The man at the microphone could feel the crowd slipping away from him.
It was December 15, 1956, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Thousands of teenagers had packed a big hall on the state fairgrounds, and almost every one of them had come for the same reason: Elvis Presley was back.
The man was Horace Logan. He ran the Louisiana Hayride, a Saturday night country music show that went out across the South on a powerful radio station called KWKH.
Logan’s show had given Elvis an early break. On October 16, 1954, a nervous 19-year-old with a guitar walked onto the Hayride stage, and before long Elvis was a regular, earning $18 a night.
By 1956, that kid was the biggest star in America. His manager, Colonel Tom Parker, paid the Hayride $10,000 to get Elvis out of his contract early, but the deal came with a catch. Elvis had to come back for one last show.
This was that show. According to the Shreveport Times, the money went to the local YMCA and Elvis played it for free.
Hank Williams Jr. walks through the history of the Hayride and the stars it launched in this documentary.
Cradle of the Stars: The Story of the Louisiana Hayride
On that December night, Elvis didn’t close the show. He went on in the middle of the lineup, with other acts still waiting to play after him.
The screaming was so loud you could barely hear the band, and he tore through his hits for about half an hour before walking off.
Then the kids started getting up to leave. Whole crowds of them headed for the doors with the night only half over.
Logan grabbed the microphone. He had to get them back in their seats, and fast, so he told them the truth over and over in words that would follow Elvis for the rest of his life.
The radio was rolling at the time, so his announcement ended up on tape. Give it a listen.
Elvis Has Left the Building, 1956
Logan had no idea he’d just handed the world a catchphrase.
The man who made the line famous was Al Dvorin, a Chicago bandleader and talent agent who worked with Colonel Parker and became the announcer at Elvis’s concerts. People often give Dvorin credit for inventing the phrase, but Logan got there first. Dvorin just said it more than anybody else.
By the 1970s, Elvis was playing huge arenas, and fans would stay put after the last song, hoping for one more. So Dvorin would step up and tell them it was over. You can hear him at the end of Elvis’s 1972 album recorded live at Madison Square Garden in New York: “Elvis has left the building. Thank you and good night.”
Over the years, people started saying it about anything that had ended, from ball games to office parties.
The clip below shows how an Elvis show wrapped up on his final tour in 1977.
Elvis Leaving the Stage, 1977 Last Show
Dvorin was on that tour too. After Elvis died, he kept saying the line for years at tribute shows around the country.
In August 2004, he said it one more time at an Elvis tribute concert in California. The next day, on the long drive home through the desert toward Las Vegas, the car he was riding in swerved off the road and Dvorin was killed. He was 81.