Back in the 1950s, some of the best nights in Memphis weren’t at the movies or the dance halls. They were at Ellis Auditorium, where gospel groups from all over the South came to sing all night long. People called them the all-night sings. The place packed out and folks stayed till the early hours.
One skinny teenager was there just about every time. He sat down front and soaked up every note. Years before the whole world knew his name, Elvis Presley was just a local kid who loved gospel music more than anything.
Up on that stage was J.D. Sumner, a gospel singer famous for one of the lowest bass voices anybody had ever heard. Sumner sang with a group called the Blackwood Brothers, and the Memphis crowds adored him. He noticed the quiet boy who never missed a show.
Then one month, the boy wasn’t there.
Sumner saw the empty spot and wondered about it. When he next ran into young Elvis, he asked him straight out why he’d stopped coming.
In his own words, here’s Sumner telling the story of the boy at the Memphis gospel shows and what he did about it.
J.D. Sumner remembers young Elvis at the Memphis gospel sings
The answer was simple, and a little sad. Elvis couldn’t afford a ticket.
So Sumner made him an offer. Here’s how he told it later: “One month Elvis didn’t attend, because he didn’t have enough money for a ticket… I told him, you come to the stage door and I’ll let you in. You don’t ever have to pay again. After a few years, he was letting me in the back door.”
Read that last line again. The boy Sumner once waved through the stage door grew up to be the most famous entertainer on earth. And when Elvis got there, he didn’t forget the man who’d been kind to him when he had nothing.
From late 1971 right up to his final tour in 1977, Sumner and his group the Stamps stood on stage behind Elvis, singing backup every night. The kindness came full circle.
Here Sumner talks more about those years with Elvis and the Stamps Quartet.
J.D. Sumner on his years with Elvis, 1989 interview
There’s a reason this one stuck with Sumner for the rest of his life. It wasn’t the sold-out tours or the big stages. It was a small thing he did for a poor kid who just wanted to hear the music, long before anyone could have guessed who that kid would become.
The Las Vegas Sun wrote about their friendship back in 1998, and the two men stayed close through all the years in between.
Go listen to Sumner tell it himself. He laughs easy, and you can tell he loved Elvis like family.