Roswellite recalls Elvis concert

Fifty years ago on Valentine’s Day, a relatively unknown singer who would eventually earn the love and adoration of millions of fans around the world came to Roswell.

At the then-North Junior High School auditorium — now Pueblo Auditorium — at a concert featuring country music legend Hank Snow, a barely 20-year-old Elvis Presley took the stage as one of the opening acts.

According to Jackie Price, a Roswell woman who attended that show, the man who later became famous for his soulful crooning and good looks was just a kid wracked with stage fright on that chilly February evening. “I didn’t like it,” she said Monday.

“He was so nervous. He was fidgety and he played the guitar too fast.” She said that years later, she read that Elvis admitted to being scared in those early days.

“And I can believe that,” she said. Price, who attended that concert with her then-14-year-old daughter Johnnie, was also irritated by something the future King of rock ’n’ roll told the audience.

“When he came on the stage, he said ‘I’m glad to be here, but we tell everybody that,’” Price said. “That didn’t sit too well with me.”

Price, who was 32 at the time, said she and her daughter had heard of Elvis but had gone to the concert primarily to see Hank Snow, whom they both admired. According to Price, Snow was an experienced performer who had composure on stage, and as expected he put on an excellent show that night.

“He did a great job,” Price said. Presley also became famous later on for driving his mostly female audiences into a hysterical frenzy, but again, according to Price, that was not the case in Roswell in 1955. “There wasn’t any screaming at all,” she said.

“There was no scrambling for seats or anything.”

Although her introduction to Presley and his music that night didn’t go over well, a year later Price and her daughter were devoted fans like so many others. In 1956, Johnnie began buying Presley’s records, which were becoming increasingly popular, and the difference between them and the Roswell show was astounding, Price said.

“He had calmed down,” she said. “His voice was so heavenly. He sang his songs slowly.”

(News, Source: Roswell Daily Record, 14 Feb 2005)