June 20, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Richard Zoglin tells the story of how the "King of Rock & Roll" reinvented the Las Vegas show into what it is today.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history.
And our next guest has written a terrific book, Elvis
in Vegas, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
And I welcome Richard Zoglin to our American Stories. How
(00:30):
are you, Richard?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Great? Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, you know, I want to start in the beginning,
because you start by describing Elvis Presley and this town
called Las Vegas. And it turns out that long before
he did his big comeback show, he had actually played
in Vegas well one time before when he had just
become a star for RCA. Talk about that first show,
(00:56):
that first time Elvis played Vegas.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Right right, That was in nineteen fifty six. He was
just coming up. He had just he had one hit
song at that point, Heartbreak Hotel, and Colonel Parker as manager,
decided to put him into Las Vegas, which was a
very strange venue for.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
A young hipshaking rock and roller from Memphis.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
He was on a bill at the New Frontier Hotel
with Shecky Green and Freddie Martin's orchestra. So it was
a very strange kind of nightclub show for Las Vegas, and.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
He didn't do very well.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
The middle aged nightclub crowd that frequented Vegas in those
years just really didn't know what to make of this kid.
But Elvis it turns out he really loved Vegas and
it became his kind of favorite getaway. He would go
back there in between movie shoots just for rest and
relaxation with his friends.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You see other shows pick up women.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
And he got married to Priscilla there in nineteen sixty
seventy made, of course, Viva Las Vegas, the kind of
quintessential Vegas movie there in sixty three, so it became
a very familiar place to him during the sixties.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Let's talk about Vegas itself, because it's a quirky city.
It wasn't a big city until fairly recently. In fact,
I was shocked, Richard, how small Vegas was until right
around the time of the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, it was a small town in it got founded
in nineteen oh five. It kind of hit the big
started to attract people in the early thirties when Hoover
Dam was constructed nearby and Las Vegas was the place
where everybody, all the construction workers went downtown Vegas to gamble.
Nevada was the one straightened union that had legalized gambling.
(02:40):
The real boom in Las Vegas happened during the forties.
There were first a couple of hotels that opened on
what we now know as the Las Vegas Strip, which
was the highway leading from Vegas to Los Angeles. But
then right after the war in nineteen forty six, the
Flamingo Hotel opened, and that was the hotel Uy Siegell
and his mob friends from New York opened, and they
(03:03):
began attracting really the top line big stars. And the
whole idea of Vegas the Vegas hotels was to get
people into the casinos to.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Gamble and pay top dollar for the biggest.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Stars, because that would get people into the casinos and
they'd make the money back from the gambling. Then that
was the money they could pay top dollar to the
stars with.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And so starting with the.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Flamingo in nineteen forty six, then all the hotels opened
on the strip in the early late forties early fifties,
the Sands, the Sahara, the Desert End, etc.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
By the mid fifties, you had it was really.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
The entertainment capital of America in terms of live nightclub entertainment,
and so it was really hitting its golden age, its
heyday years, right around the time that Elvis first appeared
in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
In fifty six.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
You wrote this in your chapter. You said there was
just one rule, keep the show to a strict time,
usually an hour or less, to make sure your patrons
weren't away from the casinos for too long. For keeping
people in the casino was the key to Vegas's whole
business model. That led to one of Las Vegas's great
innovations of the nineteen fifties, the lounge show. Talk about that.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, there were, of course the big showrooms where Sinatra,
Tony Bennett, everybody played, all the major every major nightclub
star in the country played Vegas sometime or another in
the fifties and sixties. But then starting in the mid fifties,
somebody had the idea to have a show in the lounge,
which was kind of a bar lounge area right adjacent
(04:41):
to the casino, in between the big shows in the
big showrooms. It would keep people in the casino in
the hotel, they wouldn't leave, they'd go and spend an
hour or so at the lounge where a different performer, comedians,
singers were performing, jazz groups, and the whole idea is
to keep them from leaving the hotel stay in the casino.
(05:02):
But the lounge shows became a genre of their own.
Louis Priman and Keeley Smith were a great duo back
in the fifties and they really set the model for lounge.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Shows in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
So you had this double helping of entertainment in each hotel.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And let's talk about a character who is from West Alice,
Wisconsin and his name americanized. It's wlad Zeo or something
really really hard to pronounce. But Walter Liberaci. Talk about Liberaci,
and by the way, talk a little bit about Liberacci
and Elvis.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Sure, one of the big stars in Vegas in the
mid fifties was Liberaci. He had a really unique act,
very flamboyant, you know, piano and talking with the audience,
and musical all sorts of from classical to pop, popular,
and very flamboyant. He was really one of the biggest
stars in Vegas in the fifties. Elvis came in nineteen
(06:00):
fifty six and he wasn't doing very well at the
New Frontier Hotel, so Colonel Parker went over to the
Riviera where Liberaci was playing and doing very well, of course,
and asked Liberaci if he could come over and help
out his boy, you see his show, maybe take some
publicity shots with him. And Liberaci was a very generous
(06:20):
performer did that for Elvis, and Elvis always appreciated that
that Liberachi was nice enough to sort of help him
out when he was struggling a little in Las Vegas.
But also Elvis I think learned from Liberaci. Strangely enough,
there was something about his showmanship. Liberachi had one piece
of advice for Elvis after he saw his show. He says, Elvis,
(06:42):
your show needs more glitz. And sure enough, not long after,
Elvis was touring in a gold by a jacket very
much like the one that Liberachi was wearing in Las Vegas.
And I think that they were friendly throughout their careers,
continued to see each other and occasionally, and I do
think that Liberachi's showmanship was a big influence on Elvis,
(07:07):
particularly in those later Vegas years when he came out
with the white jumpsuits and the flashy outfits and stuff.
I think you can look back and see Liberachi's influence there.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Well, we'll continue with this conversation. The book is Elvis
in Vegas, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
We'll be back with more of Richard Zoglin's story Elvis
in Vegas after these messages. Folks, if you love the
great American stories we tell and love America like we do,
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(07:37):
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our American Stories dot Com. And we continue here on
(08:11):
Our American Stories Elvis in Vegas. We're talking about this
terrific book with author Richard Zogwin, How the King reinvented
a Las Vegas Show. Let's talk about the rat Pack.
Who were they and what impact did these guys have
on Vegas.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Frank Sinatra was already a big Vegas star from the
early fifties, and in nineteen sixty he was making a
movie in Las Vegas called Ocean's Eleven. He was also
going to appear at the Sands Hotel in the evenings
after his day shooting was done well. This film had
all a lot of his sort of friends from Hollywood
(08:48):
in the cast, and somebody came up with the idea
that maybe Frank could bring some of them on stage
with him in the evening when he did his show
at the Sands, and so Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior,
Peter Law, and Joey Bishop would come on stage every night,
it turned out, and they would just have this kind
of free for all session of songs and jokes and drinking.
(09:10):
And it was a smash hit in Las Vegas. For
like one month in January February nineteen sixty, the rat
Pack shows were the biggest thing Vegas had seen. Every
celebrity from Hollywood came to a Jack Kennedy who was
campaigning for president. He came to see the show on
the campaign trail, and they kind of became the quintessential
(09:35):
iconic stars of Vegas.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
The rat Pack and let's talk about what happened soon after,
Because rock and roll is coming down the pike, a
new generation, and this is always the case with pop music,
a new generation is coming in. I want to read
something because it almost seemed to summarize the clash of
these almost two civilizations and cultures. You're right, they needed,
and you're talking about the rat Pack to leave the
(09:58):
stage before a new kind of vague entertainment could emerge.
Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley represented two opposite polls in
American popular music, the suave, largely urban jazz influenced tradition
that dominated radio, recordings and nightclubs for decades, and the unruly,
largely rural blues and country influenced music that would first
(10:19):
catch on in the mid nineteen fifties and virtually take
over in the next decade. That seismic shift in music,
as well as in the rest of the culture, was
mirrored in the changes that would come to the Las
Vegas Strip. Talk about that because it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Well, as I said, the rat Pack kind of epitomized
Vegas cool in the early sixties, but then things started
to change very quickly, starting in sixty four, with the
advent of the Beatles and the whole British invasion, the
whole all the changes in rock and roll, the counterculture,
the Vietnam protests, and everything we know what happened in
(10:57):
the sixties. And suddenly, by the late sixties, these the
cool rat pack guys were looking very last generation and
the new rock and rollers were not coming to Las Vegas.
The younger generation did not think Vegas was cool anymore,
and so Vegas was starting to wonder where it was
going and how it was going to get the next generation.
(11:18):
The nightclub scene was fading out, the traditional nightclub show,
the nightclubs were closing around the country. Vegas was really
the last outpost for real nightclub entertainment, but it was
starting to fade, and so the rock and roll scene
really made Vegas have to take a look at itself
and figure out what to do next. And I think
(11:39):
that Elvis's arrival in nineteen sixty nine helped Vegas enter
that new era, that new era.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Of rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And it's interesting because it also helped Elvis resuscitate his career.
Let's talk about the sixties, because Elvis comes back from
serving his country and Tom Parker, and that's Colonel Tom Parker,
as you write, and Chronicle made a big mistake in
the end by focusing Elvis only on this movie career
(12:07):
of his, which these are some really wretched films in
the end, and Elvis had stopped touring and playing almost entirely.
So talk about that. It's almost a lost musical decade.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Sure, it was Colonel Parker's decision after Elvis came back
from the Army, that he would become a movie star,
and he didn't want him to be. You know, people
felt that rock and roll was for kids, and that
if you wanted a career, you had to graduate to
something else. You couldn't just sing rock and roll forever.
So Elvis wanted to do movies and had done some
(12:40):
good movies, fairly good movies in the fifties before the Army.
After the Army, though, he was restricted only to movies
and recording, and through that entire decade the movies got
worse and worse.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
The songs he was recording.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Were kind of no longer making the charts by the
mid sixties late sixties, and Elvis was getting to death.
He knew the movies weren't very good. He really missed
performing live. But the Colonel was very strict about this plan.
He wanted to sort of restrict the access to Elvis,
and so, you know, strangely enough, he did not do
(13:16):
any live performing except for a couple of benefit performances
in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Elvis did no live.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Performing during the nineteen sixties, no concerts until finally in
nineteen sixty eight when he made his famous comeback special
on NBC. Finally it was time the Colonel decided for
Elvis to come back to live performing, and Vegas, being
very familiar to both of them, was where the Colonel
(13:44):
decided to do it.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
And let's talk about that night. He had to be nervous.
First of all, it's been a long time, but he
comes out in that leather elfit and he changes everybody's
mind about him. People had thought he was washed out
rock and roll had changed. Talk about the importance of
this for Elvis's career in the culture, and particularly the
cultural elites of the rock and roll crowd. That John
(14:07):
Landaus and those young music critics who sort of thought
of Elvis as sort of that old fifties character.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That's right, they had written him off.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Now things had started to change in December sixty eight
when he did his comeback special on NBC. There they
saw Elvis still as powerful of a performer as ever. Still,
the idea of Elvis returning to the stage that was
a big gamble from him, and.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
He was very nervous.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
He had been away for so long and thought so
much had changed in the rock world. Elvis didn't know
if he could still draw a crowd anymore, if he
could still perform like he did a decade earlier, so
he was very nervous about it. The rock and roll
critics all came to that show. There was so much
anticipation around that return. I think the appetite was wetted
(14:56):
by that sixty eight special on NBC, but all the
major rock critics and rock reporters from around the country
basically flew in for that one night, that opening night
on July thirty first, nineteen sixty nine, and the reviews
were almost unanimous.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Raves and even the.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Rock critics who were very skeptical of Elvis, who felt
he was a hasbian, they admitted that he was amazingly
good on stage. He could still rock with the old
to the old numbers. He had new stuff that he
was doing for the first time that you know, these
songs like Suspicious Minds and in the Ghetto that kind
of introduced a new Elvis. He was reinventing himself, and
(15:40):
I think the rock critics were kind of amazed and
grateful to see him back as dynamic as ever.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Let's talk about a guy named Krekorian. Is Kirk in
the end has something to do with his comeback. I
mean he's building a brand new hotel with a big,
big stage and a lot of capacity.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, Well, Kurt Kacorian was coming to Las Vegas. He
had bought a hotel, the Flamingo Hotel, I think a
year earlier, and then he decided to build the biggest
hotel in Vegas off the strip in the convention center area,
called the International Hotel, with a showroom twice as large as.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Any other in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
He had a whole crew getting ready for the getting
the hotel ready. He hired a you know, an entertainment director,
and the instructions were to get the best, you know,
the biggest entertainment available. A guy named Bill Miller was
the entertainment director who was a kind of well known booker,
in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
He went out and he wanted Elvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
He thought that that was the kind of big name,
you know, big attraction that the hotel needed to open.
Colonel Parker was receptive, except he had one problem. He
didn't want Elvis to open the hotel because the hotel
was still being pleaded construction. They were racing to finish
it in time for the summer opening. And he said,
(17:06):
we'll do the hotel, we'll play the hotel, but Elvis
shouldn't be first. Have somebody else be the guinea pig.
We'll come in second. And so Bill Miller, the booker,
went to his backup choice, Barbara Streisand who actually opened
the hotel in July, played the month of July in
nineteen sixty nine. Barbara actually didn't do that well. Her
(17:27):
show was not that well received.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
She did more of.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
A sort of stripped down New York cabaret style act,
and it didn't really fill that big stage. Elvis filled
the stage, and when he came he sold out every
single show for twenty eight straight days.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
And we're talking to Richard Zoglin. The book is Elvis
in Vegas, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
We'll continue with this story after these messages, and we
(18:08):
continue here with our American stories and Elvis in Vegas
by Richard Zauglin, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
Go to Amazon dot com pick this up. If you
love the culture, if you love music, you're gonna love
this book. And if you love Vegas, and well, who doesn't,
at least for a few nights. By the fourth night,
I gotta go home. But three nights, it's just perfect.
(18:30):
And we continue now on the chapter called the Comeback.
And Elvis had gone through a lot clearly in that decade.
But what I really had forgotten was, as you said,
how much the counterculture, all these young rockers, all these
new musicians from the Woodstock era, and after so many
of them just didn't like Elvis at all.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
They recognize him as an influence, major influence. I mean
the Beatles, John Lennon all, you know, knew that he
was the rock and roller that they all were inspired by.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
But you know he was he was so far out
of the picture.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
The movies were kind of being made fun of, and
it was, you know, he just wasn't a factor anymore.
And playing Las Vegas was not the cool thing to do.
Most of the rock and roll groups, certainly the big
rock groups were not playing Las Vegas. So the idea
that Elvis was was doing Las Vegas did not exactly
enhance his credibility with the sort of hip rock crowd.
(19:30):
But I think they, they, you know, were won over
by the sheer power of his stage performing. He was
really never better as a stage performer than he was
in those that first year or so in Las Vegas,
and his voice was was bigger than ever, and his
energy level was absolutely at the peak. He was so
(19:50):
excited to be back in front of his fans again.
So it was it was a really peak of the
peak of his stage performing career.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
I think, let's talk about this show itself. You're right,
Elvis had no intention of becoming a nostalgia act, nor
did he want to do a conventional Vegas show. A
little bit later, you said, Elvis had a dream one
night in which he saw himself on a Vegas stage
filled with a huge collection of musicians, a rhythm band,
(20:19):
two backup singing groups, and the biggest orchestra Vegas had
ever seen.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Talk about that, Yeah, the colonel, Colonel Parker's idea for
a Las Vegas show was chorus girls, Showgirls, a kind
of traditional Vegas show, and Elvis said, no, I'm going
to do it my way, or I'm not going to
do it at all. And he just went out and
he first he had to select a backup band, rhythm group,
(20:46):
starting with James Burton, the famous guitarist who people knew
from Ricky Nelson's TV show, and he really put the
show to Surprisingly, what surprised me was there was really
no director or producer, you know, hands on producer of
the show. It was really Elvis with just a couple
(21:06):
of his friends, going through figuring out what songs to
do and what order. He picked all the musicians, the
backup band, the two singing groups, a male white male
gospel group and a black female soul group, the Sweet Inspirations,
and just put the show together himself. He just knew
(21:28):
what he wanted to do. And it was kind of
the first sort of rock concert like show to that
Las Vegas had seen. And you know, it was kind
of a brave thing for Elvis to do. He was
not fitting into the usual mold of Vegas shows, the
traditional nightclub rat pack style, nightclub show more intimate. Of course,
(21:50):
he was on a much bigger stage, and he knew
he had to do something bigger and also something that
would showcase what he did well, the old rock songs,
the new ballads, and you know, he just knew what
he wanted and he had his instincts were right on
the money.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I want to read another passage. The musicians on stage
represented a grand coming together of all the music Elvis loved,
and that it shaped him as a singer, rock and roll, country, gospel,
rhythm and blues, plus the symphonic sound of a full orchestra.
What a dream that is to represent, in the end,
almost all of American music on one stage and probably
(22:29):
one of the only people in American history who could
have pulled that off, Richard.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah, and I think it was a great achievement. And Elvis,
he may not have been the coolest, the most cutting
edge thing in rock and roll at that point. I
mean he wasn't, but he wanted to sing to everybody.
He wanted to bring all the audiences together. You know,
Elvis was the guy who really split the audience back
in the mid fifties, you know, before rock and roll
(22:56):
came along, Before Elvis and rock and roll, everybody was
listening to music.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
There was all the hit and.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Parade tunes and tin Panaley Broadway show tunes or whatever.
After Elvis, there was a split. There was the traditional
kind of tin Panaley type of songs that the adults
were listening to and this newfangled kind of music that
the kids were listening to, rock and roll. Well, by
the late sixties, that split in.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
The culture was had gotten wider and wider.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
But Elvis really he didn't He didn't want to just
sing to the kids, and he wanted to sing to everybody.
He wanted to sing the He sang old old standards
like are you Lonesome Tonight? He sang rock songs, he's
he covered bit hits by the Beatles and Neil Diamond, whoever.
He just did everything gospel, country, and so I think
(23:48):
he was a I like to say that in the
fifties he was the great divider.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
He was the guy who divided the culture into and.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
In the late sixties he became the great uniter, bring
bringing the audiences all back together. And the fact that
he could to do that so well and sell out
four weeks of shows and by the way. That was
two shows a night, seven nights a week, for four
straight weeks, not a single night off.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
You know, no one could do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
And he sold out every show as he sold out
basically every show he did in Vegas.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
It's amazing, you're right again. The show lasted an hour
and fifteen minutes and Elvis worked himself to a frazzle,
pacing the stage like a panther, crouching, lunging, leaping, doing
karate kicks and punches. He was like a wild man,
recalled Felton Jarvis, his RCA record producer, talk about that.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, he was just so revved up to be back
in front of a live audience again, and it had
all been stored up for you know, for a decade basically,
and so it was just an incredibly exciting show. He
had an audience filled with celebrities, you know, from all
over and all the rock critics from all over the
(25:05):
country there, so elvit the adrenaline was flowing. And what's
amazing is he was able to sustain that energy all
the way through twenty eight straight days and I think
for the next year. So he came back, by the way,
after the first night the hotel signed him to a
long term contract five years and have him come back.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The idea was that he would come back.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Every six months for four weeks, twice a year.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
For four week engagements. And I contend that for the
first two or.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Three of those engagements Elvis was absolutely at his peak
as a stage performer. He started to go downhill later,
but when he was first, you know, back in front
of the live audiences again, in front of his fans,
he was so excited and juiced by that idea, the
ability to be back on a stage again, perform live
(26:00):
for his fans. And I think that just sustained him
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And indeed a stage of his choosing, the musicians of
his choosing, and the set of his choosing Richard really helps.
I'm going to read one last thing. We'll go to
the final segment. The nation's top rock critics soon weighed
in with nearly universal praise. Quote Presley came on and
immediately shook up all of my expectations and preconceived categories,
(26:24):
wrote Ellen Willis in The New Yorker. There was a
new man out there, That's what she said. And down later,
David Denton said this Elvis was supernatural. His own resurrection
is what I witnessed at the Showroom International in Las
Vegas last August, and indeed it was a resurrection of
(26:46):
a remarkable career. When we come back more with Richard Zoglin.
The book is Elvis in Vegas, How the King Reinvented
the Las Vegas Show, And go to Amazon and pick
it up, or better still, go to a local book
tout us by one if you have a friend in
the family who loves Vegas, who loves Elvis by two.
When we come back the last part of our conversation,
(27:08):
the story of Elvis in Vegas here on our American Stories,
(27:37):
and we're back with Richard Zoglin, author of Elvis in Vegas,
How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show. Let's talk
about the success, because, my goodness, the numbers were staggering.
He just kept selling the room out and selling the
room out, and ultimately this led to his undoing in
a way, didn't it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Well, yeah, you know, he was so successful and profitable
for the hotel and profitable for Elvis. And Colonel Parker
was good at sort of repeating what worked, and so
he brought Elvis back every six months, and Elvis started
touring again and it became a grind.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
It became a grind for him.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
He was excited at the beginning of the Las Vegas
runs and for the first year or so after that.
Then he started to get bored with it. And it
was a tough lifestyle for him. For four weeks to
be kind of cooped up in a hotel room. He
had trouble even, you know, going out because he was
such a big star in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
He couldn't go out and not be mobbed.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
It was a nocturnal lifestyle. He was staying up all night,
sleeping all day. As we know, the drug use began
to increase. He had his weight problems, so I think
that's when the downhill slide started.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
You wrote it soon became a grind. In his thirtieth
floor home at the International Hotel later the Hilton, with
a palatial five thousand square Foo suite, complete with private
swimming pool and rooftop terrace from which Elvis and his
pals would sometime hit golf balls, had become a prison.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, I know, it was tough.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Some people think that Vegas is what killed Elvis. I
think that's unfair. I think that he was just every
artist has to keep moving, you know. That's why he
got so bored with the movies in the sixties. How
you know, they were getting worse and worse than Elvis
(29:44):
was born. Reinvented himself and found a great new venue
in Las Vegas. But after a while it became the
same thing over and over again, combined with maybe an
entourage that was a little enabling of his bad hea abbots,
the things, you know, started to go downhill.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I wouldn't blame.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
It on Las Vegas, but Vegas was certainly part.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Of the problem, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
At the same time, this also was happening because he
was establishing well, something new that we now come to
know as the residency. You wrote, he was the first
major star to establish something like a regular schedule in
Las Vegas, two four week engagements a year, one in
the winter, one in the summer. A forerunner of the
(30:29):
residencies of latter day Vegas stars like Celine Dion. Elvis's
show set a new standard for Vegas. The star was
now his own spectacle.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, that is the important point is how Elvis not
only did Vegas help save elvis career and re help
him reinvent himself as a performer. But Elvis in a
way saved Vegas, or at least changed Vegas.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
His show was not.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
A traditional Vegas show, a traditional intimate, rat pack style
nightclub show. It was a big rock concert like extravaganza,
and it drew a different kind of audience. It got
people from around the country who were maybe not necessarily
Vegas goers. They weren't big gamblers, high rollers that Vegas
traditionally catered to. They were just fans of Elvis. They
(31:19):
were Middle America. They were families in a lot of cases,
and they would make their summer vacation organize it around
a trip to Vegas for Elvis. And so that opened Vegas'
eyes to a new kind of audience, a more a
broader based audience. And that was the audience that Vegas
over the next couple of decades would discover in its
(31:40):
own reinvention. You know, I think Elvis was sort of
the starting gun for the change in Vegas from a
kind of nightclub and gambling town for adults to a
theme park, family vacation the place that we know today
and then became the residencies came starting with Celine Dion
(32:00):
in the early two thousands. In the nineties, pretty much
the headliners kind of went into eclipse as the circusla
kind of extravaganzas took over.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And there's still a course very big there in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
But now you're seeing a comeback in the kind of
traditional headliners who are following what Celine Dion started, and
a lot of rock performers now are coming to Vegas
who wouldn't have done it before. I think now you
see Lady Gaga there and Aerosmith and so Vegas of
course has become a huge family vacation destination. It took
(32:38):
a little while, but I think he really opened the
door to a broader based audience and kind of introduced
Vegas to that new audience that it would go after
over in the next couple of decades.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Indeed, you note that his decline started somewhere around August
of seventy one, this slow, steady decline. But you write this,
but the audiences anyway, and that was part of the problem.
The fans loved him no matter how bad he looked,
no matter what he did.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Talk about that, yeah, well that's probably not something that
Elvis fans want to hear. But you know, I do
think there was a little indulgence. There was, you know,
indulgence by his entourage, the Memphis Mafia, and I think
his fans, they did. They were so excited to see
the guy on stage, and he did a great show.
(33:31):
But he began to you know, I think he got
lazier as the years went on, and his pattern on
stage sometimes was a little wacky.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
The amazing thing.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Was, even as he got his decline was starting, I
think in terms of his behavior on stage and his weight, the.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Voice was still as good as ever.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
You could hear recordings from like seventy four and he's
still the voice is still great.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
So maybe that was enough for the fans.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
But I do think that there were times when he
was just not in good shape. You could tell he
didn't have the energy, was starting to fade, but they
did love him so much, and you know, the women
would he would throw out the towels to the women,
and you know, it was just it got a little crazy,
and by the end it was a little bit of
(34:20):
a self parody. And I don't think the fans helped
by just loving everything he did.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Indeed, and this is a remarkable quote you have here
Towards the end of the book, after sitting through Elvis
Presley's closing night performance at the Las Vegas, Hilton wrote
the Memphis Press Scimitar in an eerily prophetic review on
December fifteenth, nineteen seventy six. One walks away wondering how
much longer it can be before the end comes, perhaps suddenly,
(34:48):
and why the king of rock and roll would subject
himself to possible ridicule by going on stage so ill
prepared prophetic.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Indeed, Yeah, that wasn't eerie review, written just eight or
nine months before he died.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
It's too bad what happened.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
But I just want to remind people that Elvis in
Vegas he was great before he got fat. I mean,
he was terrific in those early Vegas shows, and if
you see some of the very late ones that it
is kind of sad to see, but I think that's
the consequence of a performer who was just forced to
(35:27):
kind of repeat himself constantly. He should have done other things.
He should have toured overseas. Everybody wanted Elvis to tour overseas,
except for Colonel Parker, who we learned later had some
passport problems. He was an immigrant from the Netherlands who
apparently never had a passport, so he was always making
(35:51):
excuses why Elvis could not tour.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
He would blame it on security issues or something.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
For tour overseas, but he was really he was worried
about his own status as an illegal immigrant. So that's
the kind of thing that I think would have revived Elvis,
would have re energized him, and he couldn't do so
Vegas became, unfortunately a kind of prison for him.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
By the end, I'm going to close with something and
then get your comment. Elvis didn't kill Vegas, but he
did change it. He's triumph in Las Vegas helped asen
the demise of the old nightclub shows and sounded the
starting gun for a very different era of Las Vegas entertainment.
By the way, it's an era we all so readily enjoy,
(36:36):
and I think it's why it's the top tourist attraction
in America. And Elvis had a lot to do with that.
Let's leave in a positive note.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Talk about that definitely.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
You know, Celine diond They did a tribute show to
Elvis a few years ago that was televised and she said,
if it weren't for Elvis, I couldn't be doing what
I'm doing here in Las Vegas. After Elvis died, you
had performers like Shaer and Dolly Parton, who were you know,
the kind of performers that maybe wouldn't have done Las
Vegas before.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
But I think Elvis.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Showed that rock and roll could work on the.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Big showroom stage.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
And as I said, he showed that there could be
a bigger, sort of broader audience for Las Vegas. It
wasn't just for the high roller types who loved Sinatra
and the rat pack. It was it was for everybody,
and so that was it was just the natural progression
that took a little while. But now we have a
(37:28):
Vegas that is just a huge, you know, tourist attraction
for the whole family. And that's why Elvis continues to
be a presence in Las Vegas, the impersonators and the
wedding chapels and so forth, because I think everybody recognizes
that Elvis inaugurated a new era in Las Vegas, and
(37:49):
that new era they're still reaping the benefits of it today.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
We've been talking to Richard Zoglin, the book Elvis in Vegas,
How the King reinvented the Las Vegas Show. Go to
Amazon and get this. You will want to put it down.
Better still, go to a local bookstore and buy the book.
This is Leehabebe Elvis in Vegas, Our American Store
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history.
And our next guest has written a terrific book, Elvis
in Vegas, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
And I welcome Richard Zoglin to our American Stories. How
(00:30):
are you, Richard?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Great? Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Well, you know, I want to start in the beginning,
because you start by describing Elvis Presley and this town
called Las Vegas. And it turns out that long before
he did his big comeback show, he had actually played
in Vegas well one time before when he had just
become a star for RCA. Talk about that first show,
(00:56):
that first time Elvis played Vegas.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Right right, That was in nineteen fifty six. He was
just coming up. He had just he had one hit
song at that point, Heartbreak Hotel, and Colonel Parker as manager,
decided to put him into Las Vegas, which was a
very strange venue for.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
A young hipshaking rock and roller from Memphis.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
He was on a bill at the New Frontier Hotel
with Shecky Green and Freddie Martin's orchestra. So it was
a very strange kind of nightclub show for Las Vegas, and.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
He didn't do very well.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
The middle aged nightclub crowd that frequented Vegas in those
years just really didn't know what to make of this kid.
But Elvis it turns out he really loved Vegas and
it became his kind of favorite getaway. He would go
back there in between movie shoots just for rest and
relaxation with his friends.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You see other shows pick up women.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
And he got married to Priscilla there in nineteen sixty
seventy made, of course, Viva Las Vegas, the kind of
quintessential Vegas movie there in sixty three, so it became
a very familiar place to him during the sixties.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Let's talk about Vegas itself, because it's a quirky city.
It wasn't a big city until fairly recently. In fact,
I was shocked, Richard, how small Vegas was until right
around the time of the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, it was a small town in it got founded
in nineteen oh five. It kind of hit the big
started to attract people in the early thirties when Hoover
Dam was constructed nearby and Las Vegas was the place
where everybody, all the construction workers went downtown Vegas to gamble.
Nevada was the one straightened union that had legalized gambling.
(02:40):
The real boom in Las Vegas happened during the forties.
There were first a couple of hotels that opened on
what we now know as the Las Vegas Strip, which
was the highway leading from Vegas to Los Angeles. But
then right after the war in nineteen forty six, the
Flamingo Hotel opened, and that was the hotel Uy Siegell
and his mob friends from New York opened, and they
(03:03):
began attracting really the top line big stars. And the
whole idea of Vegas the Vegas hotels was to get
people into the casinos to.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Gamble and pay top dollar for the biggest.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Stars, because that would get people into the casinos and
they'd make the money back from the gambling. Then that
was the money they could pay top dollar to the
stars with.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And so starting with the.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Flamingo in nineteen forty six, then all the hotels opened
on the strip in the early late forties early fifties,
the Sands, the Sahara, the Desert End, etc.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
By the mid fifties, you had it was really.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
The entertainment capital of America in terms of live nightclub entertainment,
and so it was really hitting its golden age, its
heyday years, right around the time that Elvis first appeared
in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
In fifty six.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
You wrote this in your chapter. You said there was
just one rule, keep the show to a strict time,
usually an hour or less, to make sure your patrons
weren't away from the casinos for too long. For keeping
people in the casino was the key to Vegas's whole
business model. That led to one of Las Vegas's great
innovations of the nineteen fifties, the lounge show. Talk about that.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, there were, of course the big showrooms where Sinatra,
Tony Bennett, everybody played, all the major every major nightclub
star in the country played Vegas sometime or another in
the fifties and sixties. But then starting in the mid fifties,
somebody had the idea to have a show in the lounge,
which was kind of a bar lounge area right adjacent
(04:41):
to the casino, in between the big shows in the
big showrooms. It would keep people in the casino in
the hotel, they wouldn't leave, they'd go and spend an
hour or so at the lounge where a different performer, comedians,
singers were performing, jazz groups, and the whole idea is
to keep them from leaving the hotel stay in the casino.
(05:02):
But the lounge shows became a genre of their own.
Louis Priman and Keeley Smith were a great duo back
in the fifties and they really set the model for lounge.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Shows in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
So you had this double helping of entertainment in each hotel.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And let's talk about a character who is from West Alice,
Wisconsin and his name americanized. It's wlad Zeo or something
really really hard to pronounce. But Walter Liberaci. Talk about Liberaci,
and by the way, talk a little bit about Liberacci
and Elvis.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Sure, one of the big stars in Vegas in the
mid fifties was Liberaci. He had a really unique act,
very flamboyant, you know, piano and talking with the audience,
and musical all sorts of from classical to pop, popular,
and very flamboyant. He was really one of the biggest
stars in Vegas in the fifties. Elvis came in nineteen
(06:00):
fifty six and he wasn't doing very well at the
New Frontier Hotel, so Colonel Parker went over to the
Riviera where Liberaci was playing and doing very well, of course,
and asked Liberaci if he could come over and help
out his boy, you see his show, maybe take some
publicity shots with him. And Liberaci was a very generous
(06:20):
performer did that for Elvis, and Elvis always appreciated that
that Liberachi was nice enough to sort of help him
out when he was struggling a little in Las Vegas.
But also Elvis I think learned from Liberaci. Strangely enough,
there was something about his showmanship. Liberachi had one piece
of advice for Elvis after he saw his show. He says, Elvis,
(06:42):
your show needs more glitz. And sure enough, not long after,
Elvis was touring in a gold by a jacket very
much like the one that Liberachi was wearing in Las Vegas.
And I think that they were friendly throughout their careers,
continued to see each other and occasionally, and I do
think that Liberachi's showmanship was a big influence on Elvis,
(07:07):
particularly in those later Vegas years when he came out
with the white jumpsuits and the flashy outfits and stuff.
I think you can look back and see Liberachi's influence there.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Well, we'll continue with this conversation. The book is Elvis
in Vegas, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
We'll be back with more of Richard Zoglin's story Elvis
in Vegas after these messages. Folks, if you love the
great American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
(07:37):
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and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we continue here on
(08:11):
Our American Stories Elvis in Vegas. We're talking about this
terrific book with author Richard Zogwin, How the King reinvented
a Las Vegas Show. Let's talk about the rat Pack.
Who were they and what impact did these guys have
on Vegas.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Frank Sinatra was already a big Vegas star from the
early fifties, and in nineteen sixty he was making a
movie in Las Vegas called Ocean's Eleven. He was also
going to appear at the Sands Hotel in the evenings
after his day shooting was done well. This film had
all a lot of his sort of friends from Hollywood
(08:48):
in the cast, and somebody came up with the idea
that maybe Frank could bring some of them on stage
with him in the evening when he did his show
at the Sands, and so Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior,
Peter Law, and Joey Bishop would come on stage every night,
it turned out, and they would just have this kind
of free for all session of songs and jokes and drinking.
(09:10):
And it was a smash hit in Las Vegas. For
like one month in January February nineteen sixty, the rat
Pack shows were the biggest thing Vegas had seen. Every
celebrity from Hollywood came to a Jack Kennedy who was
campaigning for president. He came to see the show on
the campaign trail, and they kind of became the quintessential
(09:35):
iconic stars of Vegas.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
The rat Pack and let's talk about what happened soon after,
Because rock and roll is coming down the pike, a
new generation, and this is always the case with pop music,
a new generation is coming in. I want to read
something because it almost seemed to summarize the clash of
these almost two civilizations and cultures. You're right, they needed,
and you're talking about the rat Pack to leave the
(09:58):
stage before a new kind of vague entertainment could emerge.
Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley represented two opposite polls in
American popular music, the suave, largely urban jazz influenced tradition
that dominated radio, recordings and nightclubs for decades, and the unruly,
largely rural blues and country influenced music that would first
(10:19):
catch on in the mid nineteen fifties and virtually take
over in the next decade. That seismic shift in music,
as well as in the rest of the culture, was
mirrored in the changes that would come to the Las
Vegas Strip. Talk about that because it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Well, as I said, the rat Pack kind of epitomized
Vegas cool in the early sixties, but then things started
to change very quickly, starting in sixty four, with the
advent of the Beatles and the whole British invasion, the
whole all the changes in rock and roll, the counterculture,
the Vietnam protests, and everything we know what happened in
(10:57):
the sixties. And suddenly, by the late sixties, these the
cool rat pack guys were looking very last generation and
the new rock and rollers were not coming to Las Vegas.
The younger generation did not think Vegas was cool anymore,
and so Vegas was starting to wonder where it was
going and how it was going to get the next generation.
(11:18):
The nightclub scene was fading out, the traditional nightclub show,
the nightclubs were closing around the country. Vegas was really
the last outpost for real nightclub entertainment, but it was
starting to fade, and so the rock and roll scene
really made Vegas have to take a look at itself
and figure out what to do next. And I think
(11:39):
that Elvis's arrival in nineteen sixty nine helped Vegas enter
that new era, that new era.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Of rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
And it's interesting because it also helped Elvis resuscitate his career.
Let's talk about the sixties, because Elvis comes back from
serving his country and Tom Parker, and that's Colonel Tom Parker,
as you write, and Chronicle made a big mistake in
the end by focusing Elvis only on this movie career
(12:07):
of his, which these are some really wretched films in
the end, and Elvis had stopped touring and playing almost entirely.
So talk about that. It's almost a lost musical decade.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Sure, it was Colonel Parker's decision after Elvis came back
from the Army, that he would become a movie star,
and he didn't want him to be. You know, people
felt that rock and roll was for kids, and that
if you wanted a career, you had to graduate to
something else. You couldn't just sing rock and roll forever.
So Elvis wanted to do movies and had done some
(12:40):
good movies, fairly good movies in the fifties before the Army.
After the Army, though, he was restricted only to movies
and recording, and through that entire decade the movies got
worse and worse.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
The songs he was recording.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Were kind of no longer making the charts by the
mid sixties late sixties, and Elvis was getting to death.
He knew the movies weren't very good. He really missed
performing live. But the Colonel was very strict about this plan.
He wanted to sort of restrict the access to Elvis,
and so, you know, strangely enough, he did not do
(13:16):
any live performing except for a couple of benefit performances
in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Elvis did no live.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Performing during the nineteen sixties, no concerts until finally in
nineteen sixty eight when he made his famous comeback special
on NBC. Finally it was time the Colonel decided for
Elvis to come back to live performing, and Vegas, being
very familiar to both of them, was where the Colonel
(13:44):
decided to do it.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
And let's talk about that night. He had to be nervous.
First of all, it's been a long time, but he
comes out in that leather elfit and he changes everybody's
mind about him. People had thought he was washed out
rock and roll had changed. Talk about the importance of
this for Elvis's career in the culture, and particularly the
cultural elites of the rock and roll crowd. That John
(14:07):
Landaus and those young music critics who sort of thought
of Elvis as sort of that old fifties character.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
That's right, they had written him off.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Now things had started to change in December sixty eight
when he did his comeback special on NBC. There they
saw Elvis still as powerful of a performer as ever. Still,
the idea of Elvis returning to the stage that was
a big gamble from him, and.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
He was very nervous.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
He had been away for so long and thought so
much had changed in the rock world. Elvis didn't know
if he could still draw a crowd anymore, if he
could still perform like he did a decade earlier, so
he was very nervous about it. The rock and roll
critics all came to that show. There was so much
anticipation around that return. I think the appetite was wetted
(14:56):
by that sixty eight special on NBC, but all the
major rock critics and rock reporters from around the country
basically flew in for that one night, that opening night
on July thirty first, nineteen sixty nine, and the reviews
were almost unanimous.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Raves and even the.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Rock critics who were very skeptical of Elvis, who felt
he was a hasbian, they admitted that he was amazingly
good on stage. He could still rock with the old
to the old numbers. He had new stuff that he
was doing for the first time that you know, these
songs like Suspicious Minds and in the Ghetto that kind
of introduced a new Elvis. He was reinventing himself, and
(15:40):
I think the rock critics were kind of amazed and
grateful to see him back as dynamic as ever.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Let's talk about a guy named Krekorian. Is Kirk in
the end has something to do with his comeback. I
mean he's building a brand new hotel with a big,
big stage and a lot of capacity.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, Well, Kurt Kacorian was coming to Las Vegas. He
had bought a hotel, the Flamingo Hotel, I think a
year earlier, and then he decided to build the biggest
hotel in Vegas off the strip in the convention center area,
called the International Hotel, with a showroom twice as large as.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Any other in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
He had a whole crew getting ready for the getting
the hotel ready. He hired a you know, an entertainment director,
and the instructions were to get the best, you know,
the biggest entertainment available. A guy named Bill Miller was
the entertainment director who was a kind of well known booker,
in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
He went out and he wanted Elvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
He thought that that was the kind of big name,
you know, big attraction that the hotel needed to open.
Colonel Parker was receptive, except he had one problem. He
didn't want Elvis to open the hotel because the hotel
was still being pleaded construction. They were racing to finish
it in time for the summer opening. And he said,
(17:06):
we'll do the hotel, we'll play the hotel, but Elvis
shouldn't be first. Have somebody else be the guinea pig.
We'll come in second. And so Bill Miller, the booker,
went to his backup choice, Barbara Streisand who actually opened
the hotel in July, played the month of July in
nineteen sixty nine. Barbara actually didn't do that well. Her
(17:27):
show was not that well received.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
She did more of.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
A sort of stripped down New York cabaret style act,
and it didn't really fill that big stage. Elvis filled
the stage, and when he came he sold out every
single show for twenty eight straight days.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
And we're talking to Richard Zoglin. The book is Elvis
in Vegas, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
We'll continue with this story after these messages, and we
(18:08):
continue here with our American stories and Elvis in Vegas
by Richard Zauglin, How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show.
Go to Amazon dot com pick this up. If you
love the culture, if you love music, you're gonna love
this book. And if you love Vegas, and well, who doesn't,
at least for a few nights. By the fourth night,
I gotta go home. But three nights, it's just perfect.
(18:30):
And we continue now on the chapter called the Comeback.
And Elvis had gone through a lot clearly in that decade.
But what I really had forgotten was, as you said,
how much the counterculture, all these young rockers, all these
new musicians from the Woodstock era, and after so many
of them just didn't like Elvis at all.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
They recognize him as an influence, major influence. I mean
the Beatles, John Lennon all, you know, knew that he
was the rock and roller that they all were inspired by.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
But you know he was he was so far out
of the picture.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
The movies were kind of being made fun of, and
it was, you know, he just wasn't a factor anymore.
And playing Las Vegas was not the cool thing to do.
Most of the rock and roll groups, certainly the big
rock groups were not playing Las Vegas. So the idea
that Elvis was was doing Las Vegas did not exactly
enhance his credibility with the sort of hip rock crowd.
(19:30):
But I think they, they, you know, were won over
by the sheer power of his stage performing. He was
really never better as a stage performer than he was
in those that first year or so in Las Vegas,
and his voice was was bigger than ever, and his
energy level was absolutely at the peak. He was so
(19:50):
excited to be back in front of his fans again.
So it was it was a really peak of the
peak of his stage performing career.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
I think, let's talk about this show itself. You're right,
Elvis had no intention of becoming a nostalgia act, nor
did he want to do a conventional Vegas show. A
little bit later, you said, Elvis had a dream one
night in which he saw himself on a Vegas stage
filled with a huge collection of musicians, a rhythm band,
(20:19):
two backup singing groups, and the biggest orchestra Vegas had
ever seen.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Talk about that, Yeah, the colonel, Colonel Parker's idea for
a Las Vegas show was chorus girls, Showgirls, a kind
of traditional Vegas show, and Elvis said, no, I'm going
to do it my way, or I'm not going to
do it at all. And he just went out and
he first he had to select a backup band, rhythm group,
(20:46):
starting with James Burton, the famous guitarist who people knew
from Ricky Nelson's TV show, and he really put the
show to Surprisingly, what surprised me was there was really
no director or producer, you know, hands on producer of
the show. It was really Elvis with just a couple
(21:06):
of his friends, going through figuring out what songs to
do and what order. He picked all the musicians, the
backup band, the two singing groups, a male white male
gospel group and a black female soul group, the Sweet Inspirations,
and just put the show together himself. He just knew
(21:28):
what he wanted to do. And it was kind of
the first sort of rock concert like show to that
Las Vegas had seen. And you know, it was kind
of a brave thing for Elvis to do. He was
not fitting into the usual mold of Vegas shows, the
traditional nightclub rat pack style, nightclub show more intimate. Of course,
(21:50):
he was on a much bigger stage, and he knew
he had to do something bigger and also something that
would showcase what he did well, the old rock songs,
the new ballads, and you know, he just knew what
he wanted and he had his instincts were right on
the money.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I want to read another passage. The musicians on stage
represented a grand coming together of all the music Elvis loved,
and that it shaped him as a singer, rock and roll, country, gospel,
rhythm and blues, plus the symphonic sound of a full orchestra.
What a dream that is to represent, in the end,
almost all of American music on one stage and probably
(22:29):
one of the only people in American history who could
have pulled that off, Richard.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah, and I think it was a great achievement. And Elvis,
he may not have been the coolest, the most cutting
edge thing in rock and roll at that point. I
mean he wasn't, but he wanted to sing to everybody.
He wanted to bring all the audiences together. You know,
Elvis was the guy who really split the audience back
in the mid fifties, you know, before rock and roll
(22:56):
came along, Before Elvis and rock and roll, everybody was
listening to music.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
There was all the hit and.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Parade tunes and tin Panaley Broadway show tunes or whatever.
After Elvis, there was a split. There was the traditional
kind of tin Panaley type of songs that the adults
were listening to and this newfangled kind of music that
the kids were listening to, rock and roll. Well, by
the late sixties, that split in.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
The culture was had gotten wider and wider.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
But Elvis really he didn't He didn't want to just
sing to the kids, and he wanted to sing to everybody.
He wanted to sing the He sang old old standards
like are you Lonesome Tonight? He sang rock songs, he's
he covered bit hits by the Beatles and Neil Diamond, whoever.
He just did everything gospel, country, and so I think
(23:48):
he was a I like to say that in the
fifties he was the great divider.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
He was the guy who divided the culture into and.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
In the late sixties he became the great uniter, bring
bringing the audiences all back together. And the fact that
he could to do that so well and sell out
four weeks of shows and by the way. That was
two shows a night, seven nights a week, for four
straight weeks, not a single night off.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
You know, no one could do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
And he sold out every show as he sold out
basically every show he did in Vegas.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
It's amazing, you're right again. The show lasted an hour
and fifteen minutes and Elvis worked himself to a frazzle,
pacing the stage like a panther, crouching, lunging, leaping, doing
karate kicks and punches. He was like a wild man,
recalled Felton Jarvis, his RCA record producer, talk about that.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, he was just so revved up to be back
in front of a live audience again, and it had
all been stored up for you know, for a decade basically,
and so it was just an incredibly exciting show. He
had an audience filled with celebrities, you know, from all
over and all the rock critics from all over the
(25:05):
country there, so elvit the adrenaline was flowing. And what's
amazing is he was able to sustain that energy all
the way through twenty eight straight days and I think
for the next year. So he came back, by the way,
after the first night the hotel signed him to a
long term contract five years and have him come back.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The idea was that he would come back.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Every six months for four weeks, twice a year.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
For four week engagements. And I contend that for the
first two or.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Three of those engagements Elvis was absolutely at his peak
as a stage performer. He started to go downhill later,
but when he was first, you know, back in front
of the live audiences again, in front of his fans,
he was so excited and juiced by that idea, the
ability to be back on a stage again, perform live
(26:00):
for his fans. And I think that just sustained him
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And indeed a stage of his choosing, the musicians of
his choosing, and the set of his choosing Richard really helps.
I'm going to read one last thing. We'll go to
the final segment. The nation's top rock critics soon weighed
in with nearly universal praise. Quote Presley came on and
immediately shook up all of my expectations and preconceived categories,
(26:24):
wrote Ellen Willis in The New Yorker. There was a
new man out there, That's what she said. And down later,
David Denton said this Elvis was supernatural. His own resurrection
is what I witnessed at the Showroom International in Las
Vegas last August, and indeed it was a resurrection of
(26:46):
a remarkable career. When we come back more with Richard Zoglin.
The book is Elvis in Vegas, How the King Reinvented
the Las Vegas Show, And go to Amazon and pick
it up, or better still, go to a local book
tout us by one if you have a friend in
the family who loves Vegas, who loves Elvis by two.
When we come back the last part of our conversation,
(27:08):
the story of Elvis in Vegas here on our American Stories,
(27:37):
and we're back with Richard Zoglin, author of Elvis in Vegas,
How the King Reinvented the Las Vegas Show. Let's talk
about the success, because, my goodness, the numbers were staggering.
He just kept selling the room out and selling the
room out, and ultimately this led to his undoing in
a way, didn't it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Well, yeah, you know, he was so successful and profitable
for the hotel and profitable for Elvis. And Colonel Parker
was good at sort of repeating what worked, and so
he brought Elvis back every six months, and Elvis started
touring again and it became a grind.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
It became a grind for him.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
He was excited at the beginning of the Las Vegas
runs and for the first year or so after that.
Then he started to get bored with it. And it
was a tough lifestyle for him. For four weeks to
be kind of cooped up in a hotel room. He
had trouble even, you know, going out because he was
such a big star in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
He couldn't go out and not be mobbed.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
It was a nocturnal lifestyle. He was staying up all night,
sleeping all day. As we know, the drug use began
to increase. He had his weight problems, so I think
that's when the downhill slide started.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
You wrote it soon became a grind. In his thirtieth
floor home at the International Hotel later the Hilton, with
a palatial five thousand square Foo suite, complete with private
swimming pool and rooftop terrace from which Elvis and his
pals would sometime hit golf balls, had become a prison.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, I know, it was tough.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Some people think that Vegas is what killed Elvis. I
think that's unfair. I think that he was just every
artist has to keep moving, you know. That's why he
got so bored with the movies in the sixties. How
you know, they were getting worse and worse than Elvis
(29:44):
was born. Reinvented himself and found a great new venue
in Las Vegas. But after a while it became the
same thing over and over again, combined with maybe an
entourage that was a little enabling of his bad hea abbots,
the things, you know, started to go downhill.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I wouldn't blame.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
It on Las Vegas, but Vegas was certainly part.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Of the problem, you know.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
At the same time, this also was happening because he
was establishing well, something new that we now come to
know as the residency. You wrote, he was the first
major star to establish something like a regular schedule in
Las Vegas, two four week engagements a year, one in
the winter, one in the summer. A forerunner of the
(30:29):
residencies of latter day Vegas stars like Celine Dion. Elvis's
show set a new standard for Vegas. The star was
now his own spectacle.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, that is the important point is how Elvis not
only did Vegas help save elvis career and re help
him reinvent himself as a performer. But Elvis in a
way saved Vegas, or at least changed Vegas.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
His show was not.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
A traditional Vegas show, a traditional intimate, rat pack style
nightclub show. It was a big rock concert like extravaganza,
and it drew a different kind of audience. It got
people from around the country who were maybe not necessarily
Vegas goers. They weren't big gamblers, high rollers that Vegas
traditionally catered to. They were just fans of Elvis. They
(31:19):
were Middle America. They were families in a lot of cases,
and they would make their summer vacation organize it around
a trip to Vegas for Elvis. And so that opened Vegas'
eyes to a new kind of audience, a more a
broader based audience. And that was the audience that Vegas
over the next couple of decades would discover in its
(31:40):
own reinvention. You know, I think Elvis was sort of
the starting gun for the change in Vegas from a
kind of nightclub and gambling town for adults to a
theme park, family vacation the place that we know today
and then became the residencies came starting with Celine Dion
(32:00):
in the early two thousands. In the nineties, pretty much
the headliners kind of went into eclipse as the circusla
kind of extravaganzas took over.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
And there's still a course very big there in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
But now you're seeing a comeback in the kind of
traditional headliners who are following what Celine Dion started, and
a lot of rock performers now are coming to Vegas
who wouldn't have done it before. I think now you
see Lady Gaga there and Aerosmith and so Vegas of
course has become a huge family vacation destination. It took
(32:38):
a little while, but I think he really opened the
door to a broader based audience and kind of introduced
Vegas to that new audience that it would go after
over in the next couple of decades.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
Indeed, you note that his decline started somewhere around August
of seventy one, this slow, steady decline. But you write this,
but the audiences anyway, and that was part of the problem.
The fans loved him no matter how bad he looked,
no matter what he did.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Talk about that, yeah, well that's probably not something that
Elvis fans want to hear. But you know, I do
think there was a little indulgence. There was, you know,
indulgence by his entourage, the Memphis Mafia, and I think
his fans, they did. They were so excited to see
the guy on stage, and he did a great show.
(33:31):
But he began to you know, I think he got
lazier as the years went on, and his pattern on
stage sometimes was a little wacky.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
The amazing thing.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Was, even as he got his decline was starting, I
think in terms of his behavior on stage and his weight, the.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Voice was still as good as ever.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
You could hear recordings from like seventy four and he's
still the voice is still great.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
So maybe that was enough for the fans.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
But I do think that there were times when he
was just not in good shape. You could tell he
didn't have the energy, was starting to fade, but they
did love him so much, and you know, the women
would he would throw out the towels to the women,
and you know, it was just it got a little crazy,
and by the end it was a little bit of
(34:20):
a self parody. And I don't think the fans helped
by just loving everything he did.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Indeed, and this is a remarkable quote you have here
Towards the end of the book, after sitting through Elvis
Presley's closing night performance at the Las Vegas, Hilton wrote
the Memphis Press Scimitar in an eerily prophetic review on
December fifteenth, nineteen seventy six. One walks away wondering how
much longer it can be before the end comes, perhaps suddenly,
(34:48):
and why the king of rock and roll would subject
himself to possible ridicule by going on stage so ill
prepared prophetic.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Indeed, Yeah, that wasn't eerie review, written just eight or
nine months before he died.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
It's too bad what happened.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
But I just want to remind people that Elvis in
Vegas he was great before he got fat. I mean,
he was terrific in those early Vegas shows, and if
you see some of the very late ones that it
is kind of sad to see, but I think that's
the consequence of a performer who was just forced to
(35:27):
kind of repeat himself constantly. He should have done other things.
He should have toured overseas. Everybody wanted Elvis to tour overseas,
except for Colonel Parker, who we learned later had some
passport problems. He was an immigrant from the Netherlands who
apparently never had a passport, so he was always making
(35:51):
excuses why Elvis could not tour.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
He would blame it on security issues or something.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
For tour overseas, but he was really he was worried
about his own status as an illegal immigrant. So that's
the kind of thing that I think would have revived Elvis,
would have re energized him, and he couldn't do so
Vegas became, unfortunately a kind of prison for him.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
By the end, I'm going to close with something and
then get your comment. Elvis didn't kill Vegas, but he
did change it. He's triumph in Las Vegas helped asen
the demise of the old nightclub shows and sounded the
starting gun for a very different era of Las Vegas entertainment.
By the way, it's an era we all so readily enjoy,
(36:36):
and I think it's why it's the top tourist attraction
in America. And Elvis had a lot to do with that.
Let's leave in a positive note.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Talk about that definitely.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
You know, Celine diond They did a tribute show to
Elvis a few years ago that was televised and she said,
if it weren't for Elvis, I couldn't be doing what
I'm doing here in Las Vegas. After Elvis died, you
had performers like Shaer and Dolly Parton, who were you know,
the kind of performers that maybe wouldn't have done Las
Vegas before.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
But I think Elvis.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
Showed that rock and roll could work on the.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Big showroom stage.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
And as I said, he showed that there could be
a bigger, sort of broader audience for Las Vegas. It
wasn't just for the high roller types who loved Sinatra
and the rat pack. It was it was for everybody,
and so that was it was just the natural progression
that took a little while. But now we have a
(37:28):
Vegas that is just a huge, you know, tourist attraction
for the whole family. And that's why Elvis continues to
be a presence in Las Vegas, the impersonators and the
wedding chapels and so forth, because I think everybody recognizes
that Elvis inaugurated a new era in Las Vegas, and
(37:49):
that new era they're still reaping the benefits of it today.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
We've been talking to Richard Zoglin, the book Elvis in Vegas,
How the King reinvented the Las Vegas Show. Go to
Amazon and get this. You will want to put it down.
Better still, go to a local bookstore and buy the book.
This is Leehabebe Elvis in Vegas, Our American Store
Host
Lee Habeeb
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