Elvis Has Left the Building: The Hayride Years

On October sixteenth, nineteen fifty-four, a nineteen-year-old from Memphis named Elvis Presley walked out onto this stage for the first time. He had recorded his first single for Sun Records that summer, a two-sided record with That's All Right on one side and Blue Moon of Kentucky on the other. KWKH disc jockeys had played it and received an extraordinary amount of listener mail.

The Louisiana Hayride brought him to Shreveport to find out if he could hold a live audience. His first set drew a muted response. The crowd was polite but not electrified.

Then he came back out for a second set and something changed. Horace Logan, the emcee, would later describe what happened as an eruption. The audience came to their feet.

By the time the evening ended, the Hayride had signed Presley to a one-year contract for Saturday-night appearances. Those fifty-two Saturdays in Shreveport, broadcast on a regional radio network, made Elvis Presley a regional phenomenon before he was a national one. He was still playing this stage when RCA Victor bought his Sun Records contract in November of nineteen fifty-five and the larger machine began to take over.

His last Hayride appearance was in December of nineteen fifty-six. When the show ended and the crowd refused to leave, emcee Horace Logan stepped to the microphone and said: Elvis has left the building. He meant it practically, the young man had already gone out the back door.

But the phrase outlived the building, the broadcast, and almost everyone in the room that night. The auditorium is a National Historic Landmark today.