by Wesley Harris
The Dixie Center for the Arts in downtown Ruston has hosted numerous Elvis Presley tribute performances since the death of the “King of Rock and Roll” in 1977. His music was certainly familiar here—his films played locally, and KRUS-AM kept his songs on the air through the height of his career.
But despite Ruston’s affinity for Elvis and his frequent visits to North Louisiana, he never performed on stage here.
That absence is not surprising since Elvis’s early career was anchored just 70 miles west at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, where he appeared more than 40 times on the Louisiana Hayride between 1954 and 1956. His debut came on October 16, 1954, and he returned regularly through the following year, performing songs like “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
Because of that steady commitment in Shreveport, Ruston was bypassed as a performance stop—even as Elvis played smaller venues across North Louisiana. In 1955 alone, he appeared nearby, performing in school auditoriums in West Monroe and Bastrop, and from the back of a flatbed truck at the Joy Drive-In in Minden. While these appearances served to introduce Elvis to thousands, he was hardly the headliner, billed fourth or fifth in these shows behind Grand Ole Opry regulars.
Still, Ruston was not entirely outside Elvis’s orbit.
Traveling along U.S. Highway 80 between Shreveport and points east, Elvis and his band—Scotty Moore and Bill Black—would have passed through Ruston frequently early in his career. Local tradition holds that they sometimes stopped at the Igoe Inn, a small roadside restaurant just west of Grambling Junction.
Tom Igoe—a renowned journalist who had worked for Hearst newspapers, at one time America’s largest newspaper chain—knew celebrities, politicians, and international dignitaries. Married to a local school teacher, Igoe opened a small café on U. S. 80. And since Highway 80 was the major highway crossing the country prior to the Interstate system, many of those high-profile acquaintances would stop at his tiny café.
Igoe was an entertainer. He wore his white hair long to match his attire that would later be associated with Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. He regaled actors like Tyrone Power and Bette Davis, opera singer Beverly Sills, and even a little-known Elvis at the restaurant in the fifties where he did most of the cooking, and storytelling, himself.
Elvis did make at least one documented stop in Ruston proper during those forays through North Louisiana.
For years, reports have circulated that Elvis visited the KRUS radio station, once located upstairs above what is now Ponchatoula’s Restaurant on Park Avenue. I finally found evidence of that visit through Elgin McFadden, a Ruston native who was present at the time.
“Elvis stopped at KRUS to see the owner in 1958,” McFadden recalled. “I happened to be there but wasn’t aware of who Elvis was.”
The station’s owner, Clarence Faulk, also owned Ruston’s newspaper, placing the visit squarely within the city’s media circle of the time.
So, while Elvis never took the stage in Ruston, he was not entirely absent from its history. He likely visited KRUS to promote a record or encourage the station to play his music more frequently.
He passed through often, stopped briefly, and left behind a trace—subtle, but real.
His regional impact, however, was unmistakable. His final appearance tied to the Louisiana Hayride came on December 15, 1956, at a packed show at Hirsch Coliseum in Shreveport, where promoter Horace Logan famously declared, “Elvis has left the building.”
In later years, Elvis returned to Louisiana for large-scale concerts in places like Baton Rouge, far removed from the small-town circuit that once carried him along Highway 80 through Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
Ruston in the 1950s was a town between destinations—a place travelers passed through on their way to somewhere bigger. Elvis Presley did exactly that. And in doing so, he left behind just enough connection to become part of Ruston’s story, even without stepping onto one of its stages.
