Fans remember Elvis from ’57 Tacoma show

<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>Fans remember Elvis from ’57 Tacoma show</span>
ERNEST A. JASMIN;
The News Tribune Published: August 15th, 2007 06:40 AM

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<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>“You could see he was just having a ball,
” Nona Stephenson, 83, of Eatonville, says of Elvis Presley’s Sept. 1, 1957, concert in Tacoma.</span>

Fans remember the historic day of Sept. 1, 1957, when Elvis Presley played Tacoma. Some 6,000 people caught the King at the Lincoln Bowl, prior to an evening engagement at the old Sicks Stadium in Seattle. Here’s some of what they remember:

CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE

Kent Morrill of Tacoma garage rock legends the Wailers: “It was the beginning of the phenomenon of big concerts and all that kind of stuff. There was nothing before that. There were no bands to speak of. I think the Blue Notes were probably playing at that time. Gorgeous George wrestled once in a while. That was about it.”

Carol Norman, 61, of Tacoma: “Elvis had been trying to come to Seattle and perform (in 1956), but the council had rejected him because they said the youth were gonna tear up the seats or whatever. So I wrote a letter to (Seattle Councilman David Levine) and he wrote me back. It was a very nice letter saying how when I grow up I could understand why they could not let an entertainer like Elvis perform in their facilities.”

Phylliss Rose, 67, of Tacoma: “All the excitement reminded me of the first time I saw him on television on the Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey show. I asked all my friends if they had seen Elvis Presley, the singer, who was so handsome. They did not even know who I was talking about and said, ‘What a weird name!’”

Arlene Heldreth, 68, of Puyallup: “(Ed) Sullivan had him on, and they only filmed him from the waist up. We all giggled about that. I can remember lying on the floor in the living room watching that and my dad just howling. And my mother was just having a fit because I was watching him do these things. My mother was having a cow because I was going to go to this thing. And (to) my boyfriend at the time I said, ‘You know, you gotta get those tickets or we won’t be boyfriend-girlfriend any more.’ He got the tickets wherever he got them.”

Sandy Rice, 67, of Puyallup: “My girlfriends and I were so excited when we heard Elvis was coming to Tacoma. I was working at Puget Sound National Bank as a messenger earning $75 a month before taxes. So $5 to see Elvis represented quite a lot, but we would’ve paid almost anything to be able to see ‘the King’ in person.”

Kristi Pedersen Winters, 67, of Puyallup: “My friends and I attended the concert on Sept. 1, 1957, but only after we promised her boyfriend (the one that got the tickets) that we wouldn’t scream during the concert. Believe me, this was one of the hardest promises I had to keep.”

Jim Groves of Gig Harbor: “We were true rock ’n’ rollers back then; malt shops, pegged pants, wedged shoes, DA’s and coolness. Elvis was a cool guy and put on a great show.”


ALL SHOOK UP

Janet Meyer, 66, of Leavenworth: “We lived in Morton. So we left home at like 5:30 in the morning because we wanted to be first in line. The concert was at 2, we got there at 7, and we were not first in line. We were second.”

Morrill: “I was in high school. We wouldn’t go to see Elvis because all the girls were crazy over him and we were jealous. We went and we climbed up and used binoculars, and we watched the show from high above in the woods back there.”

David Hebert, 79, of Tacoma (then a partner in J&M Concessions): “He was selling banners and pendants and pillows. If I remember right, to purchase every item he had was around $30, which was a lot of money in those days, 50 years ago. These kids came there from the berry fields of Puyallup, and they spent their raspberry and strawberry money.”

Walt Kaplin, 70, of Gig Harbor: “I purchased a photo booklet of Elvis from a vendor. And as we were going into the stands I saw my uncle, Jim Steele, a police officer with the Tacoma Police Department.

“I asked him to have Elvis sign one of the photos in the booklet. My uncle went into the small building and within a minute came back out and waved me over to the door. I was admitted in to personally meet Elvis in private. I was alone with ‘the King’ for about five minutes, just the two of us. It was a wonderful experience. Elvis signed one of the photos in the booklet, which I still have to this very day.”

Hebert: “There was probably eight or 10 other people in that locker room there, talking to him and things like that. He was sitting there on the bench, and he wasn’t dressed out of the ordinary. He just had regular clothes on. People were talking to him about his life. So the question was brought up about, ‘You think this is gonna keep up? Are you gonna get more famous?’

“This is really something, I tell you. We got kind of a laugh out of it. He took out his wallet and took out his membership in the Teamsters Union. And he said, ‘You never know when the bubble’s gonna burst, and I’ll be back driving a cement truck.’

“(It) was just man-to-man talk down there. It wasn’t much of a ceremony. But it did stick in my mind that I did meet the guy, talked to him and shook his hand and stuff.”

Bill Nelson, 65, of University Place: “All the DeMolay kids, the Masonic kids, from all around the area here were asked to be ushers. Our jobs as ushers actually consisted of standing between the hordes of screaming young girls and the stage. [Laughs] We were the first line of defense, I think.

“We had to wear a white shirt and a tie, and we got there ahead of time. And it was with great anticipation that we were just kind of hanging out. And then here comes the entourage down into Lincoln Bowl.”

Beverly Ahnert of University Place: “My daughter was 10 years old and not quite as enthusiastic as my friend Barbara and I were. I also took the 12-year-old neighbor girl so it could look like we were going to take the kids.

“Soon a black limo of some kind roared out on the football field, and out jumped Elvis, in black pants and a gold lamé jacket. (He) jumped up on the makeshift stage, ran his fingers through his hair and sang ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ I jumped up and down, yelled and yelled some more, enjoying each note Elvis sang. Well, my daughter and her friend were almost embarrassed to tears to see me making such a spectacle of myself and sat down on the floor of the stadium seats so that no one would know they were with us. But we did not care one bit.”


BURNING LOVE

Winters: “He had a natural and perfect timing and was a real tease. The audience was in the palm of his hand. He would stand perfectly still one minute, and they would go silent, and he would get a gleam in his eye and then snap his fingers, and the entire bowl went crazy with screams. Then he would laugh and continue to sing.”

Nona Stephenson, 83, of Eatonville: “We hadn’t been seated too long when I borrowed (my friend’s) binoculars and put (them) on Elvis’s face. … And you could see he was just having a ball. I’d never forget that vision.”

Winters: “At one point, he stepped off the stage onto the ground, and a girl scooped up the dirt where he had stepped and put it into her purse!”

Meyer (photographed scooping Elvis dirt by The News Tribune): “They had a barricade set up in the front, and they had some young men in black pants and white shirts. And for some reason my girlfriend and I went right through the barricades. And what I was doing when they took that picture was I was picking up some dirt from where he walked for a girl who was on the other side of the barricades. She had a baby food jar.”

Heldreth: “Most of us had these fruit jars or napkins or whatever they could gather to scoop up this dirt that he walked on. And at that time, girls wore skirts that were full circle – and they were cut out of felt. The poodle skirts, and you wore all those petticoats underneath them. So here you’re down on your hands and knees scooping up dirt in a skirt you can’t wash, you have to dry clean. So we had to go home and have our mothers look at us like we’d been scrambling in the mud or something.”


ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Ahnert: “I did not realize that it was a historical and hysterical moment, and have always been glad that I got to be there and see young Elvis at the beginning of his huge career. How could we know that he would be the King for so many years? I did see Elvis two more times, once in Las Vegas and once in Hawaii. But it was never, ever as exciting as that first time.”

Rice: “Elvis was a great entertainer, and I was always glad we had gone to see him. I still listen to his CDs almost every day and enjoy them every bit as much as I did 50 years ago.”

Meyer: “When you go to Graceland there’s always reporters there. And they just randomly pick people. (Once) I told them about my jar of dirt and how one day when I was moving it fell off the shelf in the cupboard and my husband sucked it up with a vacuum and I was devastated. Goodness sake, it probably lasted 20 years. To everyone else it was just dirt in a mayonnaise jar. But to me it was a treasured footprint.”

Ernest A. Jasmin: 253-274-7389

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Quelle: TheNewsTribune.Com</span>

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