Review: Elvis Presley, “Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis”

Lord a-mighty, do you feel your temperature rising?  Okay, “Burning Love” isn’t among the songs on the new 2-CD Legacy Edition of Elvis Presley’s 1974 Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis, but there’s nonetheless plenty to get the pulse pounding and the pelvis swiveling.  The original Memphis LP preserved The King’s hometown show of March 20, 1974, and this reissue adds a live concert from two nights earlier in Richmond, Virginia plus five bonus tracks from an in-studio rehearsal session.  Memphis was Elvis’ fifth live recording in five years, following Elvis in Person at the International Hotel and On Stage, Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden and Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite.  Each one of those has been previously addressed by Legacy as part of this ongoing series.

On March 20, Elvis stepped onstage at Memphis, Tennessee’s Mid-South Coliseum, located roughly eight miles from his Graceland mansion – so memorably, if unexcitingly, pictured on the cover artwork for Live on Stage.  Elvis clearly had Memphis on his mind, and had just recently returned to the city’s studios in July and December 1973 for sessions at Stax.  On the same day of the concert, his album Good Times was released by RCA, culled from these sessions.  (Its tracks were reissued last year by Legacy on Elvis at Stax.)

In a move that would be odd by today’s standards, Elvis didn’t perform any of the tracks from his new album at Mid-South.  The set list hewed to the basic format he had been employing, and there’s plenty of overlap with the New York and Hawaii concerts reissued by Legacy – from the opening fanfare of Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to the finale of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”  But the local crowd seemingly energized Elvis from the second he launched his big show with the support of The TCB Band (James Burton and John Wilkinson on guitar, Charlie Hodge on guitar/vocals, Duke Bardwell on bass, Ronnie Tutt on drums and Glen D. Hardin on piano), singers The Sweet Inspirations, J.D. Sumner and the Stamps, Kathy Westmoreland and the Nashville group called Voice, and Joe Guercio and his orchestra.

That Elvis vocally was in solid shape is somewhat surprising, considering the punishing touring schedule on which he embarked in ’74.  He played over 150 U.S. concerts that year, and the Memphis homecoming shows – five, overall, of which March 20 was the final one – were his first performances there since a benefit in 1961.  The first disc of the new Legacy Edition reissues the Follow That Dream label’s complete presentation of the concert (heavily edited on the original LP) from 2004 but in newly remixed form by Steve Rosenthal and reissue co-producer Rob Santos.