On June 16, 1956, Elvis Presley walked into a Memphis television studio looking surprisingly relaxed.
Only 11 days earlier, his performance of “Hound Dog” on The Milton Berle Show had caused a national uproar over the way he moved onstage.
Now Elvis was back home.
He appeared on WHBQ-TV’s local Dance Party program, hosted by Wink Martindale, giving Memphis viewers a rare look at the 21-year-old star right in the middle of the year that changed his life. CBS later identified the program as Teenage Dance Party, while surviving listings also call it Top Ten Dance Party.
This was not another wild national performance.
It was mostly an interview.
Elvis leaned casually against a jukebox, chewing gum while Martindale asked him about his records, his sudden fame and how everything had started.
There was another important Memphis figure there too.
Dewey Phillips, the DJ who had first played Elvis’s “That’s All Right” on WHBQ radio in 1954, joined part of the appearance. Phillips had been one of the earliest broadcasters to recognize that something unusual was happening around the young singer from Sun Records.
Elvis Presley on Wink Martindale’s Dance Party, June 16, 1956
The surviving footage captures Wink Martindale interviewing Elvis and Dewey Phillips at WHBQ-TV in Memphis.
Elvis had another reason for appearing.
He was helping promote his upcoming July 4 concert at Russwood Park in Memphis, a hometown benefit appearance that would become another memorable moment from his breakthrough year. Wink later remembered this June 16 appearance as the first of two television interviews he conducted with Elvis.
The timing makes the footage especially fascinating.
By June 1956, Elvis had already appeared repeatedly on the Dorsey brothers’ Stage Show, performed twice with Milton Berle and scored a No. 1 hit with “Heartbreak Hotel.”
But his first Ed Sullivan Show appearance was still almost three months away.
So this Memphis interview catches Elvis in a narrow window: already famous enough to cause national controversy, but not yet at the absolute peak of Elvismania.
Wink Martindale would later become one of America’s best-known game-show hosts, but he and Elvis remained friendly for years. Martindale even recalled seeing Elvis backstage in Las Vegas in 1976, more than two decades after their early Memphis broadcasting days.
That is what makes the June 16 footage worth watching today.
America was beginning to argue about Elvis Presley. Memphis was simply watching one of its own become the biggest young star in the country.