MUNCIE, Ind. — On June 26, 1977, a woman named Wilma from Delaware County was in the audience at Market Square Arena when Elvis Presley performed his final concert almost two months before his death.
Back then, fans could take cameras into concerts, and it appears Wilma’s husband did just that, for he shot 112 photographs captured on forty master negatives, which were buried away in a cedar chest in Muncie in an abandoned storage area just waiting to be rediscovered by Derek Lloyd, who bought the storage locker contents and literally dug up to his elbows into a treasure trove of Elvis memorabilia.
“We get to the scarf and all the additional books and newspaper clippings from back in the ’70s before he passed away,” said Lloyd, founder of the Legends of Indiana Micro Museum in Winchester, who discovered more than just the negatives in the cedar chest. “I kinda just felt like I was connected once I went through and sat down and had them all digitized, and it’s almost like I was there.”
For those who were there, $15 bought a seat on the aisle inside MSA to see the King.
“This is two ticket stubs for the last concert,” said Lloyd, displaying the tickets Wilma and her husband kept from that long-ago legendary night and the next-to-last concert 24 hours earlier. “These are two ticket stubs from the night before in Cincinnati at the Riverfront Coliseum. That’s where the scarf actually came from.”
Yes, Lloyd has a scarf, authenticated, from the Cincinnati show, and stubs from another Indiana performance the year before that many fans may not know about.
“This was May 27, 1976, when he was at Assembly Hall,” said Lloyd, showing proof that Elvis played IU a year earlier.
The centerpieces of Lloyd’s find are the previously undeveloped photographic negatives, which he took to a lab in Ohio to restore and digitize.
“A lot of iconic photos,” he said. “There’s three shots on each one, and it’s the final bow. It’s from when he walks out on stage basically to the final adios.”
That exit would have preceded Al Dvorin’s classic concert finale announcement, “Elvis has left the building,” for one last time.
“Since nobody really knew that was going to be his last one, there’s a few snippets here, a few shots there, but to actually have the complete final bow is pretty insane, I feel like to me,” said Lloyd. “You can tell in some of these photos the smile, for as much a performer as he was, he gave it his all, I feel like. You could see the fans reaching out trying to grab the scarves and actually him bending down and talking to the fans, he was still Elvis.”
Lloyd said there were 44 scarves passed down from the stage from Elvis’ hands to his fans at MSA that night, but the piece of cloth embossed with Presley’s name from the night before in Cincinnati may be even more rare.
“That’s a stage-worn scarf from the night at the Riverfront Coliseum, and that is authenticated,” he said. “It’s dirty. It’s got some DNA on there, some sweat stains.”
MSA, and the last stage on which Elvis ever strode, came down in an implosion in 2001.
A modest marker on the sidewalk below what was the MSA location notes the historic significance of the long-passed arena and the final concert before Elvis boarded that last train for Memphis.
Included with the marker is a time capsule containing fan letters, a concert program, a recording of the concert and a Graceland catalog.
The time capsule won’t be opened until June 26, 2102, 125 years after the last show.
You can view some of the Legends of Indiana Micro Museum collection at 765deals.com.
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