After having avoided to appear on television for almost nine years the king returns to the small screen on December 3, 1968 at 9:00 pm. NBC airs "SINGER presents Elvis" and 22% of the American households tune in. The result is NBC's highest rating of the whole year.

Production

In October 1967 Colonel Parker had started to negociate a deal with NBC/Universal for a Christmas special (television) and a movie (cinema). In early 1968 Elvis signed the contract and agreed to be paid $850,000 for the motion picture, $250,000 for the tv special and a lump sum of $25,000 for the production of the soundtrack. In the end the company wouldn't start a film project especially for Elvis, but simply put him in a movie they were making anyway (Change Of Habit). The first goal, however, was the production of the Christmas special.

NBC wanted to air the show in December 1968, Colonel Parker and RCA Victor regarded the soundtrack as a successor of "Elvis' Christmas Album". The special was to be produced by Bob Finkel, who already had won two Emmy Awards for "The Andy Williams Show". During the pre-production Presley and Finkel came to the conclusion that a rock'n'roll show would be much more suitable than the original idea of a Christmas special. Somehow they managed to convince Alfred D. Scipio, the responsible manager at the Singer Company, which sponsored the show. With the star, the producer and the sponsor campaigning for the new concept, the management of NBC gave in and accepted the plan. Colonel Parker was furious. To him his client had insulted NBC/Universal and he feared that potential business partners would consider Elvis to be erratic and unreliable. Without doubt legitimate thoughts.

In May 1968 Steve Binder was hired to direct the show. Just like Bob Finkel he wasn't unknown. Binder had been responsible for "Teenage Music International", a tv show with stars like Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys or The Rolling Stones. Just before he started to work on "SINGER presents Elvis" he had finished a television special starring Petula Clark. Also in May Dayton "Bones" Howe joined the team. He had worked with Elvis before and would later be involved in projects like "Back To The Future". While the former rock'n'roll king vacationed in Hawaii, Chris Beard and Allan Blye wrote a script for the show. They, too, were forthcoming Emmy winners and creators of "The Gong Show", "Laugh-In" and "Van Dyke & Company".

The actual collaboration of Elvis, Steve and Bones started on June 3, 1968. When Robert Kennedy was murdered three days later, the producer and his director realized how shaken the singer was by the event. So they hired Earl Brown to write a song about the political and social changes and hopes for the future. The result was "If I Can Dream" which propelled Elvis back into the musical present. Billy Strange and Mac Davis contributed a ballad called "Memories", the arrangements were provided by Billy Goldenberg. On May 11th Elvis met Bill Belew, who had been hired by NBC to design the costumes. As a reminiscence to the "Gold Suit" the singer had worn in 1957 Belew designed a new golden jacket and also came up with the now famous black leather suit. Elvis liked his designs so much, that he later hired him to design his stage costumes. The studio sets were developed by Eugene "Gene" McAvory, the choreography was in the hands of Jaime Rodgers and Claude Thompson, who was also responsible for the make up.

Between June 20th and 24th Elvis put several songs for the tv show on tape (yes, back in the old days the stuff was recorded on analogue magnetic tape!). At Western Recorders in Burbank he recorded the opening medley of "Trouble" and "Guitar Man", "If I Can Dream", "Memories" and several others. The song fragments for the "Road Medley" and "Gospel Medley" were recorded separately and edited later.

A key element of the show was something that was supposed to look like a spontaneous jam session. Elvis was joined by Scotty Moore, DJ Fontana, Charlie Hodge, Alan Fortas and Lance Legault. On June 24th and 25th rehearsals were held in Elvis' dressing room, on June 27th, just three hours before the audience entered the studio, a final session took place. At 6:00 pm the microphones and cameras caught the king and his friends in action, at 8:00 pm the whole thing was repeated. On June 29th two more live performances were staged (once again at 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm), this time with Elvis being on stage all alone and his musicians placed more or less in the audience.

The involvement of Elvis ended on June 30th. He worked on the opening medley, the road medley, the grand finale (Brown's "If I Can Dream") and the "Huh-Huh-Huh" promo.

When the first edit of "SINGER presents Elvis" was shown to the executives of NBC their reaction wasn't too positive. Even though they had agreed to a rock'n'roll show, they obviously expected performances comparable with what they had seen in the Hollywood movies Elvis had made so many of. Instead they saw an apparantly unpolished, unsophisticated and visibly sweating guy belting out the songs in rough voice. But Binder and Howe insisted on sticking to their orgiginal concept. The only concession was made to Colonel Parker, who had been desperately fighting to get at least one Christmas song in the show. Nobody knows if it was an act to save face or if he simply wanted to devil the producer and the director for changing the concept and (at least according to his fears) jeopardizing the career of his client. However, in the end Bones and Howe cut out "Tiger Man" and replaced it with "Blue Christmas".

Urban Legends

Unfortunately many urban legends have found their way into the "elvis literature" and are regarded as facts by a lot of fans. Some of them have been created by members of the production team to expand their contribution to the comeback of the king, others were put in the world through the movie "Elvis", released by Warner Brothers in 2022.

This claim is ridiculous, because Elvis had signed for a motion picture and a seasonal tv special. So if the latter one would have troubled his mind so much, he certainly wouldn't have signed the deal. He simply could have opted for doing just the movie. But he accepted and gladly took the money. He knew what was expected of him right from the start and obviously had no problem with the requests of NBC/Universal.

I seriously doubt, that NBC would have invested 250k (remember, today this amount is worth about 15 times as much) in a foreseeable rating disaster. The opposite was the case: Xmas specials were quite popular, because they were enjoyed by the whole family and could be rerun every few years. Besides that these shows could be used as promotion for accordant records. Xmas lps often were constant sellers in the artist's catalogues. "Elvis Christmas Album" had been doing fine since 1957, but after eleven years another one would have been more than welcome. An accordant tv show would have been the perfect tool to promote it. Remember: The 1970 CAMDEN edition of "Elvis Christmas Album" not just turned out to be the king's best selling album, but also the best selling Xmas album of all time. No career killer at all!

Steve Binder has added a lot to this urban legend and the older he got, the harder the "fight" became. In general Elvis was free to do whatever he wanted, but in this case he explicitely had signed for and been paid for a Xmas show. The same applies to the producer and the writer, but during the first meetings they came to the conclusion to have a better idea and managed to convince the artist and the sponsor. Parker rightfully was mad about the situation and took "revenge" by adressing Steve as "Mr. Bindle" and insisting without any legal justification on including a Xmas song. One might consider this behavior to be childish, but nevertheless Parker talked to NBC and got them to agree to the plan.

Well, this stuff appeared in the movie "Elvis" (2022), but was completely fabricated. In real life the change of the show's concept had been agreed upon long before the actual production started, so no Xmast set was build. Besides that nobody ever expected of Elvis to wear an ugly Christmas sweater. Baz Luhrmann made that up to display the change of course and add some drama. The idea of Parker wanting everyone to wear Xmas sweaters was added for comedy, but strangely was taken seriously by some demented folks, who considered the film to be a documentary.

This certainly isn't the case and whoever claims such a thing has no idea about the man at all. Elvis Presley wasn't a rocker by any means. Instead he loved sad ballads, gospel songs and country music. He also never dressed that way. A short period in the summer of 1974 aside, he never wore jeans, leather or t-shirts. But he could sing rock'n'roll and convincingly had played the rocker in his early days. At the end of the 1960s rock'n'roll music underwent its first revival. People like Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley and Little Richard went on tour again and even The Beatles came up with a retro-tune like "Lady Madonna". All that caused Binder and Howe to develop the idea to present the original rock'n'roll king. I am sure, that Elvis had fun to play the rocker once more, but one has to consider that he soon went into a much smoother direction again, sang ballads and popsongs and added choirs and orchestras to his live show and his records. Elvis could rock like hell, but he wasn't a rocker by heart.

December 03, 1968

The show begins with a close up of Elvis' face. With a rough voice he sings "If you're looking for trouble, you came to the right place". The classic "Trouble" leads to the recent "Guitar Man" and therefore builds a bridge from the past to the present. The following songs are filmed in front of an audience. Some are presented in form of a jam session, some with Elvis alone on a stage that looks like a boxing ring. A black leather suit symbolizes the king's return to his roots, even though he had never worn something like this back in the 1950s. The live sequences are interrupted by medleys, filmed in a studio without an audience. One is dedicated to gospel music, the other one portrays the rise of a young singer. The location of his performances and his way to dress get better with every song until he's finally in the NBC studios, wearing the black leather suit and singing "Guitar Man". The show closes with a performance of "If I Can Dream", also filmed without an audience. Here the singer wears a white suit, the studio is dark, there's nothing but a colossal Elvis-writing in the background.

Compared to his movies the Presley image is turned by 180 degrees. Elvis is a rocker again, lean, mean, vigorous and sweating. His voice is rough, he obviously doesn't want to sound nice and smooth. Without doubt he plays a role, but he does it in a very convincing way. He is able to make everybody believe that this is his real persona and the one and only king of rock'n'roll has finally risen from the treadmill of Hollywood.

Soundtrack

The single "If I Can Dream" / "Edge Of Reality" became Elvis' best selling 45 in three years and the album "Elvis" (obviously RCA had forgotten that they had already issued a longplayer of that name way back in 1956) also sold much better than the king's lps of the last few years. When "Memories" / "Charro!" was released in early 1969 it couldn't compete with the sales of the other two records, but nevertheless it sold better than many other Presley singles of the past two years. Combined the records sold over 6 million copies. Just tap on the covers to get to the reviews.

Home Entertainment

In 2018 AGB EPE (the owner of the video footage) and Sony Music Entertainment (the owner of the audio material) teamed up and released a boxed set named "68 Comeback Special - 50th Anniversary Edition". It includes the original soundtrack, studio outtakes, the complete live sessions as well as rehearsals. Besides the audio material it also features two blu ray discs with the television special, the complete live sessions and outtakes of the production numbers. For a review, just tap on the cover. 

Elvis performing "That's All Right"