Elvis wanted two backup singing groups—one female and one male—and they were just as important to him as the band. “I wanted voices behind me,” he said, “to help add to the fullness of the sound and dynamics of the show.” He liked the popular girl group the Blossoms (who had appeared in his 1968 NBC special), but they were working with Tom Jones, so instead he hired the Sweet Inspirations, a group he had never met but who had done fine work with Aretha Franklin and had recorded a hit single of their own, “Sweet Inspiration.” (The quartet’s lead singer at the time was Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother.) The Jordanaires were the natural first choice for a male backup group, having worked with Elvis regularly ever since the mid-1950s. But they turned down the job—a decision they later regretted—because it would have meant giving up too much session work in Nashville. So Elvis opted instead for the Imperials, a gospel quartet that had sung with him on his 1967 album, How Great Thou Art.
“I think Elvis was more influenced by his gospel roots than people realize,” said Terry Blackwood, who joined the group in 1967, and whose father had been part of the Blackwood Brothers, a gospel quartet Elvis had often heard in church while growing up in Memphis. “We were power singers. And Elvis liked that. He didn’t want to just croon a song. He wanted to sing a song with power and with everything that’s within him. He learned that from watching gospel quartets.”
The final piece in the musical conglomeration was a full Vegas orchestra, which would be conducted by the International’s new music director, Bobby Morris. A widely respected drummer, who had played for years with Louis Prima and Keely Smith, Morris was originally hired as music director of the new hotel’s lounge, but was asked to take over the main showroom as well when bandleader Harry James backed out. Morris had never led an orchestra before and actually took conducting classes at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to prepare for the job. Colonel Parker put him on the payroll and flew him out to Los Angeles to meet with Elvis, help pick songs, and work on the orchestrations. Morris put together an exceptionally large group of more than forty musicians, including two dozen string players. Kirk Kerkorian even told Morris to have the hotel’s tailor make him a new tuxedo for the show. This was going to be a big deal.
Too big, in some ways, for Colonel Parker, who wasn’t happy with the huge array of musicians and singers Elvis had assembled, since all of their salaries (save for the hotel orchestra) would come out of Elvis’s pocket—a total payroll of $80,000 for the four-week engagement. The Colonel took out his displeasure on the band members by ignoring them as much as possible, to make sure they didn’t get the idea that they were indispensable. “Most of us in the band had very little to do with Colonel Parker,” said Ronnie Tutt. “He wanted as little association to be seen between him and us—because it made us less valuable, dollar-wise.”
Yet the Colonel gave Elvis no pushback; for his big return to the concert stage, Elvis would have all the company he wanted. The musicians onstage represented a grand coming together of all the music Elvis loved and that had shaped him as a singer: rock ’n’ roll, country, gospel, rhythm and blues—plus the symphonic sound of a full orchestra, for the Memphis kid whose favorite singers growing up had included opera star Mario Lanza. “For the first time, Elvis could have everything that influenced him on the stage,” said Jerry Schilling. “This was the deprived musician, who had not been able to control his music, either in the recording studio or the movies. And now he was going to satisfy all his musical desires on that stage.”
Rehearsals began on July 18, two weeks before the scheduled opening, at the RCA studios in Los Angeles. Colonel Parker gave each member of the rhythm band a suitcase filled with every album Elvis had recorded, so they could be familiar with the songs. But Elvis made it clear that he didn’t want them simply to duplicate the old recordings. “I asked if Elvis wanted me to play the songs as he had recorded them,” said Ronnie Tutt. “And he said, ‘No, man, that’s the reason you’re here. I want you to play what you play, what you hear.’ And that’s the way our relationship was the whole time. I don’t think I can even count on one hand the times he said I need this or I need that.”
The rehearsals, by all accounts, went smoothly, in a relaxed and collaborative atmosphere. “Elvis always wanted to know what the band felt. He wanted the band to be as happy as he was,” said James Burton. “But it was always his decision.” Jerry Scheff described the typical working process: “When we started working on a new song, we would start by listening to it on tape. Sometimes it would be a studio version. We’d listen to the song a few times and then start discussing how we were going to turn it into our own version. Someone would make a suggestion; someone else would throw their two cents in. We talked about the tempo and the feeling; we tore the song apart and put it back together again.” For Larry Muhoberac, the rehearsals were “fun but pressurized. We wanted it to work for him so badly.”
Burton estimated that the group learned about one hundred and fifty songs, though the final playlist was whittled down to fifty or so, only about thirty of which were actually performed in the show. Elvis and Charlie Hodge worked together to fine-tune the set list as the week of LA rehearsals progressed. Songs like “Memphis” and “The Green, Green Grass of Home” (a current hit for Tom Jones) were included early on, but later discarded, replaced by a mix of vintage Elvis hits and contemporary numbers reflecting his new, more ballad-oriented style.
After a week in Los Angeles, the rehearsals moved to Las Vegas, where the two vocal groups were added to the mix; the orchestra joined for the final two days of rehearsals in the Showroom Internationale. The Sweet Inspirations met Elvis for the first time, and they were won over instantly. “He was so gorgeous,” said Myrna Smith, one of the singers and the group’s informal business manager. “He showed up, introduced himself, ‘Hi, I’m Elvis,’ and gave each of us a kiss on the lips. Cissy was so excited she fell off her stool.” The group picked up quickly on what Elvis wanted and needed. “He didn’t give us much musical input except if he didn’t like what we were doing,” said Smith. “Then he’d wait until we had finished the song and tell us, ‘I don’t want you to sing there.’ He did it in such a nice way where it wasn’t like he was chastising you.” The Imperials, his gospel backup group, were in less familiar musical territory, but they, too, found Elvis supportive and easy to work with. “Very seldom would he say, ‘No, don’t sing there,’ ” said Terry Blackwood. “Because we kinda had like minds about where the vocals should go, even though it was music we weren’t used to singing.”
Anticipation and spirits were high. “Elvis was in a great mood,” said Scheff, “and as he heard the energy build, day after day, song after song, he became even more buoyant. He was wonderful to be around at that time—kidding around, singing naughty lyrics to songs, laughing all the while.” Elvis looked as good as he had in years—trim and energetic, his weight down to around 165 pounds. He wore weights on his wrists and ankles during rehearsals to build up his strength and stamina. Bill Belew, who had designed Elvis’s black leather outfit for the NBC special, came up with several two-piece karate-style outfits for him to wear in Las Vegas, made of stretch gabardine (manufactured by the same company that made costumes for the Ice Capades) that would allow him to move as freely as possible. Elvis fretted over what to do with his hair—which was longer than in the old days, dyed black, with big, bushy sideburns—and he got testy about it one day when Priscilla suggested that he take a look at Ricky Nelson’s new hairstyle, which she had seen on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Elvis snapped at her, angry that she would suggest he copy one of the many young rock ’n’ rollers who for years imitated him.
Colonel Parker for the most part stayed away from the rehearsals and focused instead on what he did best: building the hype. “This town has never seen a promoter like me,” he told columnist Earl Wilson. And soon he proved it. Loanne Miller Parker, then working in the publicity department at the International Hotel, recalled the first meeting in May between Colone
l Parker’s team (including representatives of RCA Records) and the hotel’s publicity staff, in Kirk Kerkorian’s cottage behind the hotel. “Colonel did not ask how to publicize the Elvis show,” she said. “He guided and directed the publicity always. The hotel’s publicity and advertising department followed his direction.”
Working from a suite on the hotel’s fourth floor, Colonel Parker orchestrated a publicity campaign unlike any Las Vegas had ever seen. He bought up nearly every available billboard in town and plastered them with Elvis’s name. Signs touting Elvis’s show popped up on taxicabs and bus-stop benches across the city. Ads for the show blanketed local radio, some of them simply repeating “Elvis! Elvis! Elvis!” before a final message giving the time and place of the show. (The hotel’s publicity director, Nick Naff, thought they were “schlocky as all hell.”) The Colonel ordered thousands of photo albums, posters, banners, and other souvenirs, which were stored at the hotel, to be hauled out for sale in the lobby as soon as the engagement began.
“If you don’t do any business, don’t ever blame me,” Colonel Parker told Elvis. “Because even the gophers in the desert know you’re here.”
Parker was confident, but still nervous. Elvis had been away from the stage for years and was unproven as a Vegas attraction. Some were skeptical that he could bring in the crowds. “They didn’t know whether Elvis would be able to fill that room consistently,” said Loanne Miller Parker. “Coming to Vegas was not an inexpensive trip for people. And most of Elvis’s fans were blue-collar workers. They didn’t have the income to do this.” Yet four weeks before the opening, his shows were 80 percent sold-out—“the cafe box-office surprise of the season,” said Variety, an advance sale matched only by that of Vegas superstars like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Soon Elvis would surpass them. Requests came in from overseas—France, Germany, Japan—some fans wanting tickets for a whole week of performances. “We got calls from all over the world,” Alex Shoofey marveled. “We couldn’t accept all the reservations.”
And still, the old carnival promoter didn’t let up. “The Colonel’s philosophy was, once the show sells out, double the advertising,” said Jim McKusick, whose father was hired to place the billboard and other “out of home” advertising. You couldn’t turn a corner in Vegas and not know that Elvis Presley was going to be there. “The way Colonel Parker did promotion, he changed the dynamics of how the hotels marketed their headliners,” said Ron Garrett, a longtime Vegas publicist, producer, and radio host. “After Elvis it was a whole different ball game.”
The summer of 1969 was an eventful, often traumatic one for a nation coming to the end of a turbulent decade. In July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. In the early-morning hours of August 9, actress Sharon Tate and four others were murdered in her rented Los Angeles home by members of the Charles Manson family. A week later, thousands of rock fans gathered on a muddy farm in upstate New York for the Woodstock music festival. A new president, Richard Nixon, was in office, promising to bring US troops home from Vietnam, even as protests against the war were mounting and divisions in the country worsening.
And Las Vegas was trying to adapt to the social, cultural, and musical changes that were sweeping the country—changes that were making Vegas entertainment look increasingly dated and out of step.
Most of the city’s longtime stars were still riding high, but they were looking more and more like relics of a fading show-business era. Sinatra was drawing sellout crowds at his new home, Caesars Palace. Dean Martin had made a successful transfer from the Sands to the Riviera’s newly enlarged Versailles Room. Dinah Shore, Donald O’Connor, and Danny Thomas were among the old favorites headlining on the Strip the same week Elvis Presley opened at the International. Vegas’ notion of a new-generation star was Wayne Newton, the wildly popular headliner at the Frontier Hotel, who covered hits by the Beatles and Glen Campbell and dubbed himself Mr. Excitement.
To be sure, a few more contemporary, rocklike (if not quite rock) acts were trickling into Vegas. Tom Jones, the Welsh dynamo, returned in June for another packed engagement at the Flamingo Hotel. Elvis went to see him at least twice, studying his moves and even hiring Jones’s opening act, comedian Sammy Shore, to open his own show. (Shore, a journeyman from Chicago who had been working in Vegas for a couple of years—he would later open LA’s famous comedy club the Comedy Store with his wife, Mitzi—couldn’t believe his good fortune when Parker visited him backstage, said he was “a funny guy,” and offered him the biggest job of his career.) Another new pop phenom from Britain, Engelbert Humperdinck (née Arnold Dorsey), made his Las Vegas debut in June and was immediately signed to a three-year contract at the Riviera. Caesars Palace, in a bid for the hip crowd, even brought in a road production of Boys in the Band, the landmark gay play that had opened off-Broadway the year before. (The show did poor business and was soon cut back from two performances a night to one.)
Behind the scenes, Las Vegas’ two leading hotel moguls were in a battle for bragging rights. Kirk Kerkorian was racing to finish construction on the International, billed as the largest resort hotel in the world, in time for its July 2 opening. Howard Hughes, miffed that his supremacy in Las Vegas was being challenged, was trying to steal some of Kerkorian’s thunder with his own new megahotel, the Space Needle–like Landmark, just down the street from the International. Hughes had rescued the unfinished hotel from bankruptcy the year before and doubled its size to thirty-one stories—one more than the International, so that he could call it the tallest hotel in Vegas. (The International was actually still taller: 365 feet, to the Landmark’s 346.) Hughes succeeded in opening the Landmark one day before Kerkorian’s hotel—on July 1, with Danny Thomas starring in the showroom—but only after a chaotic few days, as Hughes had to resolve some last-minute financial issues and refused to OK a guest list or send out invitations until a day before the opening.
The International’s opening the following night was a more conventionally well-managed Vegas affair—though the last-minute construction work meant that nearly as many workmen were on the premises as guests. Cary Grant, Rudolf Nureyev, Andy Williams, and Rita Hayworth were among the stars on hand, along with celebrity impersonators who stepped out of limousines dressed as absent bigwigs like Queen Elizabeth. Amid all the hoopla, the press-shy Kerkorian slipped by all but unnoticed—exiting the front door of the hotel, walking to valet parking, and driving off before anyone in the press recognized him.
All eyes were on the opening headliner, Barbra Streisand, who began a four-week engagement that night. Entertainment director Bill Miller had turned to her only after Elvis had demurred, but she was still a big catch: one of the top concert stars in America, just coming off her Academy Award for Best Actress in Funny Girl.
Yet Streisand, who hadn’t appeared in Vegas since her rocky stint as Liberace’s opening act in 1963, seemed out of her element. She came in with a bare-bones show more suited to New York cabarets than a big Vegas showroom: no opening act, little production, none of the usual gushy star patter. Dressed in denim overalls (which she changed for a chiffon gown midway through the show), Streisand simply walked onstage, sat on a stool, and sang. Her first number, “I Got Plenty of Nothin’,” was perhaps meant as a joke, but nobody got it. She followed that with the lugubrious “My Funny Valentine” and four or five other numbers before she even spoke to the crowd. And then it was to grumble about the unfinished hotel. “Welcome to the almost-ready International Hotel,” she quipped. “Just shows what some people can do with a GI loan.” It was just the sort of thing Colonel Parker had feared when he turned down Miller’s offer to have Elvis open the new room.
“She’s a sweet girl, but she had that New York mentality,” said Bobby Morris, the hotel’s music director, who saw trouble ahead even in rehearsals and tried to warn her manager, to no avail. “Certain things work in New York and don’t work in Las Vegas. There was too much wisecracking. She seemed above it all.”
The reviewers mostly
agreed. “The jokes she cracked at the unfinished condition of the hotel, rather than making the audience laugh, alienated them,” wrote columnist May Mann. “They settled into a cold, resentful disgust.” Variety said Streisand “seemed ill at ease before the huge crowd” and compared her unfavorably with the singer who was appearing in the hotel’s lounge at the same time, Peggy Lee. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times came in for the opening and was uncharacteristically brutal: “Even allowing for the opening night tension, Miss Streisand’s appearance was a curious, cold, and intensely disappointing 80 minutes worth. . . . It was a performance which originated in a cool intellect rather than a warm heart; it was a handout, not a sharing.”
Streisand cried in her dressing room after the show. “I felt hostility come up on the stage in waves,” she would later say. “I worked, but it was total fear time. Of course it showed. They thought I was a snob, but I was really just scared.” Then she gathered herself and tried to salvage the show. The next night she changed her opening number to the more upbeat “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” following it with more of her big hits, like “People.” She got a much better reception, and as the engagement went on, Streisand grew more comfortable; some local columnists came back and found the show much improved. Champlin re-reviewed the show near the end of Streisand’s four-week run and called it a “scintillating display of her gifts. . . . More than that, she seemed to be having a ball, relaxed, amiable and in charge.” Still, Streisand did only middling business, with plenty of empty seats for the weeknight shows.
Elvis in Vegas : How the King of Rock 'n' Roll Reinvented the Las Vegas Show (9781501151217) Page 19
