Katz Drug Store, Memphis, Tennessee.
Becky Yancey, one of Elvis' future secretaries, says she saw Elvis perform here as well as a number of well known names including Johnny Cash. Marty Lacker, future Memphis Mafia member, also saw the show. The Emcee for the evening is George Klein.
- © Commercial Appeal
Various sources from all over the interweb and / or multiple repeated quotes etc:
Elvis Presley was paid $10 dollars to perform at the grand opening of the Lamar- Airway Shopping Centre at 2256 Lamar Avenue in Memphis. About 300 people, including an aspiring young singer from Arkansas named Johnny Cash, attended the 9:00 p.m. performance, and John Evans, who later achieved fame as the keyboardist on the Memphis' the Box Tops.
These photographs of Elvis with his band were taken by Opal Walker after the grand opening of the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center show, September 9, 1954 in Memphis Tennessee. ^
"My dad had wired our house so that we had an intercom running through the house", says Evans. "That way the radio could be heard throughout the house''.
''We listened to Dewey Phillips that way. He played that song all the time. Those were magic moments in broadcasting history".
When Evans, who was about six, and his brother heard on the radio that Elvis Presley would be performing at the shopping center, they went to watch since it was just a short distance from their home. "People came from all over the neighbourhood and swarmed down on the place", he says. "My brother held me up to where I could see. I remember they were dressed like real weird country musicians. Elvis was wearing pink and gray. I was struck by that. They had a big string bass and the guy would twirl it around. There was only one amp and it was sitting on a chair. There was a little guy playing a big guitar".
For an hour, Elvis Presley performed with Sleepy-Eyed John and the Eagle's Nest band from the back of a flatbed truck parked in front of the new Katz Drug Store, the shopping centre's central business. Elvis Presley sang, "Old Shep", "That's All Right", "Blue Moon Of Kentucky", a Bill Monroe-inspired version of "Uncle Pen", "Crying Heart Blues" and "Tennessee Saturday Night".
The parking lot was jammed when Elvis Presley arrived with Dixie Locke. The lineup at the three-day festivities included an Indian band, the radio WDIA band, the Air Force marching band, and George Klein, who was back at Memphis State for the fall semester, was broadcasting from inside the giant wooden Indian.
Scotty Moore and Bill Black were already present, and Sleepy Eye John was all set up on stage, but the crowd seemed restive.
On the first day of the grand opening, Elvis Presley arrived with Scotty Moore and Bill Black. Opal Walker, who liked Elvis' music after listening to Dewey Phillips radio show, snapped a couple of pictures as the band stood near their car. Elvis Presley wore black pants with a pink stripe down the side of each leg and a pink shirt. He had a very faint mustache. She remembers how little fanfare there was before the show. "Nobody knew who he was", she said.
Peter Morton, manager of the Katz Drug Store, thanked Elvis Presley for singing the country songs and paid him ten dollars. This appearance was an excellent tune-up for a recording session scheduled the next night at Sun Records.
"This was the first we could see what was happening. 'Cause it was a whole parking lot full of kids, and they just went crazy", recalled Scotty Moore. "When we see it begin to start, Elvis goes one way and we go the other", Scotty said just two years later. "We call it being foxy. We scatter like quail".
Ralph Moore, the brother of Scotty Moore, was also at the shopping center that day. What struck him was the fact that it was a racially mixed audience. "The coloreds were dancing and they'd get up on these barrels and they would fall off", he says. That was the first time he met Elvis Presley, and he walked away that day carrying an impression of the man that stuck with him over the years. "He was a plain ole country boy - very polite", he says. "It was 'yes sir' and 'yes m'am'".
After the show Elvis Presley hung around a little, there were a bunch of people that he know in the crowd, and they all wanted to talk to him, some of them even wanted his autograph.
Most spectacular store front at Lamar-Airways Shopping Center is the Katz Drug Store, first in Memphis. This is the Katz chain's 32nd drug store. All the stores are located in big cities. The cat head on top of the building rotates and can be seen high over the center from all directions.
Until 1954 the triangle was a field that was considered a no-man's-land of sorts, one of the few places where white and black kids from the surrounding areas could encounter each other on a regular basis.
When the center was built it was at the time, the largest of its kind. Anchored by a Katz Drug Store, it included a Kroger, a Pic-Pac, Shainberg's Department Store and several clothing and shoe stores. Its opening on September 9th was blessed by Chief Wishackchihumma of the Choctaw Indians, and its emblem was a 28-foot paper-and-plastic Indian chief, in homage to Lamar Avenue's past a Chickasaw trail.
KATZ DRUG STORE / LAMAR-AIRWAYS SHOPPING CENTER - Located at Airways Shopping Center, 2256 Lamar Avenue, Memphis, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black played a lot of small gigs during 1954 and 1955 at colleges, clubs, and special events throughout the South.
On September 9, 1954 the trio performed at the grand opening of the Airways Shopping Center including its central shop, Katz Drug Store. The Airways Shopping Center is about a mile south from the Presley's Lamar address. The "Blue Moon Boys" played from the back of a flatbed truck to an energized audience which included Johnny Cash as well as Becky Yancey, Elvis Presley's future secretary.
Today, the drug store is no loner operating from this location, but the shopping center is still in existence, as part of a strip mall, next to the roadhouse, Kentucky Fried Chicken.