Lydia Hutchinson | January 8, 2016 | Performing Songwriter

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August 1970, the Grand Ballroom of the Las Vegas Hilton. The lights are going down. Out of the darkness comes a torrent of drums, a guitar riff, a piano and eight background singers clapping in tent-revival rhythm. Elvis Presley appears from the wings, throws his shoulders around and flashes a photon beam of charisma. The world’s most coveted head of male hair flops across his forehead. As he starts to sing “That’s all right mama,” the crowd goes nuts. It’s more than all right. The 35-year-old superstar has made a triumphant return to live performance.

 

When he first hit in 1955, Elvis was like an H-bomb on shaky legs. In 18 months, he went from hillbilly singer to the biggest star in America, with a parade of No. 1 hits such as “Heartbreak Hotel,” “All Shook Up” and “Jailhouse Rock.” Along the way he upended our entire pop culture—from music to fashion to attitudes about race and sexuality.

 

By the early 1960s, Elvis was lured to Hollywood as aspirations of movie stardom replaced his desire to be the king of rock ’n’ roll. But he got trapped in a succession of inane films—the result of years-long manipulations of his notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Finally, in 1968, Elvis had enough. In that landmark year, he reasserted himself in the televised ’68 Comeback Special, a new album, From Elvis in Memphis—and his first chart-topper in seven years, “Suspicious Minds.”

 

“I lost my musical direction in Hollywood,” Elvis told reporters on the eve of his return to live performance in Vegas the following year. “My songs were the same conveyer-belt mass production, just like most of my movies. Now I’m back and on the right road.”

 

His traveling companions on the road to the Hilton were a group of ace musicians, including Glen D. Hardin (piano), James Burton (guitar), Ronnie Tutt (drums) and Jerry Scheff (bass). This is the band that would ride with the king from his initial return to the stage in Vegas until his drug-addled last performances in 1977.

 

Best of the Best

Elvis had reunited original backup band members Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana for the ’68 special, but the old hands were eased out for the Las Vegas shows in favor of young guns with more skill and flash. Moore and Fontana—along with bass player Bill Black—had been with Elvis when he began recording at Sun Studios in Memphis in 1954, but the new players were carefully selected from among the best live and session musicians in the business.

 

Preparing for Elvis’ new live show was an impressive undertaking. Luckily, Elvis and his new band clicked immediately.

 

“We rehearsed probably 200 songs,” says Jerry Scheff. “When we played them with him, it wasn’t like a rehearsal. It was more like we were just having fun, like jamming almost.”

 

A San Francisco hippie with jazz and classical training, bassist Scheff had contributed to hundreds of west coast pop sessions, from Neil Diamond to Linda Ronstadt.

 

“The old songs from the ’50s, Elvis turned those into medleys, and we’d race through them,” Scheff says. “He put them in because he had to, but he squashed them down to the least time possible. He wanted to be taken more seriously by critics. That was his vision—to ease out of the rock ’n’ roll business and become known more for what he considered more adult-type stuff.”

 

Glen D. Hardin agrees. “Elvis was convinced that he was probably the best rock singer in the world, but he came to a point where he wanted to be Perry Como.”

 

Hardin, a Lubbock, Texas native, cut his teeth with Buddy Holly’s group, the Crickets, then after a stint in the Navy, joined the house band for the mid-’60s TV music program Shindig! There he taught himself the arranging skills that he’d use to give much of Elvis’ live work in the ’70s its pomp and circumstance.

 

“I could make the arrangements pretty busy because he was such a powerful singer,” Hardin recalls. “A lot of the stuff for the Vegas show, he’d tell me the song, then say he wanted it the next day. Sometimes it was more than one. A lot of it, I did without ever consulting him. When I got it all together, I’d usually stop by his dressing room before we went on, and I’d play it for him. It was loose.”

 

“In rehearsals, and on stage, Elvis keyed off the guitar,” says James Burton. “We had great eye contact. He loved guitar. If I’d play a lick or something, he would just turn around and say, ‘Yeah, baby!’ It was a great communication that all of us had.”

 

Burton had first caught Elvis’ eye as a member of Ricky Nelson’s band on the weekly TV show The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. As the chickenpickin’ axeman rose to the top of the L.A. session scene, Elvis kept tabs on him. He knew the day would come when they’d work together.

 

Rookie drummer Ronnie Tutt, another Texan, had played with Western swing bands and symphonies before joining Elvis’ band. “I’ve always said it was like working for a stripper in the old days of vaudeville,” Tutt says. “The drummers and musicians had to watch every move the stripper made to accent it with their instruments.”

 

With so many songs at his disposal, Elvis rarely followed a set list. “You never knew which way he was going to go on stage,” Burton says. “He could change at any moment. He’d say, ‘James, give me an E.’ Then he’d go into whatever song he had in his mind.”