Elvis on the Potomac
On March 23, 1956, Elvis played D.C. for the first and last time. The show, unlike the boat, rocked.

by Peter Golkin
February 15th, 2007

At 8 p.m. on a biting and windy March 23, the first Friday of spring in 1956, it became clear the S.S. Mount Vernon wouldn’t cruise the Potomac after all. ... As the night got colder and darker, a couple hundred people stood waiting on Pier 4, off Maine Avenue SW at the Washington Channel, home of the Wilson Line cruises. They’d all lined up for an evening aboard the fleet’s queen, a 201-foot, four-deck ship rebuilt from the hull up and capped with a glamorous, streamlined wedding-cake motif. Promoters billed it as “America’s finest steamliner.”

This wasn’t supposed to be an ordinary boat ride. First of all, as the kickoff to a season of Country Music Moonlight Cruises, it featured entertainment. And D.C.—very much a Southern city in those days—liked its country and western. ... The featured act was Elvis Presley, a 21-year-old just starting to light up the charts. The rest of 1956 would see the whole world catch on to the former truck driver from Memphis, Tenn., who’d walked into Sun Studio three years earlier to lay down a couple of tracks for his mother.

On Pier 4 in D.C., though, what the people wanted was the promised voyage on the Potomac. They wanted their steam-heated cruise on a glass-enclosed boat. They wanted the advertised “refreshments.” ... But the Mount Vernon was in a bad way. It blew a valve on an earlier cruise, and the crew couldn’t repair it. A lot of people wanted their money back, and they got it—all 2 bucks.


Jimmy Dean and Elvis Presley on the set of Town and Country Time.(Photo courtesy of the Dean Family Collection)

Those who stayed for the cruise to nowhere heard a three-hour show from the future king of rock ’n’ roll. They heard him playing new material: songs like “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” And although those backing Presley were on the fast track to becoming no-names, the Blue Moon Boys—Bill Black, Scotty Moore, and D.J. Fontana—were also tight. ... The show, unlike the boat, rocked. ... Elvis’ D.C. debut came courtesy of a government radio announcer from Lizard Lick, N.C., named Connie B. Gay. He moved to the capital from Appalachia in the 1940s and landed a one-hour radio show on the new 1,000-watt WARL in Arlington. Before long, he started using the program to anchor a rapidly expanding music promotion endeavor. He even trademarked it: Town and Country Time.

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On March 23, 1956 Elvis Rocked the District of Columbia
By Prince Of Petworth
Published February 4, 2025 at 9:00AM

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