The midnight show from August 11, 1970 was already known from BMG's boxed set "Elvis Live In Las Vegas". Because today the material from this compilation is available elsewhere, Sony Music Entertainment decided against a digital release. In case of this show it's a wise choice, because the Collector's Edition of "That's The Way It Is" sounds much better than the old releases.

Elvis enters the stage to the sounds of the "Opening Riff", Charlie Hodge hands him his guitar and the singer goes in medias res. It's a dynamic performance by any means. For this concert Elvis has chosen to wear the "White Chain Suit".

The singer toys around with the word "well", then he segues into a powerful rendition of "I Got A Woman".

With a few jokes Elvis introduces the rock'n'roll classic "Hound Dog". He doesn't take it seriously, but injects a lot of energy. It's an amusing reminder of the good ole' days.

Now Elvis returns his guitar to Charlie, drinks a bit of Gatorade and jokes with the audience. He also claims to have made "Love Me Tender" shortly before "Gone With The Wind" was released. Even though it's not that long ago, the times of the movie seem to be ages away. His performance is the usual circus of kissing women and fooling around with the audience. Before singing the next song Elvis kisses another girl and accepts a gift. It's a drawing of him, on which he thinks, he looks like Engelbert Humperdinck.

The king tells the audience, that he recently recorded a country album and wants to sing one of the songs from it. I guess it was a concession to MGM and RCA. The movie was supposed to be released at the end of 1970 and the release of "Elvis Country - I'm 10,000 Years Old" was planned for early 1971. Of course both parties were interested to feature current material and make use of the cross-promotion-effect. However, the performance of "There Goes My Everything" is a stunner and even better than the studio recording.

This one might also be a concession to RCA, because a studio recording of "Just Pretend" would be included on the forthcoming album "That's The Way It Is". His live rendition is just as great and belongs to the all time favorites of mine.

The laughing bag seems to be Elvis' favorite toy and he cannot help but showing it to the audience one more time. Afterwards he repeats the joke of not liking BJ Thomas' new record before presenting a very sincere and beautiful rendition of the song.

For the third and final time during this season Elvis sings The Beatles' hit "Something". He would return to the ballad in early 1971 and also include it in his television concert "Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite" (1973).

Back in 1953 Hank Williams recorded "Men With Broken Hearts" as a recitation with music. Now Elvis borrows a few lines of it to introduce "Walk A Mile In My Shoes". The socially critical song has been released in late 1969 by Joe South, in early 1970 the king performed it in Vegas as a medley with "In The Ghetto". It was also included on the current album "On Stage - February 1970". Today "Walk A Mile In My Shoes" is presented a tad faster and Ronnie Tutt's drumming differs to the one of Bob Lanning, who did the job during the king's previous Vegas stint.

The next performance is somewhat flawed. Elvis mixes up the lyrics and at one point his voice cracks. But it sounds worse than it actually is, because the king sings with a lot of power and emotion. I guess most people don't even realize these mishaps.

Elvis drinks some water and announces "We gonna get dirty now". Within a second Jerry Scheff starts to play the intro of "Polk Salad Annie" and the king turns the Showroom Internationale into a cauldron. He moves like a maniac and the well-behaved ladies instantly turn into a bunch of screaming teenagers.

Instead of introducing the band Elvis suddenly yells "one night" and jokingly asks his band, if they remember the tune. Of course they do and the king delivers a powerful rendition of the old r&b song. The audience seem to have missed the oldies a lot, because they applaude as soon as they recognice the track.

Now Elvis asks for "Don't Be Cruel" and after a second or so James Burton plays the opening chords of the mega hit. The king uses it to kiss some ladies and to clown a bit. He changes the lyrics from "Please let's forget the past, the future looks bright ahead" to "Please let's forget the past, before I kick your...".

Elvis continues to kiss the ladies during "Love Me" and jokingly promises to visit the balconies, too. Compared to later renditions the tempo is much closer to the original recording and the king's vocals are much less shallow.

Elvis sings a few times "Looks like I started something" and the band starts to play an instrumental. After a short fan contact the king moves over to the next song. Well, here the producers of the set edited out Elvis' audience walk. Especially for the MGM cameras the king left the stage and walked towards the audience. At first everyone's in awe, but soon the people realize that this is their chance to touch the idol and they start to move foreward. In the movie this is great to watch, but the pure audio information is boring as hell. So it was a wise choice to edit the scene and present just a tiny bit of it.

Back on stage the king spontaneously starts to sing "Heartbreak Hotel". It takes the band just a second to adjust and to follow their boss.

Because someone yells out for "US Male" Elvis starts to intone the song, but soon claims, that the US male would leave the stage pretty soon. So the king introduces his band instead.

After the audience got to know the ones they look at, Elvis continues with a serious and impressive rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water". The arrangement makes full use of the orchestra and the harmony singers, so everyone gets a chance to show off their talents.

Once again the king demonstrates his ability to shake his body. As usual the ladies go wild and Elvis obviously has fun driving them over the edge.

Bowing out with a few words the king sings "Can't Help Falling In Love". Tomorrow the pandemonium will start all over again.