19th April 1956, Thursday

[Graeme]

Day number 7773Site Date Map

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Playing in Oklahoma City

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[Graeme]

      

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[Alan]

From the best book on Elvis in 1956, Brian Petersens, The Atomic Powered Singer :-
      
Elvis stayed in Tulsa overnight and the next day, cruising the streets of Tulsa his eyes fell on a sports coat in a window. He stopped the car, jumped out and went inside the shop and bought the coat. It was a yellow coat trimmed with black lapels and collar. Then he took off for Oklahoma City, Ok, where he was set for two performances at the Municipal Auditoriumand while 6,500 youngsters packed the auditorium for the first show, another 6,500 waited impatiently outside to get in for his second performance. The moment the young rock-and-roll singer leaped onto the stage and grasped the microphone, the youngsters started screaming. And they kept screaming until the two shows were over. Elvis wore the yellow coat he had bought earlier in the day in Tulsa for one of the two shows while he whipped the audience info frenzies with such songs as "Long tall Sally," "Blue Suede Shoes" and "I Got A Woman" during which he broke the strings on his guitar. The Daily Oaklahoman in their review wrote: "As his show starts he leaps out on the stage with a guitar slung over his shoulders and hunkers at the microphone animal fashion. As Elvis sings he bounces and wiggles every limb, stands on his toes, crouches as if he is about to leap out into the audience, waves his hands in the air and sways backward and forward. But the teenagers love it. As he gyrated about the stage Thursday night his audience danced in the aisles, trembled as if in a trance, screamed until they were hoarse. At one point during the show he had to threaten to pull down the curtain if his audience didn't stay in their seats." At the interview between the two shows Elvis told the newsmen that "I give them what they want. I just let myself go and they like it and I love them for it." To the critics who had described his performance as "Juvenile delinquency set to music" Elvis thought this sort of critic was unfair. "It's a healthy thing," he said. "You don't have to be doped up to do it."

[Alan]

The font looks wrong bottom left so I've no idea as to whether it's authentic or not.
But I might be just as easily wrong.

[Private Presley]