September 9, 1954 - Lamar-Airways Shopping Center, Memphis TN

The September 8th, 1954 Memphis Press-Scimitar announced the upcoming opening of the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center with a brief feature on the "newest Memphis hit in the recording business" Elvis Presley, who certainly looks all-business in the photo. Elvis, Scotty, and Bill were one of the acts booked for "fun on a grand scale".

Elvis was scheduled with Sleepy Eyed John and the Eagle's Nest Band on the 9th from 9 to 10. You can click here to read more about Sleepy Eyed John and Elvis' first show at the Eagle's Nest.
Located at 2268 Lamar Avenue, the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center was a big deal at the time, with three days of festivities to mark the event. According to Scotty Moore's website, prior to the development of the shopping center, the triangle shaped piece of land was "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".

The September 9, 1954 Press-Scimitar photo above shows the Katz Drugstore at Lamar-Airways as it looked on opening day, complete with a rotating cat above the sign. According to the Press-Scimitar, you could buy everything from ice cream to a live monkey at Katz. Below is a two-page spread from the September 9, 1954 Commercial Appeal. I don't see any monkeys, but there were parakeets available.

Memphis resident Opal Walker was in attendance for the September 9th show. She was 21 and an acquaintance of Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips, who had indirectly introduced her to Elvis by telling her where he went to church. She and a friend then met Elvis after a church service where she recalled flirting and that he teased her about her long blonde hair. Below is the only photo attributed to Opal Walker that I have located.

Opal said there was little fanfare before the show, or at least, little Elvis-centric fanfare, because "nobody knew who he was", but Opal was an early Elvis fan and got there early. Scotty Moore pulled into the parking lot with Elvis and Bill Black in his wife Bobbie's 1953 Chevy Bel Air, and while they hung around in the parking lot by the car, Opal asked if she could take a few pictures, describing the scene later as "she had him all to herself". Elvis gladly obliged, resulting in three legendary photos from the King's early days.

There are no known photos of the performance itself, but the stage was on a flatbed truck in the rear parking lot. Opal said she did not remember what songs Elvis sang, but that "Bill rode his bass across the stage".

Also in the crowd that day was none other than a 22-year-old Johnny Cash. He described the scene as follows: "The first time I saw Elvis, singing from a flatbed truck at a Katz drugstore opening on Lamar Avenue, two or three hundred people, mostly teenage girls, had come out to see him. With just one single to his credit, he sang those two songs over and over."

The two songs are of course That's All Right and Blue Moon of Kentucky, which were the only two songs Elvis, Scotty, and Bill played regularly live in the earliest shows. In his CASH: The Autobiography, Johnny further stated, "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."

Elvis might have only had two songs on the 9th, but the very next day he, Scotty, and Bill would head back to Sun for the sessions that would produce Good Rockin' Tonight and I Don't Care If The Sun Don't Shine.

Shown above, the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center today, and below, the backlot where the flatbed truck/stage was parked.

In the aerial photo below, the arrow points to Katz Drugstore, now a Save A Lot supermarket, and the circle shows the parking lot where Elvis performed.