The big room: landmark concerts at the Memorial Coliseum

1952 — today

The arena years: The Allen County War Memorial Coliseum — dedicated September 28, 1952, as the county's memorial to its war dead, a history carried in the War Heroes and Famous Locations records — was for half a century the biggest indoor stage between Chicago and the Ohio line, and the touring music business used it that way. Its landmark bills are documented from the beginning. On March 30, 1957, Elvis Presley played the Coliseum on the third stop of his first tour of that year, with Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and D. J. Fontana; the local press heralded the show in advance as a bid for a new Coliseum crowd record, and it was Presley's only Fort Wayne appearance of the 1950s — local promoters noted it might be his last before the Army took him. He returned once, on October 25, 1976, in the last year of his life; the News-Sentinel's Connie Trexler reviewed him the next day as "the sweetest tough guy." The Coliseum maintains an official Historical Concert List of its music history, and the venue's own anniversary observances — it marked forty years since the 1976 Elvis show in 2016 — anchor a roster of arena-era headliners that runs from the rock-and-roll package tours through Johnny Cash, Journey, and Taylor Swift in the recollections the venue itself collects. The Coliseum as a building and memorial is treated elsewhere in this record; here it stands as what it also was: the room where northeast Indiana heard the national music, at full volume, for two generations.

Sources:

1. Scotty Moore's official site, "Memorial Coliseum — Ft. Wayne, IN" (scottymoore.net/FtWayne.html) — the March 30, 1957 Presley performance, the tour context, and the contemporary Fort Wayne press coverage reproduced there.
2. Allen County War Memorial Coliseum (memorialcoliseum.com, "History" and the venue's Historical Concert List; venue Facebook post of October 25, 2016) — the official concert-history roster and the October 25, 1976 Presley date.
3. News-Sentinel, Connie Trexler's review of the October 25, 1976 concert (published October 26, 1976), as preserved in the concert's documented record — "the sweetest tough guy."