August 29, 1954 - Kennedy Veterans Hospital, Memphis TN

The Kennedy Veterans Hospital, shown here on a postcard from the 1940s, opened just outside of Memphis in 1943. There is some confusion about when exactly Elvis played there, with some sources claiming he was there on September 21st, while Scotty Moore's tour calendar lists his appearance as August 29th. I'm going with Scotty Moore until I find credible information to the contrary.

By 1945, Kennedy was the largest Army hospital in the country, and as it expanded it became like a miniature city with its own movie theater, bowling alley, and recreation halls. In Last Train to Memphis, Peter Guralnick writes, "Scotty took his duties as manager seriously. He and Sam agreed that it made no sense to put Elvis into some of the rough joints that Scotty and Bill had been playing, so he went looking for schoolhouses to book and local Elks Club and Lions Club events within a seventy-five-mile radius of Memphis that might be looking for a singer. In the meantime they played out at the Kennedy Veterans Hospital one Saturday afternoon ..."

This account conflicts with both Scotty's date of August 29th, a Sunday, and the other proposed date of September 21st, a Tuesday. If somewhere in Guralnick's sources someone confused a Saturday with a Sunday, that would lend credence to the August 29th date, but it's entirely possible that the actual date is completely unknown and likely to remain so.

Scotty was familiar with Kennedy Veterans because he had played there with the Starlite Wranglers before signing on to be Elvis' manager and bandmate. If you click the dropdown menu on the top right of this page, you can find more information about the Wranglers and Elvis' connection to them in the July 1954 Bon Air Club posts.

According to Elvis: The Biography by Jerry Hopkins, Elvis was also not a stranger to Kennedy Veterans Hospital. Elvis' childhood friend Buzzy Forbes claimed that, as members of an Odd Fellows boys club, they would "participate in charitable activities in exchange for the use of game and meeting rooms" and he would "fool around while Elvis played his guitar and sang when they visited patients at the Veterans hospital." Buzzy Forbes also reportedly loaned Elvis a shirt for the Humes Annual Minstrel during his senior year of high school.

There are no known photos of Elvis performing at Kennedy Veterans Hospital, but he would famously revisit the site on January 4th, 1957 for his Army pre-induction test:

And March 24, 1958 for his Army induction:

Kennedy Veterans Hospital is still standing, and it became part of the University of Memphis Park Avenue Campus in 1967. If you're visiting the site, the entrance is on the appropriately named Getwell Road, which was changed from the original name of Shotwell Road in the 1940s due to the negative connotations of a military hospital and 'shotwell'.