With a Louisiana Hayride performance coming up on the 20th, Elvis, Scotty, and Bill made their way back to Shreveport where they also had a gig filling in for Hoot and Curley, a Louisiana Hayride act, at the Lake Cliff Club on the 19th. The photo above is undated, but the club began life as a sandwich shop (to the left in the photo) in the early 1930s and added the dancehall in 1938 (to the right). Since the photo says "opening tonite" and there's what looks like a 1930s car visible to the far left, it's probably from 1938.
I haven't found too much on Hoot and Curley, but Hoot's last name was Rains and Curley's was Hearndon. They were longtime Hayride performers and part of Slim Whitman's outfit, as referenced in this August 21, 1954 Billboard magazine article:
They are also listed on the November 13th Hayride performance that included Elvis:
Hoot and Curley had been playing the Lake Cliff Club for years and had a developed a loyal fanbase. I don't know why they were not performing on the 19th, but apparently the club management hadn't mentioned it to the regulars, though they did run this misspelled ad:
Misspellings were common in Elvis' early days, including the legendary July 30th show where he opened for Slim Whitman. According to Scotty Moore, the Hoot and Curley crowd were completely unimpressed with Elvis, Scotty, and Bill. By the end of their first set the club was nearly empty, and Scotty summed it up as "a complete bust".
Determining the exact location of the club has proven difficult, as it apparently burned down after it closed in the late 70s, and there are conflicting addresses. The photo posted at the top of this article lists the address as 3115 Milam Street, while a later undated ad I found says 3201 Milam.
If the Milam address is accurate and the street numbers or layout haven't changed, the club would be approximately in the wooded area by the red marker in this aerial:
You can see Blanchard Road turns off just before the wooded area, so if the Blanchard Road address is accurate, the club would be approximately where the red marker is in the aerial photo below, adjacent to the water treatment plant. The Fans of the Louisiana Hayride facebook group (linked below) says it was "on Milam Street near the Shreveport water plant on Cross Lake."
Sources:
Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick, page 150
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