Presley's shows at the International were released on the album On Stage, which has sold over one million copies. He performed at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in February for six record-breaking shows. Elvis released the multi-format hit single "The Wonder Of You", #1 in the U.K. for six weeks, #1 in Ireland for three weeks and the #1 Adult song in the U.S., as well as #9 Popular and #37 Country.
Presley also released a documentary, Elvis: That's the Way It Is, which featured concert footage of his shows at the International. He also toured for one week for the first time since 1958.
At this point, Elvis was shifting towards a more Adult sound, as his audience was growing up. The Platinum album That's the Way It Is reflected that change. "I've Lost You" is a song originally recorded by Ian Matthews for his first solo album after leaving Fairport Convention. Elvis covered it and it reached #5 on the Easy Listening chart but stalled at #32 on the Popular chart despite it being a Gold record.
Presley included "I've Lost You" in his set list for his third season in Las Vegas. Concerned about rampant drug use in the United States, Elvis reached out to President Richard Nixon and arranged a meeting at the White House on December 21, 1970.
The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Elvis one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971, an odd award considering Presley was 36 at the time. Memphis joined in the tributes to Elvis by naming the part of Highway 51 South where Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard".
Elvis received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards, the first time a Rock and Roll artist was so honored. Presley recorded 35 songs in marathon sessions in Nashville that resulted in three studio albums in 1970 and 1971 (Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old)), Love Letters from Elvis and Elvis Sings The Wonderful World of Christmas, the latter now tops three million in sales), matching his output for the previous eight years. None of them matched the freshness or quality of the 1969 Memphis sessions but we do want to feature two songs from those albums.
Elvis recorded another Eddy Arnold song on the album Elvis Country--"I Don't Really Want To Know.
Elvis recorded the Christmas standard "Merry Christmas Baby" for his holiday release, and another live album, Elvis In Person, went Gold, as did the 1972 album Elvis Now.
Presley released the film Elvis on Tour, which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary. Elvis released another great Gospel album, He Touched Me, which won a Grammy for Best Inspirational Performance and has gone Platinum. The album includes a great version of "Amazing Grace".
Presley did a short tour to promote the album that included four sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City, a record at the time. The July 10 performance was recorded and released as the album Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden, a three million-seller. By this time, Presley was wearing a white American Eagle cape, which he would spread out to reveal wings of the eagle that were attached to the back at the end of his concerts.
In February of 1972, RCA recorded Elvis live in Las Vegas for the first time since August of 1970. There was enough new material for about half of an album. Elvis wanted to release a single of his live version of "The Impossible Dream" from Man From La Mancha.
As much as he put into that song, Presley chose Mickey Newbury's "An American Trilogy" instead, with which he loved since Newbury released the song. A loose medley of the Confederate anthem "Dixie", the slavery Folk song "All My Trials", and the rousing Union rallying cry "Battle Hymn Of The Republic", the song spoke to Elvis not just because of its inescapable historical divisions but about the resolution he hoped would some day come.
The thing that the South must always understand is the other 70% of the country will never ever tolerate bigotry and racism. Ever. So that is a non-starter.
Elvis's version features a great arrangement by keyboardist Glen D. Hardin and Elvis delivered an amazing performance of the song, which became a staple of his live act over the years.
Meanwhile, Elvis and Priscilla were drifting apart and an affair with Joyce Bova resulted in a pregnancy and subsequent abortion. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972.
Presley's '68 Comeback Special had reinvigorated him as well as his career, albeit for a short time. Sales had suffered in the last two years and chart success had dried up again. Something had to be done.
Elvis booked recording sessions at the RCA Studios in Hollywood for March 27-29 of 1972, sandwiched in between the end of his shows in Las Vegas for February and preparations for a larger nationwide tour.
Jarvis had assembled quality material for Elvis to record, but the main question was the artist himself. He arrived in Hollywood brooding over the failing of his marriage with Priscilla, alternating between feelings of sadness and frustration.
Jarvis and others were concerned about Presley's state of mind. He didn't seem interested in recording a hit record, and favored sad ballads over Rock songs. But an uptempo tune was exactly what the album needed.
The song that got Elvis inspired was "Separate Ways". When he heard it, he stopped and began recording it with a manic resolve. There were endless takes of the song about a man's separation from his daughter and wife, not done with a desire for perfection, but more of a therapy that Presley felt he needed. Jarvis could not shake Elvis from his gloomy mood.
On the second night, Jarvis finally got Presley to record "Burning Love". Observers could tell Elvis's heart wasn't in it, but he performed it like the professional he was. On August 1, 1972 Presley released the single "Burning Love", his final Top 10 hit.
The third night produced another of Presley's best, a song later made famous by Willie Nelson.
Co-writer Wayne Carson told SmoothRadio.com that he wrote most of the song in 10 minutes at his kitchen table in Springfield, Missouri. Carson kept the song for over a year and was finishing a recording session when Moman (Presley's producer) asked Carson about recording "that mind" song, but said it needed a bridge.
Wayne went upstairs to work on it when Johnny Christopher and Mark James walked in and Carson asked for their help to finish the song. Between the three of them, the two-line "tell me..." bridge was added and the song was passed to one of Elvis's bodyguards.
Elvis recorded his version of the song on March 29, 1972, a few weeks after his separation from wife Priscilla--"Always On My Mind".
Five months after the Presleys separated, Elvis' new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, moved in to Graceland. Elvis and Priscilla filed for divorce on August 18. Regarding his infidelity and divorce, Elvis made an important statement--"Well," he said, "the image is one thing and the human being another...it's very hard to live up to an image."
"Memories" is a song that Elvis performed on his television special, not the one from the Broadway classic Cats, but one written by Mac Davis and Billy Strange. "They had asked for a song about looking back over the years, and oddly enough, I had to write it in one night," Davis later recalled to Billboard Magazine. "I stayed up all night at Billy Strange's house in Los Angeles. He had a little office set up in his garage. I wrote it right there."
"Memories" was the B-side to "Charro", the title song from yet another bad Presley movie that also went nowhere. "Memories", on the other hand, reached #7 on the Adult chart and has stood the test of time.
Feeling as if he had momentum, Elvis recorded his first secular studio album in eight years, the 1969 Gold release From Elvis in Memphis. It was one of the first times that Presley got to choose the songs on the album, and not the overbearing Colonel Tom Parker. Was Elvis's '68 Comeback Special just a blip on the radar or was he really back to stay?
As it turned out, Presley brought his A-game for this album. Mac Davis had written for Elvis before, including "A Little Less Conversation". Presley wanted to hear what else Mac had; Mac gave him this next song and "Don't Cry Daddy", both of which Elvis recorded.
Davis explained the song when he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006:
It's a simple matter of growing up with
a little boy who's father worked with my
father. He lived in a part of town that
was a dirt-street ghetto. I grew up in
Lubbock, Texas, and it was a ghetto
in every sense of the word, but we
didn't use that word back then. I was
trying to come up with a song called
"The Vicious Circle", how a child is
born, he has no father, and the same
thing happens. The word "Ghetto"
became popular in the late '60's to
describe the poor parts of town. A
friend of mine, Freddy Weller, who
used to play guitar for Paul Revere
and the Raiders, showed me a lick on
the guitar one day. I went home and
fiddled around with it, I wrote the
song and called him up at 4 in the
morning and sang it to him. He knew
I'd written a hit with his lick, but that's
the way it goes.
But it wasn't a slam dunk--both RCA and Colonel Parker didn't want Elvis to do "message songs". Presley, to his credit, overruled both and booked a recording session at American Sound Studio in Memphis, the first time he had recorded there since 1955. American was a tiny studio in a rundown neighborhood operated by producer Chips Moman.
The Memphis sessions were a direct consequence of the '68 Comeback Special, as Moman became interested in helping Elvis record songs in his new style. Presley's recordings had become stale in Nashville, and the switch to Memphis yielded some of Elvis's best songs in years. Those landmark sessions produced enough material for two albums.
Heard separately, the two albums were solid, but it wasn't until 1987 when A&R man, Gregg Geller combined the two albums into The Memphis Record that one could appreciate the quality that resulted from the Memphis sessions.
With not only good material that had eluded him but with a newfound energy and excitement, Elvis' performance was fresh. He poured his heart and soul into every track, a welcome change from the days of soundtrack purgatory.
The lead single from From Elvis In Memphis was "In The Ghetto", his first Top 10 hit in five years (#2 in the U.K. and Canada and #3 in the United States).
We want to also feature several of the best examples of this renewed energy and passion from the album, a landmark achievement from a 34-year-old Elvis. Featuring Blues-influenced horns from the famous Memphis Horns led by Wayne Jackson on trumpet and Andrew Love on saxophone, which included Dick Steff and R.F. Taylor on trumpet, trombonists Ed Logan, Jack Hale and Gerald Richardson, Tony Cason and Joe D'Gerolamo on French horn, and saxophonists Andrew Love, Jackie Thomas, Glen Spreen (who arranged the horns as well as the strings) and J.P. Luper, here is "Power Of My Love".
(Jackson, left, Love on right)
Jackson and Love played on nearly every song that included a horn section at Stax Records, working with Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes and Sam and Dave, among others, but their reputation also led to work at American Sound as well as Muscle Shoals in Alabama. They played horns on the Doobie Brothers' What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits and U2's Rattle and Hum and the Memphis Horns turned out amazing music for 30 years.
Jackson and Love lent their incredible sound to 83 Gold and Platinum award-winning songs and over 100 hits, including some of the most beloved songs of the 20th century--Otis Redding's "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay", "Respect" by Aretha Franklin, "When A Man Loves A Woman" by Percy Sledge, Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", Al Green's "Let's Stay Together", Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer", "Cry Like A Baby" from the Box Tops, "Roll With It" from Steve Winwood, Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour", Presley's "In The Ghetto" and another Elvis classic we will feature shortly.
Jerry Butler, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff wrote this song, a #4 hit by Butler. Elvis covered "Only The Strong Survive" for his comeback album.
The songwriting team of Dallas Frazier and Arthur Owens wrote "True Love Travels On A Gravel Road", a minor hit for Duane Dee but given credibility by the King.
Elvis played piano on "I'll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms)", a 1947 hit for Eddy Arnold.
However, Parker's ability to capitalize on the momentum was no more effective than at any other time in the '60's. The success of "In The Ghetto" was followed by yet another soundtrack song from yet another movie (The Trouble with Girls). "Clean Up Your Own Back Yard", also written by Davis along with Billy Strange, stalled at #35, but is among his best career songs.
Presley also wanted to go back to live performing, an instinct that proved right in his television special. But Parker, when the London Palladium offered $28,000 for a one-week engagement, said "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" One wonders how far Elvis would have gone with a manager who cared about him.
In July, Elvis returned to Las Vegas for his first regular live series of performances in 12 years. On July 31, Presley took to the stage at the International Hotel to an audience of over 2,000 screaming fans.
According to Priscilla Presley, The King was back on his throne and better than ever. The style of the show was loose and spontaneous, much different from most Vegas shows which had a rigid format. Elvis talked with the audience between sets, performed a wide range of musical styles, and wiped his forehead with handkerchiefs thrown onto the stage.
"He was like a tiger on stage that was unchained with this magnetism that drew everyone in," Priscilla said of her father's performance.
The original four-week, 57-show residency turned into a Presley takeover of Vegas--Elvis continued to perform in that same showroom every February and August for an annual salary of $1 million until his last show on December 12, 1976. The long-term residency set a new standard for future superstars in Las Vegas.
With Moore, Fontana and the Jordainaires opting out, Elvis had to find new backing musicians. Guitarist James Burton came aboard for the Vegas shows as did the Gospel groups the Imperials and Sweet Inspirations.
The Memphis sessions of 1969 also yielded what was to be Presley's final #1 song, written by Mark James, who first recorded and released the song in 1968. James (who also later wrote "Always On My Mind") soon moved to Memphis to write music, which turned out to be good timing.
When James' producer Don Crews learned that Elvis had booked time in the studio, he asked Mark if he had any songs that would be right for Elvis. After seeing the success that came as a result of the "Comeback Special", James felt Elvis needed to go to a more mature way of singing and performing, and needed material that fit that style. He and Don decided on this song as the perfect vehicle to announce Presley's return on the scene.
But it almost didn't happen. James happened to also be one of the principal writers for Chips Moman. Moman loved the song but refused to give up the publishing rights and Colonel Parker's representative, Tom Diskin, said that in that case the song would not be recorded (sound familiar?)
It was only Elvis' interference that led to his recording a song which, with its mature message and vocal mastery, would define the latter stages of his career. "I played him Mark's [record label] Scepter record, and he was crazy about it," Moman told The Wall Street Journal. "He wanted to hear the song over and over again, and learned it on the spot."
Presley recorded "Suspicious Minds" in eight takes on January 23, 1969 between 4-7 a.m. RCA producer Felton Jarvis recorded a horn overdub in Las Vegas, meant to portray Elvis' live performances in which both the singer and band faded out, then came roaring back to a wild audience reaction. In a Las Vegas studio, Jarvis faded the song, looped it, and brought it back again.
"Suspicious Minds" roared to #1 in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand, #2 in the United Kingdom and Italy, #3 in Denmark, #4 in Sweden and #5 in Spain and was a Top 10 smash in virtually every country in the world. It ranked as The #138 Song of the Rock Era* in 2016.
"Suspicious Minds" was Presley's first #1 in seven years, and would be his last. Here is another hit taken from those Memphis sessions, and another written by Davis. Although Elvis did not write the song, he no doubt felt its emotion. His own father, Vernon, had become a widower when Gladys passed away in 1958.
Elvis certainly had several upbeat hits in his career, but his amazing talent also allowed him to deliver great heartbreakers. Presley punctuates the sad lyrics of "Don't Cry Daddy" with heartfelt emotion that comes through his voice. The song also landed in the Top 10 in most countries, including #2 in New Zealand, #5 in Canada and #6 in the U.S.
Elvis certainly was the King of Rock & Roll whose immense talent allowed him to knock Rockabilly, R&B, and Blues-influenced Rock songs out of the park in his early days while also being able to sing tender ballads as if they were his own. But his star transcended musical genres in a way no one else in history has achieved. Presley's deep religious background made him one of the most historically-important Gospel singers and in the last years of his career, he embraced Country music. And Country music embraced him.
An aspiring Country singer/songwriter wrote this song for Elvis, and another Country performer without a hit to his name played piano on the track. Both went on to become big stars.
The singer/songwriter was an unknown named Eddie Rabbitt, who wrote the song with Dick Heard. Rabbitt worked at Hill and Range Publishers, and he nearly earned a recording contract when a major producer heard the song and told Eddie to record it. Before that happened, though, Lamar Fike, who also worked at the publishing company and was a good friend of Elvis, heard the demo and brought it to Elvis.
"He took the song to Elvis and Elvis wanted to record it as the A side of his new single," Rabbitt said in a 1987 interview. "I said, 'That's great and not so great.'" Eddie relented, and ultimately realized it was a good move for his career. "I thought if this is the only hit song I ever write, then it is better that Elvis does it because he's the King."
The piano player would later enjoy big success with songs like "It Was Almost Like A Song", "Smoky Mountain Rain" and "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me", but at the time he entered the studio, didn't have a hit to his name. Ronnie Milsap explained in an interview with Goldmine Magazine how it was that he came to play piano on this song:
It came about because there was no one
else to play piano. There was nobody
else there at American Studios that night
to do it. Chips Moman, who was running
that studio and producing the Elvis
sessions said, "Ronnie Milsap's here in the
building, bring him in."
I played on that record and sang on that
record, too. I played grand piano on
"Kentucky Rain" while Elvis was cutting
his vocal live. (Elvis would say "More
thunder on that piano, Milsap!", Ronnie
recalled.) His producer Felton Jarvis
was excited about it and he was
partnering with Chips Moman who ran
American Studios down in Memphis.
Although it reached #3 on the Easy Listening chart and #6 in Canada, its #16 peak overall in the U.S. makes "Kentucky Rain" another of The Top Unknown/Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*.
Presley released the double album From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis, which included live shows at the International on the first disc and unreleased songs from the American Sound sessions on the second. The first disc, titled In Person from the International Hotel, includes an extended version of "Suspicious Minds".
The second disc is titled Back In Memphis and contains 10 songs recorded in the 1969 American Sound session that were not used for the From Elvis In Memphis album. Still, "Stranger In My Own Home Town" contains the same energy and intensity that exudes from the previous album. It starts with a deep Soul groove and doesn't let up when Elvis sings. FromBack in Memphis. 1969 From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis has been certified Gold.
One step away from The #1 Artist of the Rock Era*, but still much more from Elvis!
Meanwhile, Elvis continued to star in bad movies, making 27 films in the 60's. The busy schedule that movies requires kept Presley from doing something he actually did well--recording music. As for the music chosen for the soundtrack albums, Gordon Stoker said that Elvis would back away from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it."
So Elvis was held back, as are all artists who cannot write their own music, and they are dependent on others to write it for them. Most artists are capable of rejecting songs they do not like; Elvis was not.
The combination of those two factors left Presley unprepared to compete once the Beatles landed in America. From 1964 through 1968, Elvis charted a Top 10 song just once out of 33 releases.
The one winner was this one, which Presley recorded in 1960 but left it off his Gospel album His Hand in Mine because he didn't feel it was good enough. Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires recalled how the song was recorded:
We had been singing since 6 or 7 o'clock in
the evening during that session. At about 3
a.m., Elvis said "Let's do 'Crying In The
Chapel'". Of course, the recording was
pretty much of a hit, so we had all heard it
on the radio. The song was recorded by a
guy over in east Tennessee, and it got a
lot of plays around Nashville. Elvis liked
the record and had it with him in the studio.
Presley underestimated his performance--"Crying In The Chapel" was a #3 hit in the United States that reached #1 in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Italy and Norway.
Although "Crying In The Chapel" was a surprise hit, it didn't reinvigorate Presley's career like he had hoped; he wouldn't touch the Top 10 for three more years. This song from Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott was on the 1962 album Pot Luck, but like the one that follows, it was released as a single in 1965 due to its inclusion in the movie Tickle Me.
"(Such An) Easy Question" reached #4 in Canada, #10 in the U.K. and #11 in the United States.
Presley and his friends invited the Beatles to Elvis's home in Bel Air, California in August, 1965.
This song too was recorded in 1961 and featured on the 1962 album Pot Luck. "I'm Yours" was also released in 1965 and it became a Gold single and peaked at #2 in Canada and #11 in the U.S. (#1 Easy Listening).
In 1965, Presley released the album Elvis for Everyone!
Those soundtracks did continue to sell for a while even though they were bad: Kissin' Cousins, Roustabout and Girl Happy all went Gold and Frankie and Johnny went Platinum. But even those buyers soon figured out that Elvis' songs had lost the magic and no soundtrack album went Gold after Frankie and Johnny in 1966.
The Girl Happy soundtrack yielded one of Elvis' most popular songs, "Puppet On A String", a Gold record which reached #3 in Canada and #3 on the Easy Listening chart in the U.S. (#14 overall).
Elvis was beginning to run out of material for the reasons referred to earlier in our series. He recorded this song in 1957 but it wasn't judged worthy at the time. With little new material, Presley had no choice. It was too short for a single release, but they got around the issue in production by repeating the concluding verse and chorus. Elvis released "Tell Me Why" in December of 1965 and it reached #7 in Canada but only #33 in the U.S., as support from radio was declining on nearly a record-by-record basis.
Elvis is one of at least 256 artists to record this song. "Frankie And Johnny" is the title song from his movie. It climbed to #3 in Canada and #4 on the Easy Listening chart in the United States.
Presley released the single "Love Letters", a song first popularized in 1945 when Dick Haymes performed the song without lyrics for the movie of the same name. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in that year. Ketty Lester reached #5 with the vocal version in 1961 and Elvis' version hit #6 in the U.K. and #7 in New Zealand and Italy.
This song written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan was recorded during the sessions for Presley's album How Great Thou Art. Elvis first heard the song from Charlie McCoy, according to the book Elvis Presley: A Life In Music - The Complete Recording Sessions by Ernst Jorgensen. McCoy worked on the Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde recording sessions for Dylan and when he played the 1965 Odetta album Odetta Sings Dylan before a recording session, Elvis "had become taken with 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time'."
As Christmas approached in 1966, Elvis proposed to Priscilla and the two were married May 1, 1967 in Las Vegas.
This song is a Swedish hymn that was translated into English by Stuart Hine in 1949 but gained considerable exposure when George Shea sang it on a Billy Graham crusade in 1957. Eventually, the song found its way into hymnals.
Presley booked a session in Nashville in 1967 to record new material and he released the album How Great Thou Art, named after the classic Gospel song that highlights the album, which reached #18. Millie Kirkham, June Page, Dolores Edgin and Jake Hess and the Imperial Quartet were brought in to give the songs a fuller sound.
"How Great Thou Art" won the 1967 Grammy Award for Best Sacred Performance and the album has sold over three million copies.
In 1967, Elvis won his first Grammy Award for Best Sacred Performance for the album How Great Thou Art, which has now topped three million in sales.
Only when the "Clambake" Soundtrack did not sell later in the year did RCA executives realize there was a problem with the music chosen for Presley's movies.
Priscilla gave birth to Lisa Maire on February 1, 1968. Elvis was about to star in the movie Live A Little, Love A Little, which was one of his last.
Mac Davis wrote the original version for Aretha Franklin, but when Billy Strange, who was Music Director for the movie, asked Davis about contributing a song, Mac realized that "A Little Less Conversation" was perfect for the scene where it would be featured. Davis reworked the song with Strange and Elvis recorded it.
The single stalled at #69, but when it was remixed in 2002, the new version rose to #1 in the U.K., giving Elvis a record 18 #1 hits there.
"You'll Never Walk Alone" captured Presley at the piano delivering a passionate performance from the heart of a song he had always loved.
Jerry Reed wrote and recorded the original of this song but let Elvis record it after producer Felton Jarvis desperately begged him for material. After two nights of recording, there were only three songs that Jarvis felt he could use. Presley was inspired by "U.S. Male" and turned it into an energetic recording. The song was later included on the 1970 compilation album Almost in Love.
Seeing that his plan for Elvis to stay busy in films and away from recording in the studio was a dismal failure, Parker then shifted to television. Elvis recorded a TV special for NBC called Elvis on December 3 in Burbank, California. The performance, Presley's first since 1961, would come to be known as the '68 Comeback Special and featured Elvis in tight black leather singing and playing guitar in a style reminiscent of his early days. The showearned 42% of the viewing audience.
One of the songs Elvis performed was a cover of this Jimmy Reed song from 1959--"Baby What You Want Me To Do".
The soundtrack album rose to #8, Elvis' first Top 10 album in three years, and has sold over one million copies. The following is taken from a story of this next song on Graceland.com.
1968 was a tumultuous year in the United States. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Presley's hometown (Memphis, Tennessee) on April 4. On the heels of that tragic news came word that Robert Kennedy, the frontrunner for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated on June 6.
Elvis was visibly affected by the news of Kennedy's assassination, which led to the song "If I Can Dream", a tribute to King that included direct quotes from him.
While Presley was working on the television special, he saw news about Kennedy's death and spent an entire night with the show's director, Steve Binder, and his friends, talking about the assassinations and Elvis' hopes for the world.
It was an emotional night and Binder felt Elvis had an important message to give, so he went to the show's Music Director Billy Goldenberg and songwriter Earl Brown and told them about the discussion that had taken place at Binder's house. Binder wanted a powerful song to close out the TV special. Colonel Parker and the producers planned to end with a Christmas song but Binder convinced them to end it with "If I Can Dream".
He wanted a powerful, meaningful song that would close out the TV special. Because the special was slated to air in December, the producers and Elvis' manager, Col. Tom Parker, had planned to end the show with a Christmas song, but Binder had other ideas. It wasn't long before "If I Can Dream" was born.
Brown came up with the song and Binder played it for Elvis to Presley's satisfaction. Elvis recorded it on June 23 with several impassioned takes, even though many said his first was perfect.
After the band and vocalists had left for the evening, Presley gave an even more amazing performance. He ordered the lights turned off and let himself be completely affected by the music, eventually falling to his knees on the concrete floor.
After he was finished, Presley went in the control room to hear the newly-recorded vocals. He was so moved by the song and his experience recording it that he told Binder, "I'll never sing another song I don't believe in. I'm never going to make another movie I don't believe in."
"If I Can Dream", a Gold record that peaked at #12 was featured in the television special and is among Presley fans' most favorite songs.
Elvis' vocals were still sterling, and the television special reignited his career. We have much more to come. Join us for Part Nine!
