Photo by Chris Jay.
Gary Lash, longtime CEO of the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, pictured with the rescued historical marker from the "Elvis Presley Pool."
Camp Forbing Town Center, a sprawling, nicer-than-average shopping center that opened in southeast Shreveport in 2016, is not a place where one expects to encounter rock ‘n’ roll history. It certainly doesn’t feel like a place that played a part in launching the career of Elvis Presley. That kind of lore belongs to roadside juke joints and downtown diners, places that wear the patina of time as comfortably as Presley wore a Lansky Brothers suit—not those marked by unattractive landscaping and windows loudly announcing seasonal drink menus. But the fact is, the history is there. It’s beneath a layer of asphalt, but it’s there.
The shopping center’s tenants include a sushi bar with long happy hours, a drive-thru CC’s Coffee House, and a Baskin-Robbins. A Kroger Marketplace anchors the development, and much of the steady stream of traffic that winds through the enormous parking lot is headed to, or from, Kroger.
About a hundred yards east of the supermarket, the piece of land that now serves as the parking lot of Thrifty Liquor and Wine #16, was, for fifty years, the site of a YMCA-owned public pool known colloquially as the “Elvis Presley Pool.” This was because the pool was built using funds donated to the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana by Presley when he was just twenty-one years old. The Times reported that construction on the pool began in April 1957 and was completed at a cost of $16,500. A new shower, washroom, and public toilets were also included in the project.
By the time that it was paved-over in 2015, the Elvis Presley Pool had fallen into disrepair; it was an eyesore filled with rank, green water and surrounded by collapsed cyclone fencing. When the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana sold the tract of land that included the site of the pool to Houston-based real estate developers, a write-up in The Times made only a passing reference to the “Elvis Pool” being included in the sale. There was no uproar from local history buffs or public outcry over the loss. The pool was quietly erased, but the story of how it came to be there lives on.
Elvis Presley’s star-making turn came on the night of October 16, 1954, when the Louisiana Hayride radio show, which was broadcast live from the stage of Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, beamed his electrifying performance of “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” into hundreds of thousands of homes.
Following his well-received Hayride debut, Presley signed a contract that required him to perform live in Shreveport most Saturday nights for the coming year. Per the terms of his first contract, Presley would be paid $18 per appearance and his band members would earn $12 per show. Even after renegotiating that contract, the most that Presley was ever paid for appearing on the Hayride stage was $200 per night.
In February of 1955, Presley hired a new manager. “Colonel” Tom Parker was a cigar-chewing ex-carnival barker whose first order of business was to find a way out of what he called “a bad deal.” Parker negotiated a buyout that included a $10,000 cash payment to the Hayride’s producers as well as the promise that Presley would headline one final Hayride concert. Presley agreed to donate his share of the money from ticket sales to help the YMCA construct an inground swimming pool in southeastern Shreveport.
The concert that resulted from this agreement was a pivotal moment in Presley’s career. It took place at Shreveport’s Fair Grounds Youth Center, now Hirsch Coliseum, on December 15, 1956. Presley’s thirty-five minute set was so raucous that Times staff writer Bob Masters described it as “one of the finest displays of mass hysteria in Shreveport history.” The infamous “gyrating hips” performance of “Hound Dog” on The Ed Sullivan Show had scandalized America just a month prior, and Elvis-mania gripped the nation. The Hayride’s organizers foolishly placed Presley’s set in the middle of the night’s lineup, with an entire second half of the concert to follow.
The nine thousand Presley fans in attendance screamed so loud for the duration of his set that the singer and band were unable to be heard above the din. The crowd nearly rioted when Presley waved goodbye. Louisiana State Troopers surrounded the singer and quickly swept him out a side door and into a waiting police cruiser. The crowd poured out of every exit, desperate for a final glimpse of the young idol. Hayride announcer Horace Logan, desperate to calm the crowd and resume the show, assured the audience: “Elvis has left the building.” If there was a specific moment in Presley’s career when it became apparent that he was a star unlike any other in the history of American music, this may have been it.
Just a few months after Presley ducked into that police cruiser, the new public swimming pool opened in Shreveport. It was a popular addition to Camp Forbing, a YMCA campground that hosted weeks-long summer camps and often used the pool to teach swimming lessons.
Illustration by Nate Treme.
No trace of the pool exists today, but it has somehow survived on Google Maps. More than a decade after being paved over, the Elvis Presley Pool still shows up in Google satellite imagery; users can zoom-in on the Google Maps search results for “Camp Forbing Town Center” and wander around the pool and poolhouse in poorly rendered 3-D.
Winston Hall, a Shreveport music history tour guide and professional piano player, calls the story of the Elvis Presley Pool “one of the most ridiculous moments in Shreveport music history.”
“It’s one of those Shreveport things that’s just so random that it could only be true,” Hall said. “If you were gonna make up a story about Elvis and his influence in Shreveport, you wouldn’t say ‘He bought us a public pool and, now, that pool is underneath a liquor store.’”
An ad hoc historical marker that stood near the pool for many years was saved from the path of a bulldozer by YMCA officials. It currently resides in an archive of historical materials housed at the Y in downtown Shreveport.
Gary Lash, longtime CEO of the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana, is thankful that the sign didn’t wind up in a landfill.
“This sign hung on the fence of the only Elvis Pool in the Universe,” Lash said, proudly displaying the hand-carved marker. “Over the years, I’d get a call every once in a while from an Elvis fan club in Germany, Europe, or Japan, asking to see the Elvis Pool. I personally took ten or fifteen groups to see it. I don’t know how they even knew it existed, to tell you the truth.”
Details • DETAILS • Details
You can visit the parking lot where the Elvis Pool once was at 9468 Ellerbe Road, Shreveport. But Elvis fans visiting Shreveport will also want to be sure to make time for a tour of the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, the circa 1929 National Historic Landmark that was the home of the legendary Louisiana Hayride radio and television show. Elvis performed there more than fifty times and it was here that host Horace Logan said the iconic line, “Elvis has left the building.” Schedule a tour at (318) 841-4000. $20 per person. 705 Grand Avenue, Shreveport. shreveportmunicpalauditorium.com
Other Stops For Your Shreveport-Bossier Music History Itinerary
- Catch a Show at the Louisiana Grandstand: Housed in the circa-1925 Women’s Department Club Theater, the Grandstand hosts a busy schedule of touring artists and showcases Northwest Louisiana’s remarkable music history. 802 Margaret Place, Shreveport. louisianagrandstand.com.
- See where Hank Williams once lived: Though the house is no longer there, the address 852 Modica Street in Bossier City is where Williams purchased his first home in 1949, and it is where he brought his newborn son, Hank, Jr. home to from the hospital.
- Eat gumbo at the old RAM Records: In the building that now houses Creole Café & Catering, singer/songwriter Mira Smith founded RAM Recording Studio in 1955—making her one of the first female record company owners in the country. Notable artists who were recorded or released through her studio include James Burton, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Linda Brannon. 2814 Greenwood Road, Shreveport.
