20th May 1956, Sunday

[Graeme]

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8pm show
      

      
      
      
      
From the best book ever written on Elvis for 1956, Brian Petersen's "The Atomic Powered Singer"
      
      

Elvis Makes Gals Shriek
Entertainer´s "Cooch" Dance a Hit.

"The rage of the teen-age" lived up to his billing Sunday at the Auditorium Arena. He is a young man named Elvis Presley. He has sideburns, long hair and wears a bright red coat over a black silk shirt.        Gyrations Do It. He sings and plays the guitar. But it isn´t his singing or his strumming that sends the girls into a frenzy. It´s his gyrations - which simply are no more than a male "cooch" dance, complete with bumps and grinds. Elvis "entertained" some seven thousand Omahans at two shows. He was on stage for 22 minutes and the shrieks of the gals - from 5 to 50, although most were teenagers - resounded all the time.        Not Too Serious When Elvis moved a knee, even a thumb, the girls swooned. Police reported that one girl down front attempted to tear off her clothes. They stopped her quickly. There wasn´t as much rock ´n´ roll dancing as there is when Bill Haley and the Comets come around. Evidently the girls didn´t want to miss any of Elvis´ movements. Elvis, backed by a trio, doesn´t take himself too seriously. He introduced one of his numbers as being "a sad song. In fact, it´s downright pityful." At the afternoon performance he dedicated his finale to the members of the audience who weren´t planning to come back to the evening show. Its title "You Ain´t No Friend of Mine."

Borge Comments When it was completed and he leaped off stage to avoid the surging mob of girls, the hall filled with shouts of "Please don´t stop. Elvis, please!" From high in the third tier, Elvis was watched by comedian Victor Borge. Mr. Borge´s comment, "The only thing he does like me is that he doesn´t come back for an encore. When he walks away the show is over."                      Fine Quartet. The remainder of the Presley show was very good. The Jordanaires were a fine singing quartet; the Flaims proved a talented rock ´n´ roll unit; Jackie Little, the only feminine member of the troupe, was a good opening vocalist; Frankie Connors was another singer and Al Maraquin was a hard-working comedian.                      Pandemonium reigns when Elvis Presley (left) bursts into song, and his appearance at the Auditorium Arena in Omaha Sunday proved no exception. His body gyrations and moaning didn´t need to make sense; somehow, they managed to intoxicate the 90 per cent female audience, sending most of the teen-age girls and even a few male youths into unrestrained delirium.

© Copyright: Omaha World Herald, May 21, 1956

[Private Presley]