Elvis at the Arena

November 23, 1956, Elvis played the Arena. One of these days I will document the Moondog Coronation Ball (1952) in some detail ... or at least spread more specious rumors. Regardless, the Arena was an all-purpose venue, the site where boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson murdered Jimmy Doyle in the sixth (literally, as it turned out) and the Cleveland Barons played hockey.

On Halloween night, 1956, the Cleveland Newspaper Guild went on strike, bringing to an abrupt halt the publication of all three Cleveland papers -- the Press, News and Plain Dealer. At the top of his game, Elvis Presley storms into town. His first movie, Love Me Tender had opened a week earlier, and the theme song was on top of the charts. No. 2 that week was Don't Be Cruel.

There wasn't a single Cleveland paper covering the concert.

Well, there was one paper covering the event. The Black and Gold sent its star photographer, seventeen year-old Lew Allen to cover the concert. Yes, that's right -- the Heights High School newspaper.

The show did not begin punctually at 8 PM that night as advertised. Excited fans were left waiting for fifteen minutes before Elvis took the stage. Legend has it he was receiving a phone call from a very ill and disappointed, ticket-holding girl who was in the hospital, and he just chatted with her for a while to try and make her feel better. Believe it or not, that's the story Lew Allen himself told, and has a picture of Elvis backstage on the phone as proof.

Allen went on to study photography at the Rochester Institute of Art, and went on a rock and roll tour in 1958, take great photographs of Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Frankie Avalon, Duane Eddy, Bobby Darin, the Hollywood Flames and others.

The Cleveland Arena and Elvis Presley were demolished in 1977.

Hockey stick.

Sources: Elvis Australia
ScottyMoore.net

See also: Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High (1955)

Tonight With Steve Allen

The program Tonight With Steve Allen debuted on September 27, 1954, featuring bandleader Skitch Henderson and announcer Gene "Match Game" Rayburn. Allen shared hosting duties with Ernie Kovacs beginning in 1956 and the show was later helmed by Jack Parr beginning in 1957. This NBC late night talk show continues to this day under the more recognizeable name The Tonight Show, though the element of comedy Allen originally introduced to the show is no longer present.

Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) -- if that truly was his name -- was a remarkable talent. Watch this video of Steve interviewing one of his favorite subjects (and anathema to the network) Jack Kerouac in 1959. The dude riffs on the piano while conducting the interview.


Allen created The Tonight Show in New York in 1953 for NBC-TV before it went nation the following year. The program ran from 11:15 PM to 1 in the morning, broadcast live (because that's the only way you could broadcast) from New York City. Everything you know about late night talk shows was created by Steve Allen, no one has created anything he didn't do first.

Though Allen must be given credit for bringing individuals like Kerouac and Lenny Bruce onto his programs (people the networks must have wished he hadn't) he was irksomely stodgy about rock and roll. NBC gave him a primetime slot in addition to Tonight in 1956, The Steve Allen Plymouth Show where he famously put Elvis Presley into a tuxedo and asked him to croon Hound Dog to an actual dog.


Source: Wikipedia

Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High (1955)

Elvis Presley at Brooklyn High

Yes, the 50s. In Cleveland. The birthplace of Rock n' Roll, where a riot where no music was played, certainly none anyone could hear, and was broken up during the first song, has been declared the first rock concert. That was in 1952.

None of the characters in These Are The Times would have listened to "rock and roll" during the 1950s, not even the younger ones. That was strictly for teenagers. However, it happened. And there is history.

Elvis Presley was 19 years old in mid-1954 when he recorded That's All Right in Memphis, Tennessee. And that is a dynamite freaking record. At that time they called what he was doing "rockabilly" and one of his nicknames was "The Hillbilly Cat." For the time being, he was strictly a Southern phenomenon ... until October 20, 1955 when he played his first gig above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Autographs for Cleveland girls

Brooklyn High School (that's Brooklyn, Ohio) held a rock n' roll concert that night, crafted by DJ Bill Randle, and starring Bill Haley & The Comets, The Four Lads and Pat Boone. Elvis was an unknown addition to the bill.

Randle had been playing their records in Cleveland since January and still thinking he had spotted a winner, he plugged the "sensational young singer" in his Oct. 1, 1955, newspaper column, "Randle on Record," as the singer "whose style is a combination of hillbilly nasalties, rock ’n’ roll, Johnnie Ray and a peculiar sound all his own. The new phenomenon looks like Tony Curtis and drives a pink and black Cadillac. Watch him roar."
- scottymoore.net

Elvis was wearing an orange suit. His set included Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Blue Moon of Kentucky, Good Rockin' Tonight and I Forgot to Remember to Forget.

Sources:
Wikipedia
scottymoore.net