Readers of the September 18, 1954 Memphis Press-Scimitar might have noticed the ad announcing Elvis Presley "in person" for another show at the Eagle's Nest, but they could be forgiven if the name didn't ring a bell yet. Though he had a couple of relatively big local shows under his belt (at the Overton Park Shell and Lamar-Airways Shopping Center) and his first Sun Records single (209 - That's All Right / Blue Moon of Kentucky) was selling well around Memphis, Elvis was only a couple of months into his professional career and running second bill to Eagle's Nest regular, Tiny Dixon. You can click here for more information on the Eagle's Nest venue and Elvis' first show there on August 7th.
Tiny Dixon features in many Eagle's Nest advertisements but he has been surprisingly hard to find information on. According to Sid Lapworth, who was the guitar manager at legendary Memphis music store O. K. Houcks in the 1950s and who also frequently played at the Eagle's Nest, Tiny Dixon was "a great local player, a very large man with hands the size of a Virginia ham." The photo below shows the Eagle's Nest house band in the mid-50s and Tiny can be seen sitting in the middle holding a guitar, to the right of Sleepy Eyed John standing at the microphone.
By my calculations, September 18th was Elvis' third appearance at the Eagle's Nest. You can click here for information on his second show, August 27th, and see the photos taken that night by his aunt Clettes. Some websites reference other September show dates before the 18th, but I have not been able to confirm those yet. Scotty Moore's tour schedule does not include any September appearances at the Eagle's Nest prior to the 18th, so I'm going with him as the expert until shown otherwise.
If the Scotty Moore timeline is accurate, then Johnny Cash was in attendance at this show. If not, then he would have been at one of the earlier unconfirmed shows. Johnny had seen Elvis for the first time on the 9th at Lamar-Airways Shopping Center, saying "That’s the first time I met him. Vivian and I went up to him after the show, and he invited us to his next date at the Eagle’s Nest ..."
Johnny described the Eagle's Nest as follows: "I remember Elvis’ show at the Eagle’s Nest as if were yesterday. The date was a blunder, because the place was an adult club where teenagers weren’t welcome, and so Vivian and I were two of only a dozen or so patrons, fifteen at the most. All the same, I thought Elvis was great. The thing I really noticed that night, though, was his guitar playing. Elvis was a fabulous rhythm player. He’d start into 'That’s All Right, Mama' with his own guitar alone, and you didn’t want to hear anything else. I didn’t anyway. I was disappointed when Scotty Moore and Bill Black jumped in and covered him up. Not that Scotty and Bill weren’t perfect for him - the way he sounded with them that night was what I think of as seminal Presley, the sound I missed through all the years after he became so popular and made records full of orchestration and overproduction. I loved that clean, simple combination of Scotty, Bill, and Elvis with his acoustic guitar. You know, I’ve never heard or read anyone else praising Elvis as a rhythm guitar player, and after the Sun days I never heard his own guitar on his records."
Sources:
Soulsville, USA: The Story of Stax Records by Rob Bowman
CASH: The Autobiography by Johnny Cash with Patrick Carr
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