Every Texas road traces history.
Some routes and sites are better known than others — few really know about Elvis Presley’s tours in Texas. Stanley Oberst knows, and he has shared it in a book. The Dallas Morning News featured a story on Oberst, listing some of the main sites one could visit to see where Elvis and Texas met. (Photo of Elvis signing autographs in Dallas, 1955, from Stanley Oberst’s collection)
You drive about 20 miles north of Tyler, along gently rolling U.S. Highway 271. A few hundred yards over the Gladewater town line, past a liquor store and a fireworks stand, you come to a rock-strewn patch rimmed by pine trees.
And that’s where you’ll find it: the spot where the Mint Club once stood, where a raw-boned 19-year-old rocker named Elvis Presley played in what many argue was his first concert in Texas.
It’s a far cry from Graceland. But for Stanley Oberst, a retired Plano teacher headed to Memphis for today’s 30th anniversary of Elvis’ death, this is sacred ground. Here, Elvis began his yearlong tour of Texas in late 1954, honing his chops and whipping up a whirlwind that would thrust him to stardom.
Stanley, 60, a lifelong fan, would like to see Elvis’ tour in Texas memorialized – perhaps as the “Hound Dog Highway” or “Pink Cadillac Trail,” after the custom-painted car that transported him around Texas. It must have looked like a spaceship speeding past farmers on tractors before landing in Gladewater.
For now, Stanley has written a book, Elvis Presley: Rockin’ Across Texas. And as he drives to Memphis to sign copies, he winds through East Texas, pausing at places where Elvis left his mark.
Oberst’s tour, on his way to Memphis and the anniversary commemoration of Elvis’ death, includes several stops.
Don’t confuse this book with the CD set “Rockin’ Across Texas,” which covers a 1970s-era tour.
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Stanley Oberst’s Elvis Tour of Texas, The Pink Cadillac Tour along Hound Dog Highway: Stops listed below the fold.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 