On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley (with Scotty Moore and Bill Black), played the first night of a two-week engagement (playing 2 shows a day) at the New Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas – and bombed!

It was Elvis Presley’s very first Vegas gig — a two-week stand for a measly $17,000, with the man who would be King wedged in between the velvet-toned Freddie Martin Orchestra and borscht-belt shtickman Shecky Greene — and he bombed royally. The audience of mostly middle-aged marrieds from Middle America stared in slack-jawed silence as Elvis wailed such tunes as ”Blue Suede Shoes.” Newsweek described his performance as ”a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party” and reported that the crowd ”sat through Presley as if he were a clinical experiment.”

”I don’t want no more nightclubs,” he fumed to the press after one performance. ”An audience like this don’t show their appreciation the same way. They’re eating when I come on.” As if that weren’t humiliating enough, after a few days Elvis’ name on the hotel’s marquee was dropped from first to third billing — beneath the comedian and orchestra leader.

He didn’t return to Vegas until 1969.