Tomorrow marks 70 years since one of the wildest nights of young Elvis’s career.
On Oct 13, 1956, Elvis played two shows at the Sam Houston Coliseum down in Texas. More than 8,000 fans packed in for each one. He was 21 years old and already the most talked-about young man in America.
About 50 lucky fans had won a contest just to meet him. They waited over two hours in his dressing room for the chance.
And when Elvis finally hit the stage, the screaming was so loud that nobody could hear him sing. He opened his mouth for “Heartbreak Hotel,” and the sound simply vanished under the noise, for minutes on end.
There’s no film of that Houston night. But there’s plenty of film of Elvis in 1956, singing the very songs that got drowned out in Texas. Here he is with the song that opened the show.
Elvis performing “Heartbreak Hotel” on 1950s television
And here’s the number that sent crowds like the one in Houston completely over the edge.
Elvis shaking up TV with “Hound Dog”
So picture that room. The noise, the chaos, 8,000 fans losing their minds. Then, after the show, a reporter managed to get close enough to ask 21-year-old Elvis a simple question. How did he explain all of it? The fame, the screaming, the whole thing that had come out of nowhere.
His answer ran in the Houston Post the very next morning, and it was four words long: “I believe in God.”
It had nothing to do with his voice or the hips everybody was so worked up about. He pointed somewhere else entirely, and in four plain words.
Here’s one more performance from that same year, with another of the hits that made him a household name.
Elvis singing “Don’t Be Cruel” on The Ed Sullivan Show
And one last clip, so you can really picture the 21-year-old who gave that four-word answer.
Elvis tearing through “Ready Teddy” in 1956
It’s easy to forget how young he was through all of it. A kid, really, in the eye of a storm nobody had ever seen before. Watch these clips and you’ll hear exactly what those 8,000 Houston fans were screaming over, 70 years ago tomorrow.