In 1956, 21-year-old Elvis Presley was at a major turning point in his career. He’d performed on national television, released his first album and was already filming his first motion picture.
In the midst of rising stardom, Presley returned to his Mississippi hometown of Tupelo to perform two shows at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on September 26, 1956.
Elise Catrion Gregg
Elvis ‘56 celebrates 70 years of the King’s Mississippi homecoming: He ‘put Tupelo on the map’
The homecoming was a legendary part of Presley’s history, with thousands of fans in attendance, Elvis-themed floats at a parade — which the King did not attend for security reasons — teenagers rushing the stage and Presley receiving both the key to the city and a certificate from Mississippi governor J.P. Coleman, who called him “America’s number one entertainer in the world of popular music.”
70 years later, fans continue to remember the performance and the festivities around it as a key moment that put Tupelo on the map. Like Brenda Hildenbrand, who was at Tupelo’s recreation concert on Saturday (Sept. 26), but also at Presley’s original concerts.
“I was a teenager and we were all hollering and carrying on and right there up front and totally enjoyed it,” Hildenbrand said.
She was 15 and had just moved to Tupelo that year, when she says her father opened the city's first social security office.
This year's recreation of the iconic concert got Hildenbrand's seal of approval.
“It's wonderful,” she said. “It's been real heartwarming. I've loved it.”
The recreation performance was led by Nick Perkins, an Elvis Tribute Artist from Hammond, Louisiana.
“I'm excited, I'm a little bit nervous,” Perkins said ahead of the concert — the first recreation the city of Tupelo has done in about 20 years. “It's a huge show, especially in our industry. It's something that's very iconic to recreate and it's something that I'm sure every tribute artist would be honored to get the opportunity to do.”
Perkins is the 2018 champion of the Tupelo Elvis Festival adult competition. For every performance — but this one especially — he does a lot of homework. He studies the moves, the outfit and meticulously-done hair and makeup to look just like the King.
“We're recreating it all the way down to having an exact guitar that Scotty Moore played: the guy who is here playing guitar for us tonight actually has the guitar signed by Scotty Moore,” Perkins said. Moore was Presley’s guitarist during the ‘56 show.
“The bass is a ‘50s bass; everything is authentic to the era.”
Perkins has been doing Elvis tribute performances since he was 14. For him, this performance is especially meaningful, though.
“We are looking at this man who at the time, in ‘56, was 21 years old, who is blowing up into this huge phenomenon,” Perkins said. “Yet he comes back and gives back to his childhood home, his childhood community.
“I feel like Elvis put Tupelo on the map: had that concert not happened, we might not be here having this conversation right now."
That’s because this concert was more than just a homecoming, said Stephanie Hall, director of community outreach at the Elvis Presley Birthplace Museum.
Presley used the proceeds from the two shows he held that day to buy his childhood home, along with land for a children’s park in East Tupelo. Hall said the gesture was remarkable, given some of the struggles Presley had as a child in Tupelo.
“You have to imagine for a minute what it felt like to go from the kid who no one thought would amount to anything, and who was bullied, who was super poor,” said Hall, “To come back here and be met with a parade, the governor is here that reads a proclamation, the mayor gives him a key to the city, and there are mobs of people in attendance.
“I mean, can you just imagine for a second how that felt?”
The land he bought would eventually become the Elvis Birthplace Museum. Now, Hall says they’d like to expand their work to keep Presley’s legacy alive, particularly for local musicians
“This is a place of beginnings,” Hall said. “And we really want to be a place where we can mentor, promote and cast a spotlight on area young musicians in their beginning.”
This year’s concert, held at Fairpark — the very same place Elvis performed in 1956 — was packed, although not as much as the King’s original performance.
People came from all over the country: some for this concert specifically, others in town to explore the museum who just happened to see the it.
Martha Crump, like Brenda Hildenbrand, came to see a recreation of the show she’d been at 70 years ago. She skipped class as a 15-year-old to travel all the way from Birmingham to see Presley.
“We just remember we got here early and we saw his car — a Cadillac — going across the field and the dust flying and all,” the 85-year-old said.
Crump remembers that she and a group of friends stayed overnight, sleeping in one of her friend’s cars in the parking lot of a local Kroger. She would go on to travel to 10 more of Presley’s concerts before his passing.
70 years later, she made that trip from Alabama once again to be back at the very same park with her daughter and husband.
“I couldn't believe when they were having this anniversary that we were here 70 years ago… I can't explain it. It's just special,” she said. “I just knew I had to be here.”
This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.