Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [68]
“All of a sudden I heard Elvis’s voice shouting, ‘Mae! Mae! Mae!’ I jumped up and ran down there, and so help me, about five hundred kids had crawled under those pull-up doors. Elvis had climbed on top of the showers, and he was hanging there darn near naked. They’d torn his lace shirt apart, and everybody had pieces of his coat, and they even had his boots and socks off.”
By the time the police got things under control, Elvis, clad only in his pants, looked sheepish and scared. The police helped him down, but Mae found that quieting the crowd was another matter.
“I heard all this screaming, and I went up out of the dugout and saw this girl I had taught. I said, ‘Hey, honey, what’s the matter?’ ‘Oh, hi, Miz Axton, boo hoo, hoo, hoo . . .’ I said, ‘Wait a minute. What is it about this kid Elvis?’ And she gave one of the best definitions I’ve ever heard. She said, ‘Oh, Miz Axton, he’s just a great, big, beautiful hunk of forbidden fruit.’ ”
The Jacksonville riot marked the first time the Colonel knew precisely what a gold mine he had in his new client. It also marked a turning point in the young life of thirteen-year-old Jackie Rowland, an Elvis fan who got backstage through the efforts of her grandfather, a policeman.
Lying transfixed on the floor, eating a bowl of peanut butter and jelly mixed together, Jackie had watched Elvis on television. Weight had always been an issue for the five-foot-tall teenager, and when she arrived at the Gator Bowl that night, she weighed 190 pounds. Wearing her blue Kirby Smith High School band sweater and a pair of blue suede shoes, “I’m sure I must have looked like a giant blueberry. Or maybe a grape.”
Backstage, Elvis signed her program and introduced her to the Carter Sisters, and then talked to her longer than he did most of the girls. When it was time for her to go, he kissed her on the cheek, “and, of course, I was in love. He was so handsome, and so nice to me, and not condescending about my weight.”
It got her thinking, fantasizing about what it would be like to see him again, especially if she could diet herself down to the size of the other girls. If she lost weight, she asked her mother, Marguerite, could she go to Tennessee to see Elvis? “Sure,” her mother said. “If you lose the weight, I will take you to Memphis.”
Two months later, on July 28 and 29, Elvis was back at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, and yet another riot ensued. Fellow performer Marty Robbins, who had joined the bill as a way to repay Colonel Parker for a favor, remembered it vividly. “They really mobbed him. I couldn’t imagine that happening. They chased him in the dressing room, underneath the stands in a shower room. He was on top of the showers, trying to get away from people. Guys and girls, alike, were trying to grab a shoe, trying to grab just anything.”
Robbins knew for certain that Elvis was going to be completely irresistible to women, because of what happened in the next town, Daytona Beach. “When we went out on the beach to go swimming, the girls were all looking at him like, ‘Boy, there is something!’ He had everything in his favor. He had youth, he had good looks, he had talent, he was single, and then when he got Colonel Tom Parker on his side, that was it. He was the best manager a person could get.”
Mae Axton had also seen the reactions in Daytona Beach and Orlando. She’d worked all three cities after getting calls from Bob Neal and Sam Phillips, asking if she could help establish Elvis in the Florida markets. The daughter of a Texas rancher and confectionery shop owner, she was a big-hearted gal who dabbled in songwriting, freelance magazine writing, and promotion work to supplement her teaching job.
As the mother of two sons, Johnny, eleven, and thirteen-year-old Hoyt (later a singer-songwriter on his own), Mae had a soft spot for young men trying to make their way in the world. She also wanted to help Bob Neal, throwing