The Private Moment Between Elvis and B.B. King Nobody Filmed D

They called him the king of the blues. They were starting to call the other one the king of rock and roll. But on a cold December night in 1956 in a segregated auditorium in Memphis, Tennessee, neither of them felt much like royalty. They were just two poor boys from Mississippi who had found their way to music because music was the only door that ever opened for people like them.

But that is not where this story begins. It begins with a young man who had everything the world said he should want and who was discovering that having everything meant nothing if you could not share it with the people who had given you everything in the first place. It begins with the weight of success, the loneliness of fame, and the quiet rebellion of a 21-year-old who refused to let the world tell him who he was allowed to admire.

It was December 7th, 1956, Pearl Harbor Day, a Saturday. Elvis Presley sat in the back of a car on the streets of Memphis, watching the city he had grown up in pass by outside the window. The streets were decorated for Christmas. Lights hung from the lamp posts along Main Street. And somewhere in the distance, a Salvation Army bell was ringing.

The air was cold enough that you could see your breath. And the sky had that particular quality of winter evenings in the south, gray and heavy, pressing down on everything like a lid. He was 21 years old. He had been famous for less than 2 years. In that time, he had appeared on national television, sold millions of records, been condemned by preachers, and praised by teenagers, and watched his face become something that no longer belonged entirely to him.

The boy who had grown up in a two- room house in Tempo, Mississippi, who had worn clothes from the charity box at church, and eaten whatever his mother could scrape together from nothing, was now staying in hotels where people brought him whatever he wanted on silver trays. But tonight, something felt wrong. He could not have explained it if someone had asked.

The colonel would have told him he was being foolish. The boys in the band would have laughed and said he was overthinking things. But Elvis had learned to trust the feeling in his gut. The quiet voice that spoke to him when the noise of the world got too loud. And tonight that voice was telling him something important was about to happen.

The car was heading toward Ellis Auditorium where the WDIA Goodwill review was being held. WDIA was the first radio station in America programmed entirely for African-Ameans. They called themselves the mother station of the Negroes. Every year they held a charity concert to raise money for needy children in the black community.

And every year the biggest names in rhythm and blues came to perform. This year the lineup included Ray Charles, Rufus Thomas, the Moononglows and BB King. Elvis had asked to attend. This was not a simple request. The Goodwill Review was a segregated event, not legally, but practically. The audience would be almost entirely black.

The performers were all black. For a white man to attend, especially a white man as famous as Elvis Presley, was to make a statement that some people would not appreciate. It was 1956, and Memphis was still very much a city divided by color. There were water fountains for whites and water fountains for colored.

There were restaurants that would not serve black customers and hotels that would not rent them rooms. The lines were drawn clearly and everyone was expected to stay on their side. Elvis did not care about the lines. He had never cared about them. Not really. Growing up poor in Templo and then in Memphis, he had lived closer to black families than to white ones.

The music he loved, the music that had saved him, that had given him a reason to believe his life could be something more than poverty and despair. That music came from black churches and black juke joints and black radio stations like WDIA. When he was a teenager, he would sneak down to Beiel Street and stand outside the clubs, listening to the blues pouring out into the night air, feeling something inside him come alive in a way that nothing else could match.

The men who played that music were his heroes. Arthur Crudeup, whose song That’s All Right, had been Elvis’s first record. Big Boy Crudup, who had probably never received a dime of the money Elvis’s version had earned. Sister Rosetta Tharp, who played guitar like the instrument was on fire, and BB King, who had a voice like Honey and Gravel mixed together, and who played a guitar he called Lucille, with more feeling than Elvis had ever heard from any instrument.

Elvis had met BB before several times actually when Elvis was first starting out still recording at Sun Studios. BB had already been a star. He had cut his own records at Sun before Elvis arrived and he would sometimes come by the studio when Elvis was there. Most of the other musicians, the white ones anyway, had kept their distance.

There was a chill in the air when BB walked in, a polite but unmistakable coolness. But Elvis had been different. He was friendly. BBE would later remember, “I remember Elvis distinctly because he was handsome and quiet and polite to a fault, spoke with this thick molasses southern accent, and always called me sir. I like that, sir.

” A young white man from Mississippi, calling a black blues singer, “Sir.” In 1955 in Memphis, that said something. The car pulled up outside Ellis Auditorium, and Elvis could already hear the crowd inside. The show had started through the walls. He could feel the bass thump of the music.

Could sense the energy of thousands of people gathered together in celebration and joy. His friend George Klene was with him. And George looked nervous. You sure about this? Eh? George asked. Elvis did not answer. He just opened the door and stepped out into the cold December air. Inside the auditorium was transformed.

The stage was alive with light and color. And the crowd, nearly 5,000 people, almost all of them, black, was on its feet, swaying and clapping and singing along with the music. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and perfume and the particular electricity that only live music can generate. Elvis slipped in through a side door, hoping to watch from the wings without causing a disruption.

He could not perform tonight. his contract with RCA forbaded. But he had not come to perform. He had come to watch, to listen, to pay his respects to the music and the musicians who had made him possible. BB King was on stage. Elvis stood in the shadows and watched. BB was wearing a white tuxedo that seemed to glow under the stage lights.

Lucille was in his hands and he was playing her the way he always did with his whole body, his whole soul. Every note rung out of the instrument like water from a cloth. The sound filled the auditorium, filled every corner, filled Elvis’s chest until he could barely breathe. This was the real thing. This was where it all came from.

Elvis thought about everything he had accomplished in the past 2 years. the hit records, the television appearances, the screaming fans who tore at his clothes and wept when he walked by. He thought about the money and the fame and the way people looked at him now, like he was something more than human.

And he thought about this man on the stage, this man who had been playing this music for years before Elvis ever picked up a guitar. This man who had given him a blueprint for everything he had become. What did BB King think of him? The question had been haunting Elvis for months.

There were people, white people mostly, who said he had stolen black music and profited from it, while the original artist remained poor and unknown. There were others, black people, some of them, who said the same thing with even more bitterness. Elvis had heard the accusations. He had read them in newspapers and magazines.

He had seen the looks on some faces when his name was mentioned. Was it true? Had he taken something that did not belong to him? He did not know the answer. He only knew that he loved this music more than he loved anything else in the world and that he had never meant to hurt anyone by loving it. The song ended.

The crowd roared. BB King took a bow and walked off the stage, heading directly toward the wings where Elvis was standing. Their eyes met. For a moment, neither of them moved. The noise of the crowd faded into the background. The backstage chaos, stage hands running, performers warming up, managers barking orders seemed to disappear.

There was only BB King and Elvis Presley, standing 5 ft apart, looking at each other. BB was 31 years old. He had been born on a cotton plantation in Berclair, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers who worked land they would never own. He had picked cotton as a child, the same way his parents had, the same way their parents had before them.

He had learned to sing in church and learned to play guitar from the men who worked the fields, men who sang to make the hours pass, to make the pain bearable, to make their lives into something that resembled meaning. He had fought his way out of that life. He had come to Memphis with nothing but his voice and his guitar and his determination, and he had built something from nothing.

He had become BB King, the Bee Street Blues Boy, the man with the golden voice and the crying guitar. He had done it without help from anyone, without the advantages that white musicians had, without the radio play and the television appearances and the record deals that came so easily to others.

And then this young white boy had come along. This kid from Tupelo with the sllicked back hair and the swiveling hips. This kid who sang the songs BB had grown up with, who moved the way BB had seen black performers move in juke joints all his life, who had taken the music and carried it to places BB could never go because of the color of his skin.

BB could have been bitter. He had every right to be. The world had given Elvis everything it had denied to him. But BB King was not a bitter man. He looked at this young man standing in the wings of Ellis Auditorium. This young man who could have been anywhere in the world tonight, but had chosen to be here.

At a black charity event, watching black musicians perform, he saw something in Elvis’s eyes that he recognized. Not arrogance, not entitlement, something else, something that looked like hunger and gratitude, and the particular loneliness of someone who has been given everything except the one thing they truly need.

BBE smiled. Elvis,” he said. “I was hoping you’d come.” Elvis’s face changed. The tension he had been carrying in his shoulders, in his jaw, in the way he held himself seemed to dissolve. He stepped forward and without thinking about it, he extended his hand. “Mr. King,” he said. “Sir, it’s an honor, sir.” There it was again.

a young white man from Mississippi, now the most famous singer in America, calling a black blues musician, sir. BB took his hand. The handshake was firm, warm, real. The honor is mine, BB said. You’re doing something important, Elvis. You know that, don’t you? Elvis shook his head. I’m just singing the songs I love.

The songs I grew up with. Your songs, Mr. King. Your music. Our music. BB corrected gently. Music doesn’t belong to any one person or any one color. It belongs to everyone who feels it. And you feel it, Elvis. I’ve heard your records. I’ve watched you perform. You feel it the way we feel it.

Elvis was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. Some people say I stole it. That I took something that wasn’t mine to take. BB’s expression softened. He put his hand on Elvis’s shoulder, a gesture of connection, of understanding, of something that went deeper than race or fame or the divisions the world tried to enforce.

You can’t steal something that’s given freely. BB said, “Music is like water. It flows where it wants to flow. It doesn’t care about boundaries or fences or the color of the hands that carry it. You didn’t steal anything, Elvis. You just opened a door that was already there. You let more people hear what we’ve been singing all along.

A photographer appeared. Ernest Withers, who had been documenting the black community in Memphis for years. He asked if he could take a picture. BB nodded and Elvis nodded too. And the two of them stood together. BB in his white tuxedo and Elvis in his striped jacket and tie.

Both of them wearing easy crooked smiles. The flash went off. The moment was captured. But before Withers could leave, something else happened. Someone in the audience spotted Elvis. The word spread like wildfire. Elvis Presley is here. Elvis is backstage. Elvis came to the Goodwill review. Within moments, the energy in the auditorium shifted.

People were standing, craning their necks, trying to see. A murmur became a rumble became a roar. The organizers asked Elvis if he would come out on stage just for a moment, just to say hello. Elvis looked at BB. BB nodded. Go on, BB said. They want to see you. Let them see you. Elvis stepped out from behind the curtain.

The reaction was immediate and overwhelming. A thousand voices rose in a single scream. The Pittsburgh Courier would later describe it as a thousand black, brown, and beige teenage girls blending their voices in one wild crescendo of sound that rent the rafters. They came rushing toward the stage, reaching for him, calling his name.

Elvis stood there and let it wash over him. He could not perform. His contract forbade it, but he could give them something, so he did what came naturally. He smiled that crooked smile. He gave one twist of his hips that trademark move that had scandalized Ed Sullivan and thrilled millions of teenagers.

The crowd went wild. But that is not the moment that mattered. The moment that mattered happened later, when the crowds had been calmed and Elvis had been escorted backstage for his own safety, when the noise had faded to something manageable and the show was preparing to continue, King found Elvis sitting alone in a corner of the dressing room.

his head in his hands. BB sat down beside him. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The dressing room was small and cramped with bare bulbs around the mirror and the smell of makeup and sweat and cigarette smoke in the air. Through the walls, they could hear the next act beginning, the music starting up again.

“You all right?” BB asked. Elvis looked up. His eyes were wet. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what I am anymore, Mr. King. I used to know. I used to be just a kid who loved music and now I’m something else. Something people made me into. And sometimes I don’t recognize myself. BB was quiet for a moment.

Then he reached over and picked up his guitar case. He opened it and took out Lucille, that famous black Gibson, worn smooth from years of playing, the instrument that had become as much a part of BB King as his own hands. Play something with me, BB said. Elvis looked at the guitar.

I don’t You don’t need to be Elvis Presley right now, BB said. You just need to be a man who loves music, playing with another man who loves music. That’s all any of us ever are. Underneath everything else, someone found another guitar. Elvis took it in his hands. It felt familiar, solid, real in a way that nothing else in his life felt real anymore.

BB started playing a blues progression, simple and clean, the kind of thing Elvis had heard a thousand times growing up. The foundation of everything he had ever sung. Elvis listened for a moment, then joined in. His fingers found the chords without thinking. His voice found the melody without effort.

They played together in that cramped dressing room. Two men from Mississippi. Two men who had grown up poor and hungry and desperate for something more. Two men who had found in music the only salvation either of them had ever known. The music flowed between them and around them, connecting them in a way that words never could.

For a few minutes there were no record contracts, no screaming fans, no racial divisions, no accusations or expectations or the weight of being something more than human. There was only the music. When they finished, Elvis was smiling. A real smile, not the one he wore for cameras. His eyes were still wet, but something had shifted behind them.

“Thank you,” he said. BB put Lucille back in her case. “Don’t forget who you are,” he said. “The world will try to make you into whatever they want you to be, but underneath all that, you’re still that kid from Tupelo who fell in love with the blues. Don’t ever lose him.” Elvis nodded. He did not speak. There was nothing more to say.

He left Ellis Auditorium that night feeling something he had not felt in months. Peace maybe, or clarity, or simply the knowledge that somewhere in the world, there was someone who understood, someone who saw past the image to the person underneath, someone who knew that music was bigger than any one performer, any one race, any one moment in time.

He would come back to the Goodwill Review the following year. In December 1957, Ernest Withers photographed him again. This time talking with Little Junior Parker and Bobby Blue Bland. A newspaper ran the photo with a short feature in which Elvis summed up the experience simply. It was the real thing.

Right from the heart, the friendship between Elvis Presley and BB King would continue for the rest of Elvis’s life. They would meet again in Las Vegas in the 1970s when Elvis was performing his legendary residency at the International Hotel and BB was playing in the lounges nearby. They would sit together after shows talking and playing music just as they had in that dressing room in 1956.

“We were the original Blues Brothers,” BBE would later say because that man knew more blues songs than most others in the business. Years later, when people would ask BB about the accusations that Elvis had stolen black music, he would shake his head. Elvis didn’t steal any music from anyone,” he wrote in his autobiography.

He just had his own interpretation of the music he’d grown up on. Same as is true for everyone. I think Elvis had integrity. And when people would ask him about racism, about whether Elvis had ever shown any prejudice or condescension, BB’s answer was always the same. with Elvis. There was not a single drop of racism in that man.

And when I say that, believe me, I should know. Elvis Presley died in August 1977. He was 42 years old. BB King lived on until 2015, dying at the age of 89, having spent six more decades playing the music he loved, carrying the blues to every corner of the world. He never forgot that night in Memphis.

He never forgot the young man who had stood in the wings, nervous and uncertain, desperate for approval from the people he most admired. The photograph Ernest Withers took that night became iconic. Two men arm in-armm, both wearing crooked smiles, the king of rock and roll and the king of the blues. Two sons of Mississippi who found each other in a segregated auditorium and discovered that music could do what politics and laws and good intentions could not.

It could bring people together across every divide the world had ever invented. There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes with being a pioneer. It is the loneliness of going first, of walking into places where no one like you has ever been welcome, of carrying the weight of representation, whether you asked for it or not.

Elvis knew this loneliness. BB knew it, too. They were both in their own ways breaking rules that the world had said were unbreakable. But on that December night in 1956 in a cramped dressing room behind the stage of Ellis Auditorium, they found in each other something precious. They found recognition. They found understanding.

They found the simple truth that every musician knows that music is the closest thing we have to a universal language and that when two people play together with honesty and love, something happens that transcends everything else. Elvis Presley went on to become the most famous entertainer in the world.

He made 31 movies and sold hundreds of millions of records. He was worshiped and mocked, loved and dismissed, elevated to godhood and dragged through tabloid scandals. He gained weight and lost his way and struggled with demons that fame only made worse. He died too young in a bathroom at Graceland, surrounded by the evidence of a life that had given him everything except peace.

But somewhere inside him until the very end, there was still that kid from Tupelo, the one who stood outside the clubs on Beiel Street and listened to the blues. The one who walked into Ellis auditorium on a December night and found a man who understood him. the one who sat in a dressing room and played guitar with BB King and remembered, if only for a moment, who he really was.

“Music is like water,” BB had told him. “It flows where it wants to flow.” On that night, it flowed between two men who had every reason to be strangers and no reason to be friends. It washed away the boundaries that the world had built between them. It reminded them both of something they already knew but sometimes forgot.

That underneath everything, underneath the fame and the struggle and the weight of being exceptional, they were just two poor boys from Mississippi who had found salvation in the same place. And that was enough. That was everything.