Seventy years ago, on Aug. 9, 1956, Elvis Presley returned to the Peabody Auditorium stage. Not as a warm-up act for Andy Griffith, not as another face in the lineup for the Hank Snow All-Star Jamboree, but as the “one big show only” headliner. “Nation’s only atomic powered singer,” as ads in The News-Journal trumpeted.
The year 1956 was when Presley transformed into a national phenomenon. His breakout year. He released five No. 1 singles and two No. 1 albums, “Elvis Presley” and “Elvis.” He appeared on both “The Milton Berle Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show.” He filmed his first movie, “Love Me Tender.” And he swept through Florida on a nine-day, seven-city tour.
Elvis and his ‘old-fashioned bump-and-grind’ at Peabody in Daytona
He filled Peabody Auditorium with some 5,000 screaming fans, the second-largest audience the venue hosted to date. Yet News-Journal writers were not impressed. “If he were a woman, we’d say he did an old-fashioned bump-and-grind routine while he alternately crooned and shouted into a microphone,” the reviewer wrote. “Each well-calculated jerk of his famous pelvis drew a scream of approval from the packed audience.”
Before the concert, feature writer Max Norris went to the Copacabana Motel on South Atlantic Avenue to interview fans who had staked out the place to get a glimpse of Presley. “Elvis Presley, whose tortured moans have found a vast audience in a tin-eared nation, slept here Wednesday night,” he wrote.
Sometimes it’s hard for adults working on deadline to understand when the whole culture has shifted in front of them. Rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay.
A previous version of this story misstated how many years ago Elvis appeared in Daytona Beach.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: 1956, the Year of Elvis, with a visit to Daytona
Reporting by Mark Lane, Special to The News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mark Lane, Special to The News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
