The February show yielded additional new material, enough to be compiled on another concert LP. Unlike the double album that captured the August 1969 show, this new record (entitled simply “On Stage,” with Elvis’s name not even appearing on the cover) collected several random tunes sung during the various concert performances of the month (as well as a couple taken from 1969).
“See See Rider” makes its Elvis concert debut here, and the old, depression-era blues song would go on to be used by Elvis as the show-opener for almost every performance the man would have until his death. As with everything else Elvis did on stage, the song was sung in warp-speed and given a pseudo-Gospel feel with the backing of The Sweet Inspirations.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“Release Me” is another old favorite, this one dating back to the late ’40s, but in the hands of Elvis is given a contemporary coat of paint, to the point where you’d believe it was recently written. He also sings it, as with almost everything else in this brief window of time, with such unbridled enthusiasm it’s almost awe-inspiring.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Having already recorded “And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind” for Neil Diamond in 1969, Elvis turned to another Diamond song—the soon to be seminal “Sweet Caroline”—and showed off his flair for interpretation. He did the same thing with a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday.”
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The first side of the On Stage LP ended with “The Wonder of You,” a top-25 hit for Ray Peterson in 1959. Elvis’s big band production sufficiently modernized it, and his belting vocals were strong enough for RCA to release it as a single. It reached #9 on the Billboard Hot100, and even reached number-one on the Adult Contemporary chart.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
On side two Elvis tore into a recent R&B song, “Polk Salad Annie” and had so much fun with it, he’d keep it in his live act for the next three years. He even played it at Madison Square Garden, offering the audience lyrics which no doubt entirely bewildered them!
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“Proud Mary” was another recent hit that Elvis saw the potential in, and as with “Polk Salad Annie” would use it in his live performances regularly through 1972. CCR took the song to #2 but Elvis never released it as a single. Tina Turner did, however, in 1971, and reached #4 with it, and won a Grammy. Elvis’s version is perhaps not as iconic as either of those takes, but it packed its own punch, nonetheless.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The album closed with a stirring ballad “Let it Be Me,” and demonstrated, above all else, Elvis’ remarkable gift for interpretation: He could take a song someone else had made synonymous to themselves and make you believe it had been written specifically for him. The On Stage album ended up being a big hit, going platinum in sales and reaching #12 on billboard’s charts, making it his fifth straight top-fifteen record. It would also set the precedent for RCA to release as many live albums as they could get away with, no matter how much of the material was repeated from record to record.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
The album wasn’t the only success; the February concerts themselves sold out every show. Keep in mind that the early months of the year were, historically, the worst time for Las Vegas. Musicians who played during the winter months rarely did so to huge crowds, and many hotels and casinos were hesitant to spend much money on luring big-name performers on the assumption that people just wouldn’t come to the desert in January. Nevertheless, Parker’s gamble paid off as did his booking of Elvis at a massive concert at the Houston Astrodome at the beginning of March. After that, there was a big studio recording session planned for June, followed by his first concert-tour since 1957, and then a documentary that Parker had planned to film and release as a closed-circuit concert show (the precursor to Pay Per View). There was no time to relax, which the easily-bored Presley needed now that his career had finally risen again.
