Concerts and Championships: Salt Palace Marks 40 Years

Summary

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Years before any of the professional sports championships were won there, and long before the likes of John Stockton and Karl Malone overwhelmed opponents on its floor, the Salt Palace hosted its first major event.

Forty years ago today -- on July 12, 1969, just a night after a huge venue-warming party and a month after its completion -- Glen Campbell crooned his Western-style tunes to a sold-out audience of 13,420 inside a sparkling, new, odd-shaped arena.

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Extract

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Concerts and Championships: Salt Palace Marks 40 Years

Kind of fitting, really. Reminiscent of other local icons -- a la Donny and Marie Osmond and the Utah Jazz's dynastic duo -- the Salt Palace was a little bit country and a whole lot of pick-and-roll.

And that just scratches the surface of what took place inside the city's cream-colored cylinder after the guitar-playing Campbell, a very popular entertainer at the time who'd yet to become the Rhinestone Cowboy, took the first strum in the arena ...

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