed to that kind of
overt sexuality," she confessed this week.
It didn't bother her "wild and crazy" friend Becky
Willingham. To the contrary, Willingham got backstage and obtained
Elvis' autograph. On her brassiere.
"That was a little too much for me," Garren said.
"I didn't come away from that night dying for Elvis. It took
me two or three more years."
What else she remembers is how thin the soon-to-be King was.
"His hair was the biggest thing about him," she said.
Garren also attended the 1974 concert and "loved him."
She could believe someone would vandalize Elvis' car, particularly
boys who "didn't know what to do about Elvis. He was too
much for them, too. He really put them off.
"I liked him ... I was just too embarrassed to say it."
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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