In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Elvis Presley He wasn’t any better looking than a dozen other young studs on the music scene.He was slender and walked with a sexy hitch to his hips. He wore his hair full and wavy, with a teasy strand on his high forehead ,and long sideburns,which were just becoming the smoky fashion for the cool cats of those days.But it was those deep-staring eyes that mesmerized all the girls—that and those sexy lips and hips. ElvisAaron Presley.It was our manager,good ol’Tom Perryman, who introduced Elvis to us one night.“I’m so happy to meet y’all,” Elvis said.“I’ve been listening to the Browns since y’all started.” A few months after his first single from Sun Records came out, Elvis made a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. But he didn’t go over to well with the audience.When he tried getting on the second time,the Opry’s manager,Jim Denny,wouldn’t hear of it.He was very ugly and cruel to Elvis.“Go back to Memphis,”he told him.“We don’t allow no Negro music on the Opry.” We went to Horace Logan of the Louisiana Hayride and put in a good word for Elvis and asked if they would please give him a chance. The rest, of course, is history.Tom sort of took Elvis under wing— until that carnival man,Col.Tom Parker,came along.Elvis looked so young and sweet that you wouldn’t have thought he could produce such a big sound. He had two very good musicians backing him in those days,Scotty Moore on guitar and Bill Black on bass fiddle.They were all good-looking boys and had no trouble getting attention from all the young things around the Hayride. The first time I met Elvis, I told him my mother had predicted he’d be a big star.He just laughed shyly.In those days,he truly had no idea of how big he would become.I don’t think he ever had a big head or even gave fame a second thought.He was too busy having fun and 95 10 being young.I believe he would have been content to sing the way he did on the Hayride. His favorite music, by far, was old-time gospel. Many a night,we’d all sit up late and sing the old hymns.Elvis was the last to want to quit.He often said that his big dream was to make it as a gospel artist.That’s what his mother wanted for him,too.Who knows, that might have been best for him in the long run. Few know this,but there were actually two Elvises inside the one. As we traveled the road with him,we came to see both sides.He could be very, very shy, the sensitive momma’s boy, and he could be as wild as a joker in a game of spit in the ocean. I know that others who call themselves biographers and scholars have written exhaustive books about Elvis.But all their pronouncements about him still come down to guesswork.They weren’t there.You had to be with him day to day, facing the grind of the road, to really understand him. It’s a little strange now to look back and remember when the BrownTrio got top billing over Elvis Presley.Tom Perryman thought the three of us and Elvis and his group would make a good package. So he arranged us a tour together all over Texas. On January 26, 1955, the Browns stole the show from Elvis in Gilmer at the Rural ElectricAssociation building.Then we did it again two days later at the high school in Gaston. I’m sure that few stole shows from him after that. I know for sure that the Browns didn’t. We worked fifteen straight days with Elvis. Our common band consisted of Scotty,Bill,and J.E.That was it,but we put on great shows. Today it’s unheard of for a musician to back two artists on the same show.After the tour was over, we again went to the Hayride’s Horace Logan and Frank Page and told them that they should sign Elvis to a contract.We knew he had the voice and the talent to be a member. No other artist had the stage presence he did. He was...

Share