The rest of the story...

Posted by ESC on October 14, 2002

In Reply to: Had he really left or was Horace being ironic? posted by Word Camel on October 14, 2002

I left off part of the story. See the third-from-bottom paragraph.

ct. 14, 2002
Radio Legend Horace Logan Dies at 86

VICTORIA, Texas (AP)--Horace Lee Logan, who started the country music program ``Louisiana Hayride'' and first said what became the catch-phrase ``Elvis has left the building,'' died Sunday. He was 86.

Logan had pancreatitis and acute respiratory distress syndrome, said his wife, Linda.

Logan began in radio when he was 16, after winning a contest to become an announcer on KWKH-AM in Shreveport, La., Mrs. Logan said.

He began producing the Hayride, a country music show performed before a live KWKH audience in Shreveport's Municipal Auditorium, in 1948. It survived only two years after Logan's departure in 1958.

In between, he introduced a number of country music's top names to the nation. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams were among people who got their first big break on the Hayride.

``When he gave you an introduction, you thought the president of the United States was coming on,'' Merle Kilgore, a friend of Logan's and manager for Hank Williams Jr., said Sunday from his home in Paris, Tenn. ``He was the greatest. Being on the Hayride ... that was a big as it got in the country music industry.''

When Presley debuted in 1954, Logan wrote in his 1998 memoir, ``Elvis, Hank and Me,'' he wanted to say something reassuring to the nervous young man, but didn't have time. Instead, he grabbed the microphone.

``Ladies and gentlemen, you've never heard of this young man before, but one day you'll be able to tell your children and grandchildren you heard musical history made tonight,'' he told the audience.

Two years later, tring to quiet a frenzied Hayride audience after another Presley performance, Logan announced, ``Elvis has left the building.''

``With his voice of authority,'' said Kilgore, who was in attendance that night, ``all of those kids shut up and believed him. Of course, Elvis really had left the building.''

The Logans had lived in Seadrift, Texas, on the San Antonio Bay, since 1995.

AP-NY-10-13-02 1903EDT