Fifty years ago this month, Elvis came to Dayton, Ohio, and the whole town seemed to lose its mind. Tickets for his October 26, 1976 show at the University of Dayton Arena went on sale at 7 in the morning on October 1. Some fans had already been waiting in line for about 36 hours. By 10 a.m. nearly half the arena was gone.
That night 13,750 people packed the place. When the big “2001” theme music started up, every one of them stood.
Then came the part nobody there ever forgot.
During “Teddy Bear,” a woman named Carol Geisel from nearby Kettering made her way up to the stage. Elvis wiped his face with one of his scarves and handed it down to her. But another woman grabbed the other end. The two of them held on tight, and in the middle of all that tugging, the scarf got cut in half.
The scarf came out during “Teddy Bear,” so start with the song that set the whole thing off.
Elvis sings “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”
Here’s the funny thing. The two newspapers that wrote about that night don’t quite agree on how the scarf got split. Elvis Australia says a third woman jumped into the tug-of-war and somebody cut it. The Dayton Daily News says two women pulled on it for about two whole minutes until a husband reached into his pocket, took out a knife and sliced it clean in two.
Either way, poor Carol was left holding half a scarf.
And that’s where Elvis did the thing people still talk about. He waved Carol down to the end of the stage and handed her a brand-new scarf, all her own this time. Her husband Jerry held onto that scarf, and 30 years later he still had it.
There was one more surprise that night. It was cold outside, so Elvis asked the crowd if they’d mind him singing a Christmas song in October. Then he went into “Blue Christmas,” something he almost never pulled out on a fall tour.
Want to hear the song he surprised a Dayton crowd with, months before Christmas? Give it a listen.
Elvis sings “Blue Christmas”
People who were in that arena still describe it like it happened yesterday. The lines, the half a scarf, the kind thing he did for one heartbroken fan and a Christmas carol in the middle of autumn.
It was the kind of night that turns a regular concert into a story you tell your grandkids. And a lot of folks in Dayton have been telling it ever since.