In October 1974 RCA released another live album of the king, but this time it was "A Talking Album Only". Even though the singer didn't sing, "Having Fun With Elvis On Stage" peaked at number 130 on the "Top LPs Chart" and number 9 on the "Hot Country LPs Chart". In total the album sold 300,000 copies (this amount equals 45 million paid streams) and was deleted in the early 1980s. RCA never produced further editions.

The cover was made up with six concert pictures from May 1974 and a map with all the cities the king had performed in. It was claimed, that every show had been a sell out and the records, tapes and concerts of Elvis were advertised.

Sony Music Entertainment/RCA Legacy stick to the approach of RCA and keep the product off the market. Therefore "Having Fun With Elvis" cannot be found on the streaming platforms.

Originally the album had been a product of Boxcar Records, the record devision of Boxcar Inc. The company had been established in January 1974 to sell Presley merchandising. It was also planned to distribute products of other artists. Colonel Parker held 56% of the shares, Tom Diskin and Elvis held 22% each. Since the king's stage comeback, the sound engineers had taped a lot of shows. Because the contract with RCA forbid the release of song recordings, the clever manager edited jokes and monologues and produced this special "talking album". It first was offered exclusively through the souvenier booths in the Las Vegas Hilton during the "Elvis Summer Festival 1974" and sold 20,000 copies. This generated RCA's interest and so it was agreed to turn "Having Fun With Elvis On Stage" into a regular release. The label made a non-refundable advance payment of 100,000 USD (using our rough factor of 15 this would be 1.5 million USD today) to Boxcar, which was to be settled against royalties of 50 cent per copy. Elvis obviously thought it was an advantageous deal, because otherwise he wouldn't have agreed. I guess he simply was happy to receive some money without any effort from his side. The running time of "Having Fun With Elvis On Stage" is 37:06 minutes.

 

A Talking Album Only

A huge part of the album is Elvis' life story, as told during his comeback shows in 1969. Besides that the record presents incoherent bits and pieces, that are not really entertaining out of the context of the shows.

 (C) RCA Records