1957: Elvis Invades Canada

Elvis and The Jordanaires while performing at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada; April 2, 1957

With Elvis' success in the US and his fame spilling over to the UK, it was only natural that his agent would seek to take him to every possible corner of the world. As money-centric as it was, this plan and its gains seemed to go unnoticed by the Colonel at the time (of course, it was not yet known that his refusal to leave the US was due to his past). But he listened to the clamor of Canadian fans (since the neighboring country did not require a passport for Americans) and signed a not very modest contract for four shows in early April 1957.

During a small tour between recordings of films and records, from March 28 to April 6, 1957, Elvis played 14 previously booked shows and left the US for the first time in his life, even though it was only to go to the "backyard" of the country. There, his five shows, on April 2 (Toronto), April 3 (Ottawa) and August 31, 1957 (Vancouver), were immensely well received by fans and utterly hated by most of the press.

Toronto Star music critic Hugh Thomson wrote in a scathing review of Elvis Presley's two concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens on April 2, 1957: "It goes without saying he has all the appeal of one-part dynamite and one-part chain-lightning to the adolescent girls, but to one like myself who is neither a girl nor adolescent, I could only feel he was strikingly devoid of talent."

Thompson's criticism affirms: "While a frenzied audience (reportedly composed predominantly of women, ranging in age from four to 64) screamed and cheered in approval as Elvis glided across the stage, seductively cradling the microphone and stopping to rock his hips in rhythm to the music, Thomson seethed: “One rock ‘n’ roll ballad sounded just like the other, and the basic theme and appeal were sex, which Elvis lays on with the subtlety of a bulldozer in mating season, you might say. He is Mr. Overstatement himself. He has to knock himself and his audience out at every beat."

Elvis' trip to Toronto was credited in The Toronto Telegram to the efforts of Carol Vanderleck of Leaside, who sent a petition with 2,443 signatures asking him to perform there. The Toronto Star suggested that another fan, Shirley Harris, who with the help of a local radio show collected 2,000 signatures, was responsible. At the time it was widely reported in the Canadian press that, by percentage, Elvis received more fan mail from Canada than from anywhere else. But it was Vanderleck that Colonel Tom Parker personally called to announce a concert at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Article from The Toronto Star attributing Elvis' trip to Canada to Shirley Harris; April 2, 1957

With one hit song after another until 1956, Elvis soared in popularity and, Jerry Hopkins suggests in "Elvis: A Biography" (Warner Books, 1971), that Parker was unhappy to continue to present his star for free on television. So he organized a money-making tour in the Spring of 1957, starting in Chicago and including stops in Fort Wayne, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Buffalo. His appearances in Toronto and Ottawa on this tour - and a subsequent stop in Vancouver later that Summer - would be Elvis' only appearances outside the US in his career.

Elvis had released his first single, "That's All Right", just three years earlier; his popularity quickly exploded, with numerous television and film appearances in Hollywood in 1956 and early 1957. Still 10 months away from being drafted into the army, Elvis was at the height of his budding career. Everywhere he made an appearance, chaos ensued.

Of the March/April 1957 tour, Scotty Moore, a member of Elvis' band, said: "It generated coverage, controversy, and cash, and from nearly every point of view could not fail to be accounted a success, but if anything was needed to confirm the Colonel’s growing conviction that this was a phenomenon that had orbited out of control…this tour served to do it… [I]t was becoming increasingly impossible even to do the show."

First in line for tickets when they went on sale March 20 was a 13-year-old boy, who arrived at 5:45 am; the Maple Leaf Gardens box office wouldn't open until 10. With prices ranging from $1.25 to $3.50 per seat, tickets sold out within 48 hours. Elvis and his bookers quickly agreed to do a second show: Tickets that had already been sold would be covered by the original 9:00 pm show, and a 6:00 pm performance would be added.

Elvis receives fans backstage at Maple Leaf Gardens; April 2, 1957

The first major rock 'n' roll event in Toronto had taken place almost a year earlier, when Bill Haley & His Comets performed at Maple Leaf Gardens. But whereas Haley - a jovial, burly singer approaching middle age - had been accepted as relatively innocuous to political moralists, preachers and parents, Presley represented a new and dangerous youth culture. Canadian critics, like Americans before them, commented on his suggestive stage moves; his raucous (to older ears) fusion of Country and Rhythm & Blues; and, most important, the response the singer provoked among his new fans.

Journalist Barbara Moon gave Toronto religious leaders free reign to talk about Elvis in Maclean magazine starting July 7, 1957. Jan Scott, religious columnist for the Toronto Telegram, insisted that teenagers who listened to rock'n'roll inevitably would regret it once they realized that "the whole business of pleasure-seeking and self-indulgence was a mockery and a sham." Reverend WG McPherson of The Evangel Temple proclaimed that rock touched the emotions "like the music of the heathen in Africa."

"Elvis Presley is a vulgar, tasteless amateur!” exclaimed Rudolf Bing, general manager of The Metropolitan Opera Company, who happened to be visiting Toronto in late March. He was pressed by Toronto reporters about whether there was at least something entertaining about Elvis’ on-stage antics. "No," he sternly insisted. "I find this no laughing matter. It is a desperate state of affairs when you consider millions of youngsters being brought up on horror comics and Presley."

Fans go wild during Elvis' performance at Maple Leaf Gardens; April 2, 1957

Presley did himself no favors in the face of critics who alleged a link between the singer and juvenile delinquency when he got into a street fight in Memphis a few weeks earlier. At the time, Elvis was signing autographs when he was confronted by an 18-year-old soldier who claimed that the singer had pushed his girlfriend months earlier. Through no fault of his own, Elvis pulled out a Hollywood toy pistol, and with a grin on his face exclaimed, "I'll blow your brains out, you punk."

"It was all a misunderstanding," Presley explained after the matter was amicably resolved through mediation by a Memphis judge. "We're both sorry it happened. I thought he and his buddies were trying to beat me up." As insignificant as it is, the widely publicized incident served to underscore the "danger" that Elvis and his rock 'n' roll posed to America's youth.

While Telegram campaigned for demotion, there were those among the Toronto media who defended the singer and his teenage fans.

"There is far too much gratuitous insult handed out these days to young people regarding what they like or don’t like, and the guilt-by-association technique had been over-used already on the many decent youngsters who genuinely like Presley even to the point of imitating his haircut," Scott Young , a columnist for the Globe and Mail, wrote thoughtfully, placing Elvis within the context of the long history of youth culture and the mothers who had swooned over Rudy Vallée in his younger years. "And in 20 years, some vital young man with long hair or no hair at all will come along playing a bassoon or a Tibetan lute and will fill Maple Leaf Gardens with the sons and daughters of the people who will be there to hear Elvis Tuesday night," he concluded. "And the veterans of this Elvis recital, away off there in 1977, will sit at home and stare into their coffee cups and wonder what the world is coming to."

When they finally met him in person - as Star reporter John Beehl did when Elvis toured in Chicago at the end of March - the journalists were surprised to discover a young but respectful man, with a soft voice, who didn't drink, didn't talk profanity, rather than the caricature depicted in so many pulpits.

"If I thought I was contributing to juvenile delinquency or causing anybody to go astray, I’d go back to driving a truck," Elvis said when a Canadian reporter gave him the opportunity to respond to his critics. Of his provocative performances, he added: "When I start to sing I’m carried away, I spread my feet apart, pick the guitar, and the rhythm carries me from there. I can’t help movin’ around. It’s the way I sing."

Elvis, Gene Smith (L) and George Klein (R) backstage at Maple Leaf Gardens; April 2, 1957

In the weeks leading up to Elvis' arrival, the Toronto press ran dozens of stories about him and his local fans. The Star visited the k ids of Presley Avenue in Scarborough. "Kids keep asking me all the time if I really live on Presley Ave.," commented a 14-year-old resident and Elvis fan. "When I tell them I do, they practically swoon." "Oh, I wish I lived on Presley Ave.," they say.

The Globe and Mail featured a photo of two East York teenagers, Helen Hagen and Judi Reilly, who composed a song in tribute to Elvis. Radio stations held contests to give young listeners a chance to meet Elvis in person.

The Star sent Don Carlson to Memphis to write a three-part biographical profile of the singer, recounting his rise from truck driver to rock 'n' roll sensation in less than four years. He wrote: "Selling records at a rate of a million per month, he said, earned Elvis about $1 million in royalties annually from his record deal with RCA Victor, television appearances added $100,000 per year, and personal appearances another $25,000 per week. Hollywood commitments added between $100,000 to $250,000 per movie on a three-films-per-year contract."

Carlson also cited conservative estimates that consumers spent $25 million a year on products with pictures of the singer - such as scarves, busts, shirts, pajamas and lunch boxes - and products associated with Elvis, such as cosmetics and soft drinks.

Before the 6pm show, sitting at a table in a concrete room in the heart of Maple Leaf Gardens, Presley chatted with the journalists who were there to cover his set. Wearing a silver silk shirt and red suede jacket, he impressed most of them with his natural charm, humor and ease in answering questions about his critics, his love life, his taste in women and his multifaceted career - which most of the reporters present assumed it would be over soon.

Has he ever thought about becoming a doctor or psychiatrist, asked a journalist. "I have not thought of becoming a psychiatrist, but I have often thought of going to one," came the quick reply. Asked about formal musical technique, Elvis quipped, "I don't know anything about music - in my line I don't need to." He admitted to experiencing a bit of stage fright despite the audience's enthusiasm. "It's the waiting part that gets me," he told a reporter. "It's not that bad once I've done the first couple of numbers. But I'm never completely at ease."

Other reporters, while undeniably impressed by Presley, found his charm dangerous. "After seeing Elvis in action the question is not what’s going to happen to the teen-age squealers who undoubtedly will recover their equilibria, but what will become of this Bible-reading, non-smoking, non-drinking boy who is so good to his mother," Angela Burke of the Star mused after the press conference. "For the trouble with Elvis, from this observer’s view, is young Mr. Presley’s complete lack of naiveté. Even the way he handles himself in a press conference, parrying questions sometimes with humor, and sometimes with remarkable innuendo, is a shocker when one considers his age."

Out in the arena, the crowd was silent for half a dozen opening acts. An hour-long show featuring dancer Frankie Trent, singer Pat Kelly, comic Rex Marlowe and Jimmy James' banjo culminated in a chorus of boos for Irish tenor Frankie Connors. Only a solo set up by The Jordanaires, Elvis' backup singers, was well received by the impatient audience.

After a 20-minute break, when the house lights went out and a local DJ announced Elvis' imminent arrival on stage, the crowd roared at deafening volume for 30 seconds straight. "From there on the Gardens, from floor level to the highest tier, became a din of shrieks, whistles, feet-stomping and handclapping, lit by the chain lightning of amateur photographers’ flash bulbs," the Globe and Mail recalled.

But, having broken a guitar string or hitting his eyes with a microphone (versions vary), Presley was even later on stage. When he finally appeared onstage – dressed in the famous Nudie Cohn-designed golden lame suit he had introduced earlier in the tour – the noise prevented anyone from actually hearing Elvis sing. "It was Presley a la pantomime all the way," reported Globe and Mail, "but nobody seemed to mind."

Elvis on stage at Maple Leaf Gardens; April 2, 1957

"Up and down the stage he goes, dragging the mike like a captive, undulating, shouting feverishly," wrote organist Charles Peaker, who attended the concert at the invitation of the Star. "He freezes, the orchestra stops—he glares at the audience like one in a hypnotic trance, then he leaps, gives tongue, and starts to dislocate his golden legs again." Providing the most colourful descriptions of Elvis’ performance carried in the Toronto press, Peaker continued: "Then his face sets, his lips curl back and seizing the mike by the scruff of the neck he prowls up and down the platform, snarling, and driving his worshippers crazy."

Whenever Presley smiled seductively to one section of the audience or stretched out his arm towards another, the affected spectators erupted with ecstatic screams. His guitar was more prop than musical instrument. "At times he even balances on both toes with his knees forward, hips wiggling and chest thrown out," reporter Joe Scanlon recalled. "The position appears physically impossible to hold, but Elvis manages to stay that way for 15 or 20 seconds."

None of the stage movements were choreographed or ever the same from concert to concert, which caused problems for his backup singers. "So we’d be watching," one of The Jordanaires, Gordon Stoker, recalled of this tour in Hopkins’ biography of Elvis, "and we’d be watching so hard we’d blow the part, we’d forget to come in with the ‘ooooowahhhh’ and he’d turn around and give us the lip—you know the way he moves the left side of his mouth in a cocky sneer—of he’d say something like ‘oh yeah?’ or ‘sumbitch.'"

Among those 23,000 who attended Elvis’s Toronto concerts were several local celebrities including TV comedians Wayne and Shuster—who characterized Elvis as "sort of an E.P. Taylor with sideburns"—and Toronto Symphony Orchestra conductor Walter Susskind. "I feel that Mr. Elvis Presley is everything he is reported to be," Susskind summarized. "Unfortunately, I could hardly hear him, so I cannot comment myself further." A contingent from the Toronto Town Jazz Club attended "out of curiosity." "What a horrible experience," club president and jazz critic Dave Caplan complained. "I came to find out what all the noise about Presley is about; and that’s just what it all amounted to—a lot of noise."

Evelyn Dumas, a twenty-something from Saskatchewan working for a Toronto family, was gifted a front row ticket by her employer. Slightly older than the majority of the teenage audience, she nevertheless gave in to girlish exuberance: "Although I was never one to do it—he walked on that stage, pointed his finger, began singing—and I screamed, just as loud as the rest of the girls in the audience that night! I was spellbound."

Elvis performed most of his hits, all except "Blue Suede Shoes". He treated the audience to "Heartbreak Hotel", "Don’t Be Cruel", "Love Me", "Too Much", "That’s When Your Heartaches Begin" and "All Shook Up"—which would be the number one record on the very first CHUM chart on May 27, 1957—as well as some lesser known songs like the not-yet-released "One Night" and "Butterfly", which he never formally recorded.

As raucous as the gathering appeared, members of Elvis’s entourage told Toronto journalists that "the whooping and hollering and shenanigans just didn’t compare to what they had seen in other cities." Just the night before, in Buffalo, a woman had clutched the singer until a blow from a policeman’s club broke him free.

Toronto police try to calm fans down at Maple Leaf Gardens; April 2, 1957

Toronto police, under the command of District Chief George Elliott, took no chance of a repeat, stationing as many as 125 uniformed police officers around the arena to spot trouble before it started. "Whenever a youngster bounced up in his seat a policeman would reach over and plunk him down again," Star‘s Scanlon observed. "This sometimes gave the Gardens the appearance of a large jack-in-the-box but it seemed to have the desired effect." Two young female fans were ejected that night when they rushed the stage. In addition, Globe and Mail noted "a scattering of fainting women."

Surveying the scene from the back of the stage, Elliott, satisfied that the crowd was well-behaved, was seen tapping his foot to the music. "I’m a bit of a Presley fan myself," he later told the press. "They were a good bunch," Elliott said of the audience, which avoided the ugly scenes witnessed elsewhere at Presley performances—like that in Vancouver several months later, when the concert was cut short because the crowd rushed the stage.

The most difficult task of the night for police was clearing the arena after the early concert so that those with tickets for the 9 p.m. show could take their seats.

Fans at Maple Leaf Gardens included people of all ages; April 2, 1957

In between performances Elvis rested backstage, lying down in his dressing room for a period and meeting some lucky fans, including Vanderleck and Harris, whose petitions had led to the concerts in the first place. Meanwhile, clean-up men filled and carried away boxes and boxes of used flashbulbs collected from the arena floor.

The early show proved to be the last time Elvis wore the full gold lamé suit. His performance style, regularly dropping to his knees, had quickly worn down the gold on the front of the pants. Other than that detail, the second show went much the same as the first.

With 15,000 fans now jammed into Maple Leaf Gardens (the largest audience to that point in Elvis’ career) the crowd’s hollering once again drowned out the singer and his musicians. As he neared the end of another hour-long performance, Elvis was drenched in sweat, his hair disshelved. One reporter in attendance likened him to "a kid staggering after a tough basketball game."

He closed the show with "Hound Dog", repeating chorus after chorus a dozen or more times in a growing crescendo. And then, an instant after the last notes were played, he was gone. For his own safety, Elvis never did encores or lingered at the venue. Before the audience could react—still hopeful there’d be a curtain call—he bolted off-stage and into a waiting car. "I’ll bet that guitar hadn’t hit the stage from his hand by the time he was shooting through the door," one Toronto police officer observed. "His fast disappearance made it a lot easier for us."

As hundreds of onlookers began swarming the service entrance on the north side of Maple Leaf Gardens, Elvis was in a taxi, bound for Union Station. Squads of police officers had been dispatched to the King Edward Hotel expecting, like most of Elvis’s fans, that the singer would return there. By the time they all realized he wasn’t coming back, he was already on a train to Ottawa.

Elvis arrives in Ottawa; April 3, 1957

After his show at the Maple Leaf Gardens, Elvis and his 15-man entourage caught the overnight train to Ottawa's Union Station. They arrived in the capital at 8 in the morning and although his means and time of arrival were to have been a secret, some dozen teenagers got wind of it and were at the station waiting for him.

The morning of April 3rd, 1957 was sunny, the temperature 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and Elvis got off the train wearing a black suit, burgundy velvet open-necked shirt, rose-coloured raincoat and smudgy white bucks. Beneath his shiny pompadour, his face looked pale and drawn. He carried a stuffed yellow and brown teddy bear.

The girls in the small crowd screamed when they saw him walking their way across the station floor to a waiting taxi outside. Elvis smiled his crooked smile, gave them a wave, and a quick wiggle of his right leg. Surrounded by Ottawa Police and his entourage, he stopped to sign two autographs before stepping into the back of the taxi which took him to nearby Beacon Arms Hotel to rest up before his two shows that day at the Auditorium. One show which was at 4:30 pm, the other at 8:30 pm. Tickets for both shows were $3.50 each and the shows were sold out.

The vast majority of Ottawa Presley fans were unaware of his whereabouts in the city, and all day swarms of teenagers roamed the corridors and lobbies of the city's hotels searching for him. Also, throughout the day, Presley fans invaded the city by bus, car and train from all parts of Ontario, Quebec and upper New York state. A 10-coach "Presley Special" train carrying 800 fans who paid $11.00 for the round trip arrived from Montreal where Elvis was to have performed that night instead of Ottawa. Montreal City Council banned him from appearing, fearing he would cause a riot, in addition to the moral indignation that his bodily moves and music would generate.

It was not just teenagers who caught the Elvis fever. In a night session of the House of Commons that day only 37 of the 259 members were present, and CCF Whip Stanley Knowles said the missing had all gone to see Elvis. It was different at Notre Dame Convent school; the Mother Superior told the students they were not allowed to attend Presley's concerts, and students were to write their names on the blackboards promising to obey the edict. Many did. Many also disobeyed. Many went to see Elvis with their parents and eight girls from the school were caught and suspended. The parents who had taken their children to see Elvis and the parents of the suspended girls were outraged.

He wore his famous $4,000 gold lame jacket with a black shirt, black pants and white bucks for his two shows. Each show was only 40 minutes long with nine songs, including "Don't Be Cruel", "Hound Dog", "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Love Me Tender". The brevity of the performances was true to the philosophy of his manager Colonel Tom Parker, who roamed back and forth in front of the stage: "Just give 'em a taste; leave 'em begging for more."

Elvis sings, but no one can hear him over the deafening pandemonium. It is total madness, a wall of non-stop screaming. When he drops to his knees, when he touches his ear with his thumb, when he snaps his legs, when he swivels his hips, when he shakes, when he shimmies. When he smiles that crooked smile, it is mass hysteria.

Hysterical fans at the Auditorium; April 3 , 1957 

During his pelvis-thrusting, shoulders-juking rendition of "Hound Dog", three cops charge down the centre aisle tossing fans back into their seats like sacks of potatoes. More than 100 policemen, specially assigned to the Auditorium, guarded the stage and were placed throughout the crowd. Fans were warned that anyone attacking Elvis would be thrown out. It was sheer bedlam with non-stop screaming. 

Reporter Richard Jackson of The Ottawa Journal wrote: "Most of the mob were teenagers. Girls had their thick, white bobby sox and flat-heeled white bucks, full skirts, and loose sweaters. And boys in their jeans, jackets and jack-boots. With each shimmy, the idol's knees further beckoned the floor. The closer they came, the louder the screams, and when he finally rested on the stage floor - thunder! Many in the shrieking crowd wore 75-cent 'I Like Elvis' buttons and carried $1.00 programs."

Under the double byline of Greg Connolley and Gerry Mulligan of The Citizen: "The screams and squeals were so devastating that it was virtually impossible to hear anything that Presley was allegedly singing."

Ottawa Journal reporter Helen Parmalee spoke to a foreign embassy official in the Presley audience who sheepishly told her he was there on assignment "to study Canadian culture." Parmelee wrote: "Some wept, some moaned; some clutched their heads in ecstasy. Every body screamed, stamped, clapped hands, flailed arms; one person got down on all fours and pounded the floor. Elvis 'sent' them. Elvis 'sent' me too — home with a bursting headache. I'm still bewildered. Last night's contortionist exhibition at the Auditorium was the closest to the jungle I'll ever get."

Two teenage girls had started off that morning from Montreal by foot before a businessman picked them up in his car. When they got to Ottawa they were thrown out of the Beacon Arms Hotel for trying to ferret out Elvis. They did not have tickets for his concerts, but they managed to talk a reporter into letting them get through the doors on his press pass. Their obsession for Elvis was topped only by the 10 fans on the Montreal train who quit their full-time jobs so that they could see Elvis.

CFRA radio station disc jockey Gord Atkinson emceed Presley's shows, and later ushered backstage several girls who had won the station's contest to meet their idol. One girl, after meeting him, cried and said she would never again wash her right arm, which Elvis had kissed. Another girl could not stop crying because Elvis had autographed her arm.

Sitting cross-legged on a table in one of the hockey dressing rooms Elvis was asked by reporter James Perdue how long he thought his success would last. Elvis said he thought his moneymaking days were coming to an end, that his popularity probably would not last more than another year, two at the most. He said he wanted to capitalize fast on the rock and roll craze so he could save money for middle-age and a late marriage.

When asked his opinion of the Notre Dame Convent students being banned from his shows he expressed surprise and drawled: "I'd like to invite the principal to my show. Jumpin' and shakin' and dancin' ain't indecent - it don't incite the kids to rob banks or buy a gun."

A reporter asked him if he had ever thought of becoming a doctor or a psychiatrist, and Elvis said: "No sir, I haven't thought of becoming a psychiatrist, but I've often thought of going to one."

Elvis talks to the the press at the Auditorium; April 3, 1957

The King of Rock and Roll made one comment about Ottawa when, to a reporter's question about what he thought of the city, he answered: "Well, sir, I haven't had a chance to see it. I slept all day. The people are real friendly, but it's a little cool outside."

While Presley was holding court inside, police were involved in scuffles with numerous teenage boys attempting to crash their way through the back of the Auditorium to get to see Elvis. Hordes of Presley fans marched boisterously through the downtown city streets, singing his songs and yelling his name. Five of the teenagers were remanded in court for setting off celebratory firecrackers on Sparks Street and in the lobby of the Chateau Laurier Hotel. The Ottawa Police Department's Presley Squad was kept busy long into the night.

All who attended the two concerts will have memories to cherish for a lifetime - they came, they saw, they thrilled to the greatest of them all, the King of Rock 'N' Roll, on that historic day he came to Ottawa.

The hysteria generated by Elvis was so great that, this time, Parker would not let it go unnoticed. He would sign another contract for one more show in Canada.

On August 31, 1957, Elvis, Scotty Moore, Bill Black, D.J. Fontana and The Jordanaires went to Vancouver by train to perform at Empire Stadium. It was the second stop of a tour of the Northwest that had started the day before in Spokane. By this time Elvis had recorded eight No. 1 singles in two years, had made three movies and was about to release 'Jailhouse Rock' as his latest single. Having performed in Toronto and Ottawa in April, this was only the third time they ever performed outside of the U.S. and for Elvis it would be the last.

As in Toronto, Vancouver's first rock-and-roll show had taken place barely a year before, when Bill Haley & His Comets drew 6,000 people to the Kerrisdale Arena. Now Elvis had drawn a crowd over four times larger (25,900) and the stage was set up on the empty football field, but fans wanted to be closer. Thousands bypassed security to find a place in front of the stage on the field. The show had to be stopped twice for safety concerns.

The Colonel suggested to Elvis that he tone down his show, but being a rock 'n' roll rebel, he didn't listen. He did shorten the set, though, and - for safety reasons - he fooled the audience. He gave his gold jacket to a crew member to wear while getting into a car, so fans would think it was him leaving. The fans followed the man in the gold jacket, and Elvis was allowed to calmly leave the stadium unharmed.

Fans bypass security and invade the Empire Stadium; August 31, 1957

20 year old Red Robinson, the DeeJay for CKWX who had emceed the Bill Haley show and emceed Elvis' show said: "That was the first time there was ever a performer in front of 26,000 people in a rented stadium. Sinatra, Crosby, no one ever rented stadiums before him." According to records given to Red by the promoter Hugh Pickett shortly before he died, there were 25,898 paid admissions and at ticket prices of $1.50, $2.50 and $3.50, the gross receipts came to $61,099.86 of which Elvis probably earned $21,936.32.

Red Robinson also said: "With the press conference over, the reporters were ushered out. As Emcee of the show, I remained with Elvis. Let me tell you about an incident that happened while we killed the hour or so remaining until show time. It taught me that, while Elvis was always polite, he also had a wild streak of fun in him. After we’d been chatting for some time, Elvis opened the dressing room door at the stadium and invited one of the policemen outside to come in. He asked to borrow the cop’s handcuffs… then casually handcuffed me to a shower rod. Then he hid the key and laughed wildly at the joke."

Elvis during the press conference at Empire Stadium; August 31, 1957

The crowd was seated in the stadium's stands on either side of the football field, and the stage was set up in the north end zone. It was constructed on the back of two flatbed trucks with a fence put up around it and between the stage and the audience was nearly 100 yards of empty football field with air cadets and police lined up as security. The opening band played for about 45 minutes before Elvis went on. When the music began, more or less drowned out by the screams, the crowd surged past the 'security' onto the field and sat down in front of the stage. Scotty said: "We must have looked like ants to them back where they were sitting. All they wanted to do was to get closer. They didn't care if they had seats or not."

Stadium officials stopped the show and told the crowd it would not continue until they got back off the field. D.J. Fontana remembers how defiant the crowd was. "Stadium officials couldn't budge them," D.J. said, "they tried and they tried, and they wouldn't move, so we finally started the show."

Elvis and local radio contest to meet him winner are driven around the Empire Stadium; August  31, 1957 

The concert had lasted all of 22 minutes. Frightened by the surging fans, Parker told Elvis to cut the show short. When Elvis abruptly left the stage Scotty and the others were left onstage to face the fans alone. Unknown to the audience, Elvis had gone into an alcove aside the stairs behind the curtain, gave his gold jacket to one of his entourage (possibly Gene Smith) who then ran to the car to be whisked away pursued by the fans.

Vancouver Sun photographer Ralph Bower said: "They knocked the fence over and chased him, and that's when he got away. They came like a herd of cattle. I was standing there and they run right over the top of me." Elvis walked across the field to the dressing rooms unnoticed in his black shirt.

D.J. Fontana said: "The kids all ran up there and the platform kind of tilted to one side." By the time they got their instruments loaded into their car, they were surrounded by fans. All they could do was sit and wait it out. "They shook the car a little bit thinking Elvis was in there with us," said D.J., "but finally they let us go. It took about two hours for us to get out. It usually took us about two hours to get out of all the buildings."

Elvis on stage at the Empire Stadium; August 31, 1957

Bower snapped a shot of the crowd just before they trampled him, and the paper ran it on the front page, accompanied by a scathing review by John Kirkwood. "It was like watching a demented army swarm down the hillside to do battle in the plain when those frenzied teenagers stormed the field," Kirkwood wrote. "Elvis and his music played a small part in the dizzy circus. The big show was provided by Vancouver teenagers, transformed into writhing, frenzied idiots of delight by the savage jungle beat music. A hard, bitter core of teenage troublemakers turned Elvis Presley's one-night stand at Empire Stadium into the most disgusting exhibition of mass hysteria and lunacy this city has ever witnessed."

The kids who were at the show, of course, felt differently and they loved Kirkwood's hysterical condemnation of the show. Colonel Parker also enjoyed reading the accounts of the riot the next day. Scotty said: "It really wasn't a riot, the fans were just trying to get closer to the stage to see, that's all."

Red Robinson recalls that at the show they played "Money Honey", "That's When Your Heartaches Begin",  "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock". Red said the "biggest single goof" of his long career was when he went on the radio the day following the show and divulged Elvis' room number: "I went on the air the next day and said, 'Wasn't that wonderful, Elvis stayed at the Hotel Georgia, room 1226'. The kids went up and ripped up the carpet, tore pieces out of the bed. It cost CKWX about $5,000 to repair the room."

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Original articles: Toronto-Ist, Elvis InfoNet, Elvis Australia

Photos: York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections, Toronto Telegram, Elvis InfoNet, A. Andrews, C. Buckman, D. Gall, T. Grant; Andrews-Newton Photographers Fonds (Copyright: City of Ottawa Archives), Elvis Australia e Google

Organization and structuring: EAP Index | http://www.eapindex.com

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