(Credits: Far Out / MGM)
Thu 25 December 2025 2:00, UK
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in different households when Elvis Presley performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.
If you haven’t seen the performance I’m talking about, go watch it, you won’t believe how controversial the whole thing was, and while today’s standards, the whole thing looks positively tame, Elvis moves around a lot and certainly injects some energy into the performance (nothing comes across as vulgar or offensive), you have to keep in mind, though, that this was a very different time.
The movement that Elvis was doing, for many, was considered far too sexual. Onlookers thought that ‘The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s antics didn’t deserve a place on the TV, as they called him vulgar. It wasn’t just conservative households across the States who were shocked and disappointed, either, as other musicians made their disdain towards Elvis known.
Frank Sinatra wasn’t shy in making it clear how much he hated Elvis’s music and movement. He said: “His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac… It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people.”
While a lot of people were upset, they were outnumbered by those who loved the performance. Elvis became, arguably, the world’s first rock star, as his voice and stage theatrics were considered so beautiful and captivating that audiences around the world grew to love him. Despite hardly touring outside of Las Vegas, tickets to an Elvis Presley show became some of the hottest tickets around. It’s hard to imagine that someone who made such a legacy on the foundation of live performing could ever have a bad gig, but that’s what happened when he played the Grand Ole Opry.
We should give Elvis the benefit of the doubt here, as the show took place long before he became a household name. In fact, he barely even had any music out in the world. He was working as a delivery driver for Crown Electric Company when he was invited to record some songs at Sun Studio alongside musical counterparts Scotty Moore and Bill Black. The first song they released together was ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, and while it didn’t do much, it was enough to get them a spot at the Grand Ole Opry.
Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. (Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
The gig happened on October 2nd, 1954, as Elvis was set to take to the stage that had already been graced by so many greats. It couldn’t have started any worse, as Hank Snow, who was hosting the segment, forgot Elvis’s name. He was welcomed onto the stage with a slow round of applause as Snow introduced “a young man from Memphis”.
Already a professional and knowing that the show must go on, Elvis still took to the bright lights and performed ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, but his performance was to relative silence. Elvis, Moore and Black had made up their own rendition of the track, which relied heavily on a rockabilly style. It was different, and different in this instance meant pretty unwelcome.
“The crowd was polite,” recalled Moore. “They didn’t roll in the aisles or anything like that because this was something new to them.”
The real controversy comes when discussing what then happened backstage. According to Elvis, Jim Denny (a manager who had helped land him the gig) told him that he should give up music and stick to driving a delivery truck. It seems that nobody else was around to hear this, but Black recalls Elvis recounting the events to him immediately afterwards, and doesn’t see what benefit Elvis had by lying.
“Now the story that everybody’s heard so much of about Bill Denny saying to Elvis, ‘You oughta keep your truck driving job,’ or something like that,” said Black. “I don’t know because I wasn’t there. But [Elvis] told me about it, told me and Bill about it after it was said.”
These events are contested as Sam Philips, Elvis’s DJ and producer, claimed that Denny was pretty supportive. Whatever was said backstage, the fact remains, one of the biggest and most iconic performances of Elvis’s early career went horribly. It would be enough to put a lot of people off making music anymore. Luckily, Elvis wasn’t like most people.
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