On the night of November 22nd, 1963, Elvis Presley was in Las Vegas when the news came through. President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. He was dead. Elvis was between shows. He had performed one set that evening. The second was scheduled for 10:00. His road manager, Joe Espazito, went to his dressing room to tell him.
Elvis was sitting with his guitarist, Scotty Moore, who had been with him since the beginning, since the Sun Records days since 1954. They were not talking. They were between the kind of silence that longtime collaborators can share without discomfort. Joe came in and told them. Scotty described what happened in Elvis’s face in an interview he gave in 2005.
He said it was unlike anything he had seen in nine years of watching Elvis receive news. Not grief, not shock, a specific private kind of fear. Elvis said nothing immediately. He sat very still. He looked at the floor. Then he said something that Scotty Moore repeated in every interview he gave about Elvis for the rest of his life. They’ll come for the ones who matter next. Elvis said.
Scotty asked who he meant. Elvis looked up. The ones people listen to, Elvis said. Elvis Presley was 28 years old in November 1963. He had been the most famous person in America for seven years. In those seven years, he had received death threats, not the vague, unspecified threats that accompany fame.
Generally, specific ones, letters with details, phone calls. Colonel Tom Parker had maintained a security operation around Elvis since the late 1950s. not publicized, not acknowledged, but present. Elvis knew about the threats. He knew more than Parker let most people know he knew. Scotty described the months after November 1963 as a period in which Elvis’s behavior changed in ways that were subtle, but to someone who had known him for 9 years, visible.
He was more careful, more aware of who was in a room, more attentive to the edges of crowds. Not paranoid. Scotty was specific about this. He wasn’t paranoid. Scotty said he was paying attention. There’s a difference. In January 1964, Elvis received a threat that was specific enough to require police involvement.
The details of that threat have never been publicly released. What is known is that it was taken seriously, that Elvis was informed, that he performed anyway. Scotty Moore was backstage when Elvis went on stage that night. He described the walk from the dressing room to the stage entrance. Elvis walked it alone.
He had sent the people around him ahead. He walked the last 20 ft alone. Scotty watched him from the wings. He said that what Elvis did in those 20 ft was something he had never seen him do before or after. He stopped in the dark of the backstage corridor 20 ft from the stage entrance. He stood completely still.
His eyes were open. He was looking at the stage entrance. He stood there for perhaps 10 seconds. Then he walked on. He performed. The audience never knew. Scotty Moore described that 10 seconds in the corridor as one of the bravest things he ever witnessed. Not because it was dramatic, because it was not. Because it was a man standing alone in a dark corridor, knowing something specific about the risk and taking 10 seconds to acknowledge it, and then walking forward.
After Elvis died in 1977, Scotty Moore was asked by a journalist about the moments he remembered most. Scotty mentioned several. The Sun studio sessions, the first Ed Sullivan appearance, the 1968 comeback. Then he mentioned the corridor. The journalist asked why that particular moment. Scotty thought about it.
Because Scotty said, “Everybody thinks courage is about not being afraid.” He shook his head. Elvis was afraid. He was afraid a lot. He talked about it. He didn’t hide it from the people around him. Scotty paused. But he always walked out, Scotty said. Every time, no matter what was waiting, he walked out. Scotty Moore died on June 28th, 2016.
He was 84 years old. He had known Elvis Presley for 23 years. the corridor story, the 10 seconds in the dark on the night of a specific threat. He told it multiple times in interviews, in the memoir he co-wrote, in conversations with musicians who asked about the man he had played with since 1954. He always ended it the same way.
He walked out every time. No matter what was on the other side of the door, he stood still for 10 seconds. Then he walked out. That is courage. Not the absence of fear. The 10 seconds and then the walking.
