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Lamar-Airways Shopping Center
1950's America saw the introduction of several new things, among them the Eisenhower interstate highway system, rock and roll, and shopping centers (strip mall). One of the first and newest in Memphis was the Lamar-Airways Shopping Center, located at the triangle formed by Lamar, Park and Airways. When Lamar-Airways was built, the area around it was already well-developed. Expensive but aging homes stood to the west on South Parkway. Orange Mound to the east had been developed decades before, and there was already some strip development in place to accommodate through traffic in and out of Memphis.1
Until 1954 the triangle was a field that was considered a no-man's-land of sorts, one of the few places where white and black kids from the surrounding areas could encounter each other on a regular basis. When the center was built it was, at the time, the largest of its kind. Anchored by a Katz Drug Store, it included a Kroger, a Pic-Pac, Shainberg's Department Store and several clothing and shoe stores. Its opening on September 9th was blessed by Chief Wishackchihumma of the Choctaw Indians, and its emblem was a 28-foot paper-and-plastic Indian chief, in homage to Lamar Avenue's past as a Chickasaw trail.1
An advertisement in the local papers prior to the opening advertised (see here for schedule): Music
and Entertainment for Everyone!
Marty Lacker, who knew Elvis in high school and would later become a member of his "Memphis Mafia" in the early '60s was working at Shainberg's Department Store in the shopping center when it opened. Marty said, "there was a walkway in between the two buildings. If you were standing on Lamar and looking straight at the building Katz would be the building on the right and the stage was in the lot behind there on the Airways side. Shainberg's was on the left just across the walkway to Katz."
Barely two months after the release of their first record and less than a month before their first and only appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, Elvis, Scotty and Bill were still playing strictly small gigs in and around Memphis. They were hired to perform at the grand opening of the shopping center on September 9, 1954. They did so on a makeshift stage built on a flatbed truck in the center's expansive, unprecedentedly large parking lot. Still relatively unknown outside of Memphis the Memphis Press-Scimitar again misspelled Elvis' name, this time with two S's in Presley.
Opal recalls, "Elvis had that one record out, and it was a smash locally, and I loved it. I had a girlfriend who was a friend of Dewey Phillips, the first deejay to play him. My girlfriend and I went down and sat in with Dewey while he did his show, and he told us all about Elvis and where he went to church. You can bet we were at First Assembly next Sunday, and he was there with a friend. After church we flirted with them. He teased me about my long blonde hair." "This show at Lamar-Airways shopping center came up and I went alone and took my camera. I rode a streetcar, I believe and waited for Elvis to arrive. They all came up in that Chevy, and I asked him to pose and he seemed happy to. There were a lot of people there, but few besides me seemed to know who he was. I had him all to myself. I could have shot a whole roll. But I didn't know then what I know now. He went on stage and started singing and shaking... the girls went wild. Me, too. That was the first time I saw Elvis perform, but I didn't miss any opportunities in the future." 3 In the audience that night was John Evans who at seven years old would listen to Dewey Phillips. When they heard that Elvis would be at the shopping center they went to watch. His brother held him up so he could see and he remembers them dressed as real weird country musicians with Elvis wearing pink and gray. He said, "they had a big string bass and the guy would twirl it around. There was only one amp and it was sitting on a chair with a little guy playing a big guitar." John would later achieve fame playing guitar and keyboards on the first Memphis pop record to go to No. 1: The Box Tops' "The Letter". Incidentally, on the following day, Sept 10, 1954, Buddy Cunningham, the father of Bill Cunningham of the Box Tops, would be the first to play percussion on an Elvis session when he beat on several empty boxes during the recording of "I don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine".
Johnny Cash, just recently out of the Air Force, married and relocated to Memphis, was also in the audience that night. In an autobiography he wrote, the first time I saw Elvis, singing from a flatbed truck at a Katz drugstore opening on Lamar Avenue, two or three hundred people, mostly teenage girls, had come out to see him. With just one single to his credit, he sang those two songs over and over. That’s the first time I met him. Vivian and I went up to him after the show, and he invited us to his next date at the Eagle’s Nest.4
With the completion of the interstates in the 1960s and the introduction of "the Malls", there was a gradual loss of business along the primary roads like Lamar Ave. Today, all the stores that were originally in the Shopping center are now gone and in their place newer smaller chain stores. Shainberg's is a "Family Dollar" store and Katz is a "Save a lot".
page added November 26, 2007
1courtesy
The Memphis
Flyer online cover story August 5-11, 1999 Special thanks to Vikki Hein for her assistance with the ads
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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. | |||||||||||||
Katz drug, a chain originating in Kansas City was one of the first to
redefine the drugstore as we know it today, offering its customers items
far beyond the scope of pharmaceuticals. Brothers Mike and Isaac
Katz, founders of the drugstore chain, had been operating tobacco and
confectionary stores in Kansas City with a 19 hour workday ethic. In
1917, Herbert Hoover, President Wilson’s appointee charged with the
regulation of food production and service, had decreed that no
tobacconist or confectioner could remain open past 6 p.m., unless the
business was also a pharmacy. In response, the brothers
recruited a retired Kansas City pharmacist to be present for the
government inspection, and purchased a handful of medicines for
inventory. The brothers were now in the pharmacy business, and the
large number of doctors who made their offices in the building's floors
above would prove a crucial source of new customers. The company
soon spread to the suburbs and throughout the greater Midwest,
eventually becoming known as Skaggs and then Osco Drug.2
Opal
Walker was a young girl from Memphis at the time who was at the show
that night and took 3 photos that have since been reprinted in countless
books and articles. They are the only known photos of the appearance
there though none show the actual performance.
