Memphis Radio: Wink Martindale Talks Friendship with Elvis

Wink Martindale w/Elvis

90-Year-Old radio/TV legend Wink Martindale was the headliner for "Conversations on Elvis," a public talk show-style event Saturday held in Memphis, as part of this week's commemoration of the Jan. 8, 1935, birthday of Elvis Presley. About 300 people attended, to hear stories about the King of Rock 'n' Roll from his friends and colleagues.

Remarkably fit with a voice almost as resonant as it was in his heyday, when he hosted such 1970s and '80s network game shows as "Gambit" and "Tic-Tac-Dough," Martindale was introduced as "a broadcast legend" and "the last survivor" of the historic night that introduced Elvis Presley, the entertainer, to what would prove to be a rapt and eager world.

In other words, Wink was more or less in The Room Where It Happened on that July night in 1954 when his fellow deejay, Dewey Phillips, played Elvis' version of "That's All Right" on the air, after Sun Records founder Sam Phillips (no relation to Dewey) delivered the acetate of the recording to the WHBQ radio studio, then located in the Chisca Hotel on Main Street.

"That was the beginning of Presleymania, and I just happened to be there at night," Martindale told the "Conversations" crowd.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports Martindale, the morning deejay, said he was at the station that night only because he was showing the studio to some visiting high school friends from his hometown of Jackson, Tennessee, where Winston Conrad "Wink" Martindale began his radio career before relocating to Memphis for his "dream" job on WHBQ. He said the Elvis song caused such a "commotion" that he was charged with calling Gladys and Vernon Presley at home, to get them to bring Elvis to the studio, to talk on the air about the song that was driving listeners wild.

"I met him that night, and he remained my friend until the day he died," Martindale said.

Martindale left Memphis for Los Angeles in 1959. In 1975, he married Sandy Ferra, Elvis' former girlfriend.