Red Robinson with Elvis Presley

Today Red Robinson ranks right behind Dewey Phillips as the fifties DJ most associated with Elvis Presley. Robinson had unprecedented access to Elvis on August 31, 1957, when Presley appeared in Vancouver. Red personally recorded Elvis's press conference that day and introduced him at Empire Stadium that evening.

 

"I had a microphone and a 601 Ampex Tape Recorder wrapped in leather— beautiful—weighed about 60 pounds. That's why the quality is so good. I just carried it in. Now you've got gatekeepers and all that stuff, and Elvis had a few too, but nobody stopped me. But I did that with Buddy Holly, Louis Armstrong, everybody. Now people say, oh, you had foresight, what a visionary. It was just that I was a fan then; I'm a fan now. I just wanted to preserve the encounter.

"There was a makeshift stage set up at the north end of Empire Stadium. They built the stage and put a roof over it for rain. For both Elvis and later the Beatles it was a hot summer night, so they didn't need it. They removed the goal posts. At the side of the stage was a little thing like a tollbooth. After I introduced him, I just stood and watched the show from back there. I could see everything.

"There was pandemonium … wild, pandemonium, euphoric—but a riot? No. I'd say the first five or six rows in front of the stage is where the problem was, and that was where the fear was, and that was why D.J. Fontana says he thought they were gonna get killed. That was the thrust. The rest of the people were well behaved."