In the fall of 1954, Elvis Presley was 19 and just getting started. That fall, his road led to Shreveport, Louisiana. Every Saturday night, a radio show called the “Louisiana Hayride” went out over station KWKH. Elvis played it for the first time on Oct 16, 1954.
You can hear the show’s announcer bringing the young singer on that very first night, three weeks before the moment this story is about.
Elvis’s first night on the “Louisiana Hayride,” 1954
The “Hayride” had sponsors, and sometimes the performers sang a little ad for one of them, live on the air.
One of those sponsors was Southern Maid Donuts.
The company was started by J.B. and Rosalea Hargrove in 1937. Bruce Jones opened the Shreveport shop in 1941, and his family still runs it today on Hearne Avenue. His grandson, Mike Jones, owns the shop now, and he knows exactly how the radio deal came about.
“Grandaddy bought the sponsorship on the ‘Hayride,'” Mike told the Southern Foodways Alliance.
Somebody wrote a short jingle for the shop. Other “Hayride” stars sang Southern Maid jingles too, among them Minnie Pearl, Johnny Horton and Johnny Cash.
Then, 72 years ago this week, on Saturday night, Nov 6, 1954, it was Elvis’s turn.
He stepped up to the microphone and sang the Southern Maid jingle live on the radio. The words told listeners they could get their doughnuts piping hot after 4 p.m. The Southern Foodways Alliance calls it “the only commercial endorsement of his career,” and it’s said to be the only ad Elvis ever did.
So what does a future superstar get paid for his one and only ad?
The story in Shreveport is that he was paid in doughnuts.
Southern Maid gave him a box of them for singing it. One Shreveport radio station tells the local version as “a dozen of fresh glazed donuts,” and calls it local lore. Either way, Elvis went home with something sweet instead of a paycheck.
There’s one sad bit of news for fans. No recording of Elvis singing the jingle is known to survive. The Johnny Cash version still exists, but Elvis’s seems to have gone out over the air that night and disappeared. Mike Jones doesn’t believe it survives either.
This short video from the writer behind the Rock ‘n’ Roll Unravelled history site walks through what’s known about what’s said to be Elvis’s only ad.
The story of Elvis’s only ad, explained
It’s easy to look back now and think somebody at Southern Maid planned the whole thing, signing up a kid who’d become the biggest star in the world.
Mike Jones doesn’t see it that way. “A lot of people think there was a brilliant plan, execution, strategy,” he said, as quoted by Tasting Table.
The truth was simpler. His grandfather bought some radio time. A young singer from Memphis just happened to be the one handed the jingle that night.
As Mike put it to Tasting Table, “It was pure happenstance, like most things are.”