Elivs
Memorial Auditorium
Dallas, TX
28 December 1976

Cover pictures and so on available  at http://www.elvisconcerts.com/cds/hotdallas.htm


  1. 2001 theme (Also Sprach Zarathustra)
  2. See See Rider
  3. I Got A Woman/Amen
  4. Love Me
  5. Fairytale
  6. You Gave Me A Mountain (incomplete)
  7. Jailhouse Rock (incomplete)
  8. O Sole Mio/It's Now Or Never
  9. Tryin' To Get To You
10. Blue Suede Shoes
11. My Way
12. Polk Salad Annie
13. Band Introductions
14. Early Morning Rain
15. What'd I Say
16. Johnny Be Goode
17. Drum solo
18. Bass solo
19. Piano solo
20. Electric piano solo
21. Love Letters
22. School Day
23. Hurt (with reprise)
24. Unchained Melody
25. Can't Help Falling In Love
26. Closing vamp


Lead guitar: James Burton
Rhythm guitar: John Wilkinson
Bass: Jerry Scheff
Piano: Tony Brown
Electric piano: David Briggs
Drums: Ronnie Tutt
Acoustic guitar: Charlie Hodge
The Joe Guercio Orchestra conducted by Joe Guercio
Backup vocals: The Sweet Inspirations, JD Sumner and The Stamps Quartet, Kathy Westmoreland, Sherrill Nielsen

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Elvis' last tour of 1976 has become somewhat the stuff of legend these past three decades. The New Year's Eve show in Pittsburgh, in particular, has been singled out as one of the best concerts Elvis ever gave. Was the tour really that great? Well, I think identifying the Pittsburgh as the best or one of the best performances Elvis ever gave is a bit much -- without even considering the '50s, putting it up against the live segments of the 1968 TV special or many of the concerts Elvis did after his return to the stage in 1969 (including some great and highly energetic performances as late as 1975) places it in more realistic perspective. But, yes, the tour really was a great one, and not just by the diminished standards set for part of the preceding year.

In retrospect, and it was apparent to some at the time, Elvis could have benefited from taking at least a good chunk of 1976 off. The year's concerts started off well with a March tour that saw him turning in very committed performances somewhat similar in tone to his great performances in July and December of the previous year. Yes, he was looking heavier than ever before, but he was still knocking them dead the hard way and a master of the stage. After that, though, Elvis' burgeoning health problems came to the fore and many of his subsequent appearances suffered as a result, not helped by his self-medication. Elvis was too often obviously weak, sometimes out of breath (he normally had superlative breath control that played an important role in producing that fabled voice), and too frequently appeared not just overweight but very swollen, puffy, and ill. Sometimes he seemed -- he WAS -- exhausted. There were some moments of glory, of course (the June-July tour featured some excellent concerts, for example), and many shows that featured a more upbeat superstar turning in a commendable performance. Still, all was not well.

Somewhere between the end of yet another tour in early September -- Elvis seemed to be on the road most of the year, a need he perhaps had on one level but hardly a good idea for a man in his perilous condition -- and the middle of October, when he opened a new tour in Chicago, Elvis lost a lot of weight. He'd suffered from bad gastrointestinal problems for much of the preceding year and that painful situation came right about this time, so maybe that accounts for some of the weight loss -- more correctly, a lessening of the edema that would become even more astoundingly apparent in 1977, starting with his first tour in which he looked a good 50 or 60 pounds heavier on the first night than he did a week later. The swelling of his hands and face is also apparent in footage from the "Elvis In Concert" TV special that was shot on his last tour (and he looked far better during the last two concerts than in the earlier ones filmed by CBS). It's possible that Elvis also decided a change was necessary, despite being a notorious creature of habit, and worked off some of the excess. Regardless, for the October tour, the November tour, and the December stint in Vegas (his last, a fact he was very happy about) he looked a lot trimmer, a lot fitter, and a lot younger than he had for most of the year. He even wore jumpsuits he hadn't worn since the summer or fall of 1974, as well as some from his relatively svelte days of June, 1975 (like the Indian Feather suit he wore in Dallas). He also sang with greater energy again and had that sparkle in his eye that was missing too many times in recent months. "Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" is, I believe, an apt description.

And he was even more so for the last tour of 1976, a very short mini-tour that started in Wichita, KS, on December 27 and ended in Pittsburgh four days later. His new love interest, Ginger Alden, may have -- indeed, probably did -- add to his enthusiasm, and if he was basically showing off for her on this tour, well, it worked out pretty well for the rest of us, even those of us who weren't there in person and have only audio or 8mm-footage evidence of what it was all like.

This recording, a soundboard recording in excellent quality, hails from the second stop on this tour. It's really hard to believe, listening to this, that the man would be dead less than eight months later. Right from the first ultra-exuberant shout of "See See Rider" (it's often said, when listening to Elvis concerts, that you can get an idea of the whole concert's tone and quality from the first song) this is a spectacular concert. Sure, it's no longer 1970, but it's still very, very good. The CD "Burning In Birmingham" (a record of the December 29 show) came out a year or so before this one and became an instant favorite of many. It's true that the Birmingham show was another excellent one, that included some rarely-performed masterpieces, but I have always found this show more appealing to listen to. Elvis is in such a great mood, as he was throughout the tour, and it's infectious. "If I died tonight, it'd take a year to wipe the smile off my face," he said, and I believe him.

Elvis rips in to his songs in this recording, as he did elsewhere on that tour, often embellishing his already increasingly-elaborate vocal gymnastics on some songs and employing some pretty creative phrasing. Songs that had too often received fairly pedestrian treatment were attacked with vigor. In fact, at times there's almost too MUCH vigor going on! he does, at some points, go pretty wild. And, really, it's refreshing to hear even if sometimes it does obscure the perfection of songs sung in a more straightforward manner a year before.

As in Birmingham a night later, Elvis directs rhythm guitarist John Wilkinson to keep the song "Early Morning Rain" going -- usually it was done a shortened piece to showcase Wilkinson's playing. He sings the heck out of some of the songs that showcase his vocal power and range, such as 1955's "Trying To Get To You," 1975's "Fairytale," and that year's "Hurt." Unfortunately, the archetypal Elvis power-ballad "You Gave Me A Mountain" is incomplete, because of tape damage, but what we hear is sounding good. Even the overused "Love Me," that had by now become not much more than an aural backdrop for the tossing-of-scarves ritual, is performed with conviction greater than at any time since 1971. He also brought forth a real surprise when he sat down at the piano and played and sang "Unchained Melody." He'd debuted the song on the previous night and, though obviously still a bit tentative as he improvised an arrangement that would change more than once, the results are very nice and rather different from those rare later iterations of the song.

Elvis was yet to bring forth some great moments on stage but the December, 1976 tour really did represent his last real sustained period of greatness as a live performer. He still had the charisma, and he still had the voice (not always the breath, but he had that voice), and he sure as heck (for better AND for worse) had the legacy and pop-icon status that his previous work had crowned/trapped him with, but everything else was too rapidly failing him.

With a few notable exceptions, after the first two decent tours in February and March, Elvis' shows during his remaining tours in 1977 -- again, he should not have been on the road at all -- suffered from too many nights when his ailing condition affected his ability to perform as *ELVIS*. There were moments of brilliance in all but the most dire, though. Even the June 19 show in Omaha, a painful thing to even listen to the soundtrack of, yielded the powerhouse version of "How Great Thou Art" that graced the "Elvis In Concert" TV show and album...somehow Elvis reached way down inside and pulled out one superb performance amidst a sea of substandard stumbling, and I am betting that it really hurt to do so. But even most of the better moments were not up to what Elvis Presley was still very much capable of, or would have been if he had not been dying before the very eyes of his audiences. There were many contributing factors to his death at age 42, and one was that he was basically worked to death.

But we'll always have Dallas. So here's to Elvis, and here's to the people who brought us this soundboard tape, and here's to y'all for reading this whole rambling diatribe. :D

Now, as the man himself might have said, get to listenin' to the sumbitch...

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