"Louisiana Rocks"

One of the few things I've ever done that impressed my kids when they were young is the fact that I once interviewed and photographed Elvis Presley, one-on-one, just me and the King in the same room together alone. That long-ago interview came to mind recently as I skimmed a review copy of long-time friend and former newspaper co-worker Tom Aswell's just-issued book, "Louisiana Rocks," an anthology of musicians with Louisiana connections who were present and participated in the creation of rock and roll. (More of the book in this edition; see Piney Woods Bookshelf).

It was 1954, and I was the one-man newsroom at the little five-day Gladewater, Texas, Daily Mirror, just down the road from Longview, through the piney woods from Kilgore, around the corner from Tyler. Gladewater was still an oil field town--not quite like Kilgore, with its rig-studded downtown--on the pre-Interstate US Highway 80, on the outer edge of the gradually declining East Texas field. There was farm country just up the road at Gilmer in Upshur County, which contained the Union Grove school district snuggled up next to Gladewater at the western outer limit of Gregg County, a hawk-and-a-spit from the Smith County line. It was at the Union Grove High School football banquet that I listened to and photographed a big old stoop-shouldered fellow named Bear Bryant from Texas A&M, but that's another story.

This was the era of 50,000-watt live performance AM radio, and KWKH in Shreveport was airing the Louisiana Hayride, competing regionally for attention with the Grand Ole Opry, already a national institution for fans of country music from WLAC in Nashville. Tom Aswell's book reminded me of the parade of country music stars who launched from the Louisiana Hayride--the likes of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Doug Kershaw, Slim Whitman, and . . . and, there was that nineteen- or twenty-year-old kid named Elvis Presley, who had apparently flunked his first performance test for a regular Saturday night slot at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville (where I attended a few Oprys in another earlier chapter of my life; again, another story).

In response to the regional popularity of its show, the Hayride began sending its artists on road tours around Louisiana, Arkansas, and East Texas, and in at least a couple of instances, to take the weekend radio show for broadcast to one of the area cities. The radio station at Gladewater, whose call sign I have forgotten, was managed by a fast moving, long-legged fellow Lions Club member whose name I have also forgotten. At one of the informal morning coffee-and-doughnut meetings attended by a come-and-go crowd of the downtown business owners, clerks, and what used to be called "sweats" at the local eatery, the station manager--call him Bud--said he had landed a deal with the KWKH Hayride to bring the show to Gladewater for a joint broadcast within the next few weeks.

As word of the coming attraction leaked out through the Daily Mirror among other sources, there began to be a titter and tee-hee among the young female population. Elvis had a reputation already. The advertising sales lady at the newspaper was an elderly gal of maybe 35 or so who had at least one daughter of teenage high school age. The mom, who had occasional professional contacts with Bud, the radio guy, was involved with other moms in daughter doings at the high school, and they contrived with Bud to stage a pre-show reception for Elvis and their daughters at the Gladewater country club. Good pre-show publicity. As the local newspaper reporter, I had an invite--all in the interest of promoting the Big Show. And so it happened that the girls and their moms made a big fuss over Elvis, to which he was appropriately appreciative, and after the excitement and the refreshments, the girls and their moms toodle-ooed and left, and Elvis and I were left standing there, eyeball to eyeball in the country club dining room. He was nineteen or twenty, I was twenty three. I probably blinked first, and then introduced myself, shook hands, and probably asked some inane question, to which he probably mumbled something classic. I snapped the picture, and we left. Standing there alone in his pompadour and sideburns, he did not look especially famous, but it was hardly more than a month later that he took off like a Saturn rocket, and never really returned to Earth until he was planted at Graceland. I was able to treat my then-grown kids to one of his last road shows at the Monroe Civic Center in the mid-seventies, and made a stop at the Graceland shrine some years later, on some tour the reason for which I do not rightly remember.

To put this and much more into context, get "Louisiana Rocks: The True Genesis of Rock and Roll." No matter your age, you'll find memories of your youth.

Now I can tell my great-grandkids that I knew Tom Aswell, the famous author, when he was a cub.

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