Elvis and the Press: St Paul, Minnesota, April 1977

In this episode we’re looking at a particular Elvis show from April 1977, as part of a wider discussion about how Elvis’ live performances at that time were being reviewed in the press. This is a companion to our recent written Q & A with Francesc Lopez, pioneering webmaster of elvisconcerts.com.

Our leading contributor, Gary Wells, joins us to take a close look at Elvis’ concert at the St Paul (MN) Civic Centre on April 30th, 1977, which was the subject of a devastating review in the St Paul Pioneer Press, by a very well regarded sports reporter named Charley Hallman. Many claims in the article are open to question, and it’s an interesting chapter in the saga of Elvis and Colonel Parker’s relationship, or deliberate lack thereof, with local press while on tour; there was no special access granted, no backstage hospitality, and Elvis was not made available for interviews. As the Baltimore Sun later noted, “The media have to buy tickets if they want to review him or take his picture, he doesn’t need them.”

In a pre-internet and social media age, with no other available context or information, these reviews tended to be taken at face value, many have been quoted as authoritative sources in subsequent biographies and have, as a result, become the definitive account. Peter Guralnick’s Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, while a fine, impeccably researched bio, is arguably a classic case in point. Fortunately for us, this show, like many others, was recorded from within the audience and subsequently bootlegged, and these are now widely available online, so we can make up our own minds.

Gary gives us his thoughts on the show based on the available audio, and we then look in detail at the Pioneer Press review. We also examine some other unwelcome publicity surrounding Elvis and the Colonel around this time, and consider whether or not it was Colonel Parker’s own policy of keeping the press at arm’s length that left them open to misrepresentation and misunderstanding, accidental or otherwise.

We’re delighted that supremely talented voiceover artist, Alistair McMillan, has joined us to read some of the background information.

In our post-credits segment right at the end, we revisit our earlier episode, From Memphis to Vegas: A Vintage Leisure Tour, in which Gary takes us on an audio journey to some of the important cultural sites in Memphis. In this clip, we recall Gary’s visit to 1034 Audubon Drive (the Presley family’s first home in Memphis), and to Sun Records.

Companion Newsletter

The St Paul Civic Centre under construction.

Like many shows throughout the seventies, Elvis’ St Paul concert was recorded from within the audience and bootlegged. Others were recorded in studio quality from the soundboard, the tapes of which also found their way to bootleggers. This (audio only) recording is of reasonable quality, however the listening experience is improved by using headphones. As far as we can tell, the recording is reasonably complete, with just the latter part of the band introductions missing.

In our interview with Francesc Lopez, he made a key point, “I always thought that Elvis, or the Elvis organisation, alienated the reporters by not offering interviews or complimentary tickets.” This lack of press access certainly did create some resentment within local media, as can be detected in the tone, and accuracy, of some of the commentary. It also left open the opportunity for misrepresentation.

Elvis’ performance in St Paul was towards the end of 13 day tour, the third road tour for the year. The schedule had eased just a little by this point, with just one show per day and no weekend matinees. There is an interesting mix of venues, as can be noted from the tour itinerary. Elvis was wearing two jumpsuit styles only, the Arabian, and the more frequently chosen Sundial.

The ‘1974 Arabian’ style suit was worn for five of the 13 shows during this tour, then just once more, on June 18th, in Kansas City, MO.

Tour itinerary screenshot from the database at elvisconcerts.com

Elvis was suffering from a cold for the St Paul performance, he mentions this with his usual self-deprecating humour during the band introductions. For some additional context and comparison in relation to Elvis’ performances during the tour, you can find an audience recording of Elvis’ April 25th show at Wendler Arena, Saginaw, Michigan, here. He was clearly feeling much better that night, and it is probably a better indication of what he was still capable of, even at this late stage.

Here is the complete review of the St Paul show, by sportswriter Charley Hallman, in the St Paul Pioneer Press, from May 2nd, 1977, thanks to elvisconcerts.com.

HEADLINE: Nasal Drip Cut Short the Hips

Elvis Presley cut short his appearance before 17000 spectators at the St. Paul Civic Center Saturday night because of a bad cold. Ray Crump, equipment manager of the Minnesota Twins and a friend of Presley’s said the entertainer “apparently picked up a cold” after jogging around Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis Saturday afternoon.

Crump, who spent most of Saturday with Presley, said Elvis has dropped “a lot of weight, probably about 40 pounds” in the last two months. He has lost most of the weight through jogging and a heavy exercise program, Crump said. Elvis dedicated his Saturday night concert to Crump’s boss Calvin Griffith and the Minnesota Twins baseball team. “It was a nice thing for him to do,” said Griffith after Sunday’s 6-5 Twins victory over the Detroit Tigers. “Maybe it had something to do with our winning today,” Griffith said. The Twins president and many members of his organization attended Saturday night’s concert.

“That was probably the worst concert Elvis has done in a year”, said Crump. “Not that many of us noticed, but he has been averaging an hour and a half in most of his shows on this tour.” Several times during Presley’s appearance, the singer had to stop for a drink of water and an assistant, Charlie Hodge, stood by with a box of Kleenex for Presley to use, which he did on at least two occasions. Presley even joked about it during the concert. “It’s difficult to sing a love ballad with your nose running”, Presley told the audience.

Presley’s early cut-off of the music stunned many of the concertgoers. There was no applause nor was there an encore at the end of the show. The swivel-hipped rock singer, now 42, has weighed as much as 250 pounds recently, but he is now apparently down near 200. Several times during his concert appearance Saturday he had to re-hitch his belt after his loose hanging trousers appeared to slip down over his hips.

So, assuming that there might be one or two raised eyebrows over the some of the claims in Charley Hallman’s review, it’s interesting to have a look at some of Mr Hallman’s own background, and also the pivotal figure of the remarkably well-informed Mr Ray Crump, from whom much, if not all, of the review’s detail seems to have come.

Charley Hallman was a highly regarded sports writer, who passed away in 2015. This is his obituary in the Star Tribune, and it’s interesting to note that his concert review rated a mention;

Charley Hallman, a sportswriter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press for more than a
quarter-century, has died. Hallman, whose tenure with the newspaper spanned from 1970 to 1997, died of cancer Thursday at an assisted-living center in Hopkins, his former employer reported Saturday night. He was 71.

Along with spending much of his career covering the NHL’s North Stars and the
Minnesota Gophers hockey teams, Hallman routinely made it to Indiana to report on the Indy 500.

The Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse worked with Hallman at the St. Paul newspaper for 18 years and said Hallman was a “fantastically productive and dedicated newspaperman” who was a character without peer. “He was the No. 1 character who I’ve worked with in 47 years of Twin Cities sports writing, but there was more: He also could crank out more copy faster than anyone,” Reusse said Saturday night.

Hallman joined the Pioneer Press on Feb. 1, 1970, from the Associated Press, and it was obvious that Hallman’s time reporting for the wire service served him well on deadline. “When Charley was on the road with Gophers hockey, to Houghton and Grand Forks and Duluth, the fastest way to get his game story back was with dictation,” Reusse recalled. “I would be on the copy desk on weekend nights, and … he would call in his game story, 16 to 18 paragraphs, without a pause, unless I asked for it — a totally coherent gamer completely off the top of his head.”

Hallman also moonlighted in the music industry, joining with record-store manager Peter Jesperson and producer/engineer Paul Stark in January 1978 to found Twin/Tone Records. The label introduced the Suburbs, the Replacements, Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks and others to the public.

In 1977, he reviewed an Elvis Presley concert for the Pioneer Press, noting that
the King cut short the show before a packed house at the St. Paul Civic Center
because of a “bad cold.” Presley died three months later from something other
than the sniffles. Between breaks for a tissue, Presley dedicated the show to Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith, Hallman’s brief review noted.

As we discuss in the podcast, the claims in Charley Hallman’s review don’t stack up. The bootleg recording shows that Elvis was onstage for around the usual length of time for this period, one hour give or take, and that there was a loud and responsive audience. There was always a sense of disappointment at the end of the show, because most fans knew that Can’t Help Falling in Love was the closing song. Elvis never stayed for an encore, and was always in the limousine and on the way to his hotel or the airport even before the band finished playing.

We know from many sources that Elvis travelled in a completely separate unit, isolated from his band and road crew, living from plane-to-hotel-to-arena and back again. He was obsessive about climate control and had aluminium foil taped onto his hotel room windows to keep out the daylight. As for Mr Crump’s claims of jogging around Lake Nokomis with Elvis, and his apparent insider’s knowledge of the tour, it seems highly unlikely to say the least, and begs the question why such a well-regarded journalist would have given it so much uncritical emphasis. Perhaps it was a combination of no press access to the show, and a tight deadline.

Ray Crump was the equipment manager for the Minnesota Twins (baseball) team, and was also described by Charley Hallman as a ‘friend of Presley’s’.

According to an article on the Fox Sports website in 2014, Mr Crump went on to run a museum of baseball memorabilia and souvenir store, and described his hobby as ‘meeting entertainers’.

“…As visitors walk around to the other side of the modest museum, they’re instantly bombarded by Crump’s personal Wall of Fame. The wood-panelled wall is filled with row after row after row of a smiling Crump alongside some of the biggest celebrities and entertainers of the past 50 years: Jimmy Buffett, Frank Sinatra, Dolly Parton, and, yes, the Beatles.…Crump’s encounter with the Beatles came about when the Fab Four played their only concert in Minnesota at Metropolitan Stadium in 1965…Instead of hanging out in a hotel surrounded by ravenous fans, the Beatles spent their time before the show in one of the Met’s clubhouses…Keeping them company was none other than Crump, who posed for photos with each member as they shot the breeze for nearly eight hours…”

The article also contained an interesting and cautionary note from Mr Crump’s son;

“…My dad’s the kind of guy that you can’t discount everything he says, but you also can’t believe everything, either…”

Having said that, Ray Crump’s claim about the Beatles appears to be true, and this is covered in a 2015 article in USA today, including an interview with Mr Crump himself.

Ray Crump passed away in 2017, aged 81.

So, with no press access or other context, perhaps it’s now a little easier to understand how, without the benefit of hindsight or of any first-hand information, Charley Hallman might have considered Ray Crump a sufficiently credible source for a hastily compiled review.

(If anyone has any direct knowledge of Ray Crump’s ‘friendship’ with Elvis and the Memphis Mafia, or of Elvis’ visit to St Paul, please do comment below or contact us. We’ll add any additional information or context to the post for the sake of accuracy and completeness.)

There are several common themes of negativity across many of the press reviews in the latter part of Elvis’ career, most of which don’t even touch on the quality of Elvis’ performance; the lengthy pre-programme and intermission, the fact that (warm-up comedian) Jackie Kahane told the same jokes as last time they were in town, and the relentless hawking of merchandise, the Elvis ‘super souvenirs’. Martha Groves, in the Chicago Daily News, summed it up succinctly in her review following Elvis’ shows in Chicago right after St Paul;

“…Elvis Presley inflicted two hours of Las Vegas and intermission pain on his Sunday night audience in the Stadium, then spent an hour licking the wounds...”

Towards the end of the podcast episode, we play an edited clip from part three of our series on Aloha From Hawaii with Gary, in which we discuss the question of whether the general narrative created by the overall press coverage was fair. It appears that the answer we came up with between us, was ‘yes and no’.

Something that might have been preying on Elvis’ mind that night in St Paul was some unwelcome and no doubt surprising news received the day before, when he was playing in Duluth. He discovered that he was possibly up for sale.

The Nashville Banner, citing ‘authoritative sources’ in Nashville, Memphis and Los Angeles, claimed that Colonel Parker had decided to sell Elvis’ contract for ‘health and financial’ reasons. The story claimed that Parker needed a fast million dollars to replace money lost gambling at the Las Vegas Hilton in December 1976, when Elvis was playing what would prove to be his final Hilton residency.

Elvis biographer, Peter Guralnick, (Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley) points out that the paper’s alleged sources were anonymous, and that the article contained factual inaccuracies, including the incorrect assertion that Elvis’ Las Vegas Hilton contract had expired, leading to the reporter’s conclusion that Parker would no longer be able to trade Elvis’ services to pay off his debts, hence the sale. In reality, Elvis was booked to play his most significant engagement in Vegas since 1969 – the grand opening of the new 5 000 seat Hilton Pavilion showroom, scheduled for October, 1977.

Colonel Parker was already in St Paul, and spoke to rival Nashville paper, The Nashville Tennessean, describing the Banner’s story as a ‘complete fabrication’, “I’m here, I’m working with Elvis, I’m in good health, and I don’t have any debts – at least none that I can’t pay.”

Joe Esposito also weighed in, describing the relationship between Elvis and
Colonel Parker as ‘cordial’ and stating that neither had any plans to break their
long-standing agreement that had begun with a handshake. The ‘consortium of West Coast businessmen’ who were the alleged buyers never materialised, if they ever existed at all.

Having said this, Peter Guralnick concluded;

“… but it was apparent to anyone who knew anything about the recent history of
their tangled relationship that the story was, in essence, true. Too many people had heard Colonel complaining that Elvis was more trouble than he was worth, that he was intractable and could no longer be effectively managed. And too many people were aware, as Elvis’ Los Angeles lawyer Ed Hookstratten was inclined to put it, that Colonel was “servicing a problem of his own.” Elvis had no doubt about the story in any case: he knew in his bones it was true. And while the consortium of ‘West Coast businessmen’ who were supposed to be buying his contract never surfaced, driven off presumably by the glare of publicity, Elvis had never felt more betrayed or more alone…”

In our above-mentioned Aloha Part III episode, we also discussed some of the evolving financial arrangements between Elvis, Colonel Parker and RCA, and how that impacted the final few years of Elvis’ professional life, and his general health and wellbeing.

Although it is not directly relevant to Elvis and his contract, there was an interesting saga surrounding an ill-fated business venture, Presley Center Courts, from 1976. Whether or not some lingering worries and legal issues compounded Elvis’ feelings of isolation over the ‘for sale’ rumours, in light of the Colonel’s attitude to the Center Courts debacle, I guess we can only speculate.

The plan was for a nationwide chain of branded, upmarket racquetball and spa
facilities for which Elvis would lend his name and in return receive 25 per cent of the company. Elvis was assured it was a risk-free commitment and a good long term prospect, requiring no cash investment on his part. Elvis might have seen this as a way to forge some business and financial independence from Colonel Parker. The driving force behind the project was a local Memphis property developer and businessman, Mike McMahon, along with Elvis’ personal physician, Dr Nichopoulos, and Joe Esposito.

Peter Guralnick wrote;

“…They had broken ground on the Memphis and Nashville clubs in the middle
of April (1976) …but then things started to go wrong, as McMahon claimed that
Elvis had to put up money for a buyout of the leases on the two buildings
currently under construction, and when Elvis balked, informed him that by
becoming 25 percent owner of the corporation, he was liable for 25 percent of
its debts…”

Elvis then discovered that McMahon had been taking a salary and was funding
a company car from the business account, despite assurances from Nichopoulos
that no one would be taking anything out until the business showed a profit.
Elvis appealed to Colonel Parker for help, but Parker reminded Elvis that he had
been against the whole affair from the start, that a 25 percent stake in a company at no cost had always been too good to be true, and that it was too late for any kind of intervention.

Elvis took matters into his own hands. In a late night and not entirely coherent
phone call to McMahon, with whom the relationship had to this point been cordial, Elvis let him have it, and even allegedly threatened to kill him. Nichopoulos mediated, telling McMahon not to worry and that irrational rage was a side effect of Elvis’ medication regime, and that Elvis would soon calm down. Nichopoulos wasn’t spared, himself the subject of a midnight call during which Elvis fired him and robustly expressed his disappointment at being taken advantage of.

Through his lawyers, Elvis subsequently withdrew his support for Presley’s Center Courts and instructed that his name be removed from the project. Following some legal manoeuvres, it appears that Elvis did pay some compensation to the racquetball company and loaned them around 40 000 dollars on top of 25 000 dollars damages, and the business continued without Elvis’ name until it folded in 1981. (The loan was apparently repaid promptly). Nichopoulos was soon forgiven, as was Joe Esposito. The following year Elvis loaned a further 55 000 dollars to Nichopoulos, on top of an existing loan of 200 000 dollars, as the doctor was struggling with debt over a lavish new home. (As if Nichopoulos wasn’t ethically compromised enough already).

According to the New York Times;

“…In 1980 Dr. Nichopoulos was indicted on 14 counts of overprescribing stimulants, depressants and painkillers for Presley, the singer Jerry Lee Lewis and several other patients. Two counts dealing with Presley accused Dr. Nichopoulos of “unlawfully, wilfully and feloniously” prescribing, in the months leading to Presley’s death, a cornucopia of narcotics, painkillers, depressants and appetite suppressants…”

Dr. Nichopoulos was acquitted of all charges, but in 1995 the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners permanently suspended his medical license, stating that he had been overprescribing to numerous patients for years. He tried multiple times to have his medical licence reinstated through appeals, but failed. He died in 2016, aged 88.

Thanks to Gary Wells, to Alistair McMillan, and to everyone who supports our podcasts and web posts by reading, listening, and sharing on social media.

Thanks to also to Steve Collins and Gainesville. Find out more about our friends and supporters on our community page.