Elvis Played the Louisiana Hayride 72 Years Ago Today, and You Can Still Walk Across That Shreveport Stage

On Oct. 16, 1954, a young singer from Memphis walked onto the stage of the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport for his first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride. Elvis Presley had already been turned away by the Grand Ole Opry. Seventy-two years later, the building where Shreveport gave him a weekly radio audience is still standing at 705 Elvis Presley Avenue, and you can still walk across that stage.

The Hayride started more than six years before Elvis got there. It went on the air on April 3, 1948, a Saturday night barn dance broadcast from the auditorium by KWKH, a 50,000-watt station whose signal, according to the 64 Parishes encyclopedia entry by historian Tracey E.W. Laird, could be heard as far north as Chicago and as far west as Los Angeles. The show grew from there. By February 1950 it had its own network of 27 stations across four states. In 1953 CBS radio began carrying a 30-minute segment every third Saturday on more than 200 stations, and in June 1954 the Armed Forces Radio Services began airing a weekly segment overseas.

The building itself was older still. Designed by Shreveport architect Samuel Wiener, the Art Deco auditorium was dedicated to the soldiers of the First World War on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1929, according to the auditorium's own history. The venue's history calls it the finest example of Art Deco construction in Louisiana.

Laird ranks the Hayride second in significance only to the Opry, with one important difference. The Opry was a gatekeeper for established stars, while newer artists looked to Shreveport as the place to start. Hank Williams was the first in a long line of performers who built a following on the Hayride and then moved to Nashville, and the pattern held so steadily that the show became known as the "Cradle of the Stars." Slim Whitman, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, George Jones and Johnny Horton all came through. Several local factors helped. Television was late arriving in the Shreveport market, which kept the live crowd large, and Barksdale Air Force Base kept the clubs of the Bossier strip busy enough to support the working musicians who played the Saturday broadcast.

Elvis signed on to play every Saturday night for $18 a show, according to the auditorium. He stayed about a year and a half. The show also trained younger local musicians, Laird notes, among them James Burton, D.J. Fontana and Jerry Kennedy. Hayride engineer Bob Sullivan once summed up the place by saying, "That show wasn't produced, it just happened."

Elvis's last Hayride appearance, on Dec. 15, 1956, was expected to draw more fans than the auditorium could handle, so the show moved to the larger Hirsch Memorial Coliseum on the state fairgrounds. About 9,000 people turned out, the Shreveport Times has reported, and police officers dressed as Elvis to distract the fans waiting outside while he was driven to another entrance. According to Shreveport historian Eric Brock, as the Times reported, the night ended with producer Horace Logan announcing that Elvis had left the building. Logan is credited with coining the phrase, and when he died in 2002, The New York Times obituary led with it.

The Hayride did not last long after Elvis. Laird writes that some blamed the change in its audience during his run, as screaming young fans crowded out the older listeners who had filled the seats in the early years. Others pointed to television, or to Shreveport leaders who were slow to see what they had. The weekly broadcasts ended in 1960, the same year Johnny Horton, the show's last major star, was killed in a car crash. Irregular shows went on through the 1960s, and the name was revived for a time in the 1970s.

The auditorium outlasted all of it. In 2008 the Interior Department named it a National Historic Landmark, citing the Hayride's role as country music's most innovative and experimental radio show and a proving ground for talent the Opry later lured away. It still books concerts and comedy shows, and it offers one-hour music history tours that invite visitors to walk in the footsteps of music legends, for $20 a person. Public tours are listed on the venue's calendar and carry a $160 minimum to reserve, and groups of eight or more can book a private tour by appointment at 318-841-4000.

The building's story is bigger than country music. The auditorium notes that Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Bobby "Blue" Bland and B.B. King all played there, and its tour page counts Jimi Hendrix among the performers who have stood on the same boards as Elvis.

Photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.