Originally it had been planned to open the
tour in Dallas/Texas. But because the huge
venues were not available, Colonel Parker moved
the start of the tour thirty miles to the west
and booked the Tarrant County Convention Center
in Fort Worth/Texas. After the 14,000 tickets
were gone within 48 hours, a matinee was added.
On the next day another evening concert
followed, as well as another matinee. Finally
Elvis appeared in Fort Worth on June 15th and
16th, each day at 2:30 pm and 8:30 pm. In total
he was seen by 56,000 people and earned 650,000
USD.
In August 2021 Follow That Dream Records
released a set of two compact discs, which
contained the shows from June 16th. The discs
are housed in a 5" digipak. All tapes from this
tour seem to have a lot of hiss and the
recordings are running a tad too low. Jan
Eliasson tried to get rid of the noise by
cutting off the treble. The result is less hiss,
but also a somewhat dull sound. The speed of the
recording wasn't corrected. It's not all that
obvious, if you don't listen
too closely, you won't hear it. But if you do,
you might ask yourself why Sony's own
collector's label didn't bother to solve the
problem.
CD 1 (matinee performance)
CD 2 (evening show)
Verdict
Both shows are good ones, the evening
performance is a bit more lively. Even
though the running speed of the recording is
just a tiny bit too slow and most fans won't
hear it, FTD could easily have corrected the
glitch. Nevertheless "Fort Worth, Texas
1974" is a good representation of the
Presley show in the summer of 1974.
(C) Follow That
Dream Records / Sony Music Entertainment