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The Catholic Club
Helena, Arkansas is located about 65 miles southwest, downriver and across the Mississippi from Memphis, Tennessee. St. Mary's Church in Helena was built in 1936, about 6 blocks from the location of the first Catholic Church in Helena that was bounded by Columbia, Franklin, Porter and Perry Streets and was built in 1854 and burned down in 1856. It is a large red brick medieval type of building.
In 1941, Sam Anderson opened and operated Station KFFA AM on the second floor of the Floyd Truck Lines building in Helena. Two days before the station opened, then 14 year old John William Payne (aka. Sunshine Sonny Payne) started work there part time as a janitor and errand boy. On November 21st of that year KFFA broadcast the King
Biscuit Time radio program for the first time. The show featured
Sonny Boy Williamson (actually Aleck "Rice" Miller) and Robert Lockwood
Jr. (or Robert Junior Lockwood as he was called because of his
association with Robert Johnson) performing live from the
studio. Sponsored locally by the Interstate Grocery Company and named
for the product it was intended to promote, King Biscuit Flour, the show
was broadcast daily at noon to a target audience of the Delta field
hands at lunchtime.
King Biscuit Time was an immediate hit, prompting IGC to introduce Sonny Boy Corn Meal, complete with a likeness of Williamson on the front of the package. By mid 1942, Sonny Payne had began reading on air commercials for the corn meal at the station before going off to join the war later that December after his 16th birthday. The KFFA studio band, the King Biscuit Entertainers, among others, often included pianist Pinetop Perkins and James Peck Curtis on drums playing five days a week at the station and then traveled to evening engagements in the region. King Biscuit Time was the first regular radio show to feature blues, and would influence four generations of Delta blues artists.
In 1949, St. Mary's built a parish center on the property adjacent to their church. The building housed a gymnasium and stage. In addition to the church's use, the building, also referred to as the Catholic Club, was also used for many activities by the neighboring Sacred Heart Academy, and also for banquets, meetings and dances by various civic organizations in the community.
By 1951, Sonny Payne had returned to Helena and began working as an announcer for KFFA and hosting the King Biscuit Time program, always opening the show with the phrase "pass the biscuits, cause it's King Biscuit Time."
On December 2, 1954, Elvis, Scotty and Bill made their
first appearance in Helena. Payne said Elvis auditioned for Parker, who then told Payne, "'He's not bad.'" So Payne and Parker approached Father Thomas Keller for permission to rent the Catholic Club. The cost was $15 for three hours. According to Payne, he and Parker each borrowed $7.50 to come up with the fee because Elvis did not have it and promised to pay them back after the show, which he did. 2
Bill E
On the same day of the January show in Helena, Scotty had received a letter of rejection from the Colonel's man, Tom Diskin, and their Chicago office though plans were already in the works for them to start booking dates for them. By March 8th, they were back for their third appearance at the Catholic Club in Helena. It was an 8:00 p.m. show in which they shared a bill with Betty Amos and Jimmy Work.3
St. Mary's parishioner Nick Brocato said he worked the concession stand when Elvis performed at the Catholic Club and he shared Payne's view. "I wasn't a fan of his at all," he said. "You have to keep in mind that he was just starting out when he came here. He wasn't an overnight success." Brocato said he doesn't remember a lot about the shows except when Elvis "did that little dance on the stage with that shuffling of his feet the girls went wild." 2 Lynne Von Kanel said, "The guys didn't like it, but the girls sure did," and admits she was one of those girls. Oh, I went wild," she said. "I was one of those girls screaming and hollering." The Sacred Heart graduate said she first heard Elvis perform at the Catholic Club as the opening act for Jim Ed and Maxine Brown. She saw him perform at least two other times at the club. "His voice and his actions; we'd never seen anything like that before," she said. "This new rock 'n roll was what the teenagers in my group were really eatin' up. We really loved it. We would all go backstage and talk and visit and get autographs. He was very congenial, very nice," Von Kanel said. "The guys hated him. Looking back I don't see anything that was obscene or really bad about it, it was just that we weren't used to that," she added.2 Helena resident Billie Jo Moore graduated from Barton Public School in 1956 and she said she remembers seeing them at the club twice. The first time she went with girlfriends and they had to sit in the bleachers because all the chairs on the floor were full. "Kids from all the county schools went." "He was an electrifying entertainer, but different from anything any of us had ever seen," Moore said. "The shock value was just tremendous." She said she wouldn't call what he did indecent or inappropriate, but "it was a stretch bordering on vulgar." 2
Nancy Norman, a 1956 Elaine High School graduate, first heard them at the Jim Ed and Maxine Brown show also. "My mother wouldn't let me go unless my Daddy went," she said so Norman, her father and five or six girlfriends went and were "amazed" by what they saw. "I thought he was an awfully nice young man," she said. Norman said she, her father and friends went backstage to introduce themselves after the show and invited Elvis to eat dinner at the In Between, a former popular restaurant and hang out. "He was so conscious of his hair," she said. "He combed his hair more than anybody I ever saw in my life." "Then we followed him all over the countryside," she said. Norman saw Elvis in shows in Earl, Wynne, Barton, Marianna and even Memphis, eight times in all from 1955-56, with three of these at the Catholic Club in Helena.2
On December 15, 1955, they performed at the Club in Helena for the last time. On this appearance they shared the bill with Carl Perkins and according to Peter Guralnick, all five hundred tickets for the show were sold out two days in advance.4 Bill E. Burk wrote that the priest of the parish then asked that Elvis never again be invited back to the Catholic Club.1 Brocato said he was there the night Presley was asked to leave the club, but he didn't actually see what happened. He only saw the crowd of girls rush on the stage after the performance. Von Kanel said, "I saw him autograph a girl's leg. She hiked her skirt up and he autographed her thigh," she said.2 Neither of them, however, saw or heard the exchange with Father Keller.2 Regardless, by this point in Elvis' career the venue would be too small for them. Elvis had signed with RCA, and would make his national television debut in just over a month.
Due to the lowered demands for a boarding school, dwindling enrollment and increased costs of maintaining the building grounds, Sacred Heart Academy closed in May of 1968 after more than 100 years of service to the community. The building was razed in 1973 and the Sisters of Charity donated to St. Mary's Parish the land that is currently used as the church parking lot.
According to Pat Truemper, a 10th grader at Sacred Heart Academy at the time Elvis performed there, the gymnasium and stage no longer exists in the hall as it was back in 1955. The building has been renovated due to a fire back in the early 70's. A parochial school, under the Sacred Heart Academy name, operated until 1973 in St. Mary's Parish Hall. On August 15, 1999, the cornerstone originally placed on the Sacred Heart Academy grounds in 1917,
and secured by local parishioners of
In the '60s KFFA moved from the Floyd Truck Lines Building to the top floor of the Helena National Bank Building. Sonny Boy Williamson left the show in 1944 and returned to Helena and the program in 1965, before dying that year. In 1986 Helena held the first annual King Biscuit Blues Festival, today called the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival. Robert Lockwood Jr. passed away on November 21, 2006, 65 years to the day from the first broadcast of King Biscuit Time. Payne and Brocato both said in later years they grew to enjoy Elvis' music. Of the $15 that he was owed Payne said, "Before he went into the Army I called and, got, 'Oh man, I'm gonna get it to you,' but after two or three calls I said, 'Well, forget it.'" Payne did eventually get his money, 50 years later. The Helena Chamber of Commerce contacted the Elvis Presley estate about the debt and presented Payne with a $15 check at the annual chamber banquet in February 2005. "I felt about this high," Payne said holding his hand a foot off the floor. "I was thoroughly embarrassed." 2
Today, the King Biscuit Time program is still broadcast daily, now from the studio at the Delta Cultural Center, located at 95 Missouri Street in Helena. 58 years later, Sunshine Sonny Payne is still its host and "passing the biscuits." 5 page added November 6, 2009 *Most of the history of St. Mary's, the parish hall and Scared Heart Academy presented here is courtesy the Sacred Heart Academy Homepage. The history of KFFA, King Biscuit Time and its participants and performers were collected from various sources on the web, not the least of which is the KFFA and King Biscuit Time websites and the NPS site "Trail of the Hell Hound." It should be noted that some of the recollections may be misremembered. For one, Elvis did not have a pink Cadillac at the time of their first appearance, or first several for that matter. 1 excerpt from "Early
Elvis: The Sun Years" by Bill E. Burk
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| All photos on this site (that we didn't borrow) unless otherwise indicated are the property of either Scotty Moore or James V. Roy and unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited. |
