And that's how the story begins, as Sam Sutherland tells it.
"Here's the thing," he says. "I was in the seventh grade, or so. It was around there."
It was the summer of '53, he believes, when Elvis came to the farm.
It was before Elvis was Elvis. He was just a skinny kid from down south, Memphis, dark eyes, dark hair, slicked up in a kind of pompadour. He wasn't a big deal then, just another singer hanging out with Hank Snow. It was before he walked into Sun Records in Memphis and became an American icon.
It's a long story, and it begins with Sutherland's father, John. John Sutherland was a fiddle player, pretty well known in bluegrass circles in York County and beyond. Sam learned to play fiddle from his father, branching out later to pick up the guitar and the mandolin. That was their entertainment back then. They lived out on a farm near York New Salem, and that's what everybody did, played music. Sutherland still plays. He's 73 now, retired, has a place in Spring Grove, and he still goes to bluegrass jams in Craley and Gettysburg.
It's not like it used to be.
When he was a kid, it was the heyday of country music, and York County was a hotbed for musicians and fans. The biggest stars of country music -- Hank Snow, Roy Acuff, Red Foley, Jimmy Martin -- all came here for shows at places like Sunset Park and Valley View Park and Williams Grove. Hank Williams played Sunset Park, pulling up in his Cadillac, the same Cadillac in which his life would end a few years down the road in West Virginia. It must have been an impressive car, as it was mentioned in all of the accounts of Williams' visit.
The shows were big-time, Sutherland remembered, the crowds huge. But in a way, the shows were also kind of intimate. The artists would mingle with the crowd and glad hand and chat, sometimes sharing a picnic lunch or have a cold beverage. Some of the singers and musicians got to know people very well, so well that York County was like a second home.
And that's how it came about that Elvis visited the Sutherland farm.
Sort of.
His older sister, Anna Mae, made it happen.
Anna Mae went to a lot of the shows with her friend, Elzora Harold, Sutherland recalled. After a show in Baltimore, they got to meet Hank Snow and got along well. It didn't hurt that, according to Sutherland, his sister and her friend were drop-dead gorgeous and attracted musicians like flies to a cow pie. Musicians are dogs, in that regard.
Snow always made a point of saying hello to Sutherland's sister and her friend when he played the area. It was all very innocent, at least on the girls' part. Sutherland couldn't vouch for Hank Snow's intentions. He always seemed to be a gentleman, and if he had deeper desires, he kept them buried. At least around Sutherland and his family.
One time -- this would have been the summer between the seventh and eighth grades, Sutherland remembered -- Hank Snow came out to the farm to visit with his sister. He had his band with him, and among them was a skinny kid -- dark eyes, dark hair, slicked up. The kid had been singing with Snow, doing a few shows here and there. He had been a big fan of country music and was a pretty decent singer. Least that's what they said.
It was a nice visit. Not much happened. The kid didn't make that much of an impression. Sutherland seems to recall that he was kind of quiet and respectful, not at all what you would think.
A couple of years later, Elvis appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and that was that. Sutherland recognized the kid. He never realized that that skinny kid he met at the farm would become that big of a deal.
Of course, he turned out to be bigger than a big deal, bigger than Hank Snow, bigger than Hank Williams, bigger than country music. He became legend.
"When I met him, he was just some kid with Hank Snow," Sutherland said. "But he went up like wild fire. Back then, he didn't seem like a big deal. He was just another guy."
Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046.Read more Argento columns at www.ydr.com/mike or visit his blog at www.mikeargento.com. Or follow him on Twitter at FnMikeArgento.
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