The latest release from the Memphis Recording Service is an interesting one, and manages to shed new light on an Elvis Las Vegas season that, I admit, I had largely dismissed. Three consecutive shows from February 2nd and February 3rd 1973 are included, alongside a disc of rehearsals from the previous week.
Anyone expecting a varied setlist from the three shows will be disappointed. In fact, there is very little variation here. With the exception of one version of Sweet Caroline and one of I’ll Remember You, the three shows are identical (although not in performance). What MRS manages to do is breathe some life into the sound quality of these shows, all of which have been released before (two on bootleg and one on the FTD label). For example, whereas the February 3rd midnight show on the FTD release I’ll Remember You has a rather lifeless, dead feeling to it, MRS have managed to make the sound more dynamic and decidedly “fuller” – and the audience is far more present here, too, which also adds to the listening experience. But their digital extraction technique isn’t perfect, and more on that later.
The first concert is the midnight show from February 2nd, and it manages to show Elvis in surprisingly fine, not to mention engaged, form. I always remembered his performances from this season to be somewhat lifeless, but perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me – or maybe the sound quality of the past influenced my thinking. The setlist doesn’t differ all that much from the Aloha concert from a few weeks before (although American audiences hadn’t seen it yet), although Until It’s Time For You To Go, Sweet Caroline (a request), and Love Me Tender are included here.
The show is short at just forty-seven minutes (the three shows all clock in to around that length), but it’s good to hear Elvis invested even in his sequence of 1950s hits, including Blue Suede Shoes and Hound Dog, with him using the funky arrangement heard on the Madison Square Garden album on the latter. Elvis is also in very good voice – What Now My Love, for example, is much better than the Aloha rendition, which has a rather nasally quality, and with Elvis’s voice wavering on the quieter moments. There’s none of that here. An American Trilogy is also excellent.
The sound quality of this first show is mostly very good. I don’t have copies of the original bootlegs to compare it to, but it certainly sounds better than the uploads of them on YouTube. There are places, though, where the digital manipulation is apparent, although this is mostly during dialogue rather than the music (it almost sounds as if the dialogue is from a different show completely). Sadly, the one song that does sound a little odd in places is What Now My Love, but these are relatively minor points.
The second show is the dinner show from February 3rd, and here we find a rather different Elvis. This concert was originally released on the Fort Baxter bootleg It’s a Matter of Time – and may well be where my memories of the season come from. The energy and engagement of the previous disc are noticeably reduced on this show, and we can hear this from a number such as I Got a Woman, which is oddly coasted through with little enthusiasm. There’s also a return to the nasal sound of Aloha – this is even more apparent in the dialogue.
There’s nothing embarrassing here – that would come in the next Vegas season – but it does feel as if Elvis isn’t giving his all, although he seems to wake up more as the show progresses, and from What Now My Love onwards, he’s sounding nearly as good as the night before. The sound for this disc doesn’t have any of the odd moments heard on the previous one. It is dynamic and punchy, again with the audience up front so that the mix is more “live” than so many dull soundboards we have heard in the past.
The third show almost feels like a cross between the first two. It’s not as engaged as the first disc, but not as relaxed as the second. Sadly, there’s little engagement during the 1950s section – except when giving out scarves and kissing the audience. It is, therefore, a standard show, and there are no real surprises after the previous two concerts. However, the sound quality here is the best of the three shows. Again, it’s punchy and vibrant, with each instrument clearly audible. We’ve had multitracks that don’t sound much better than this.
What’s clear through these three shows, though, is that Elvis in better form here than during the famous Aloha from Hawaii show. His voice is certainly stronger and more controlled (especially during the quieter sections), and we can hear that particularly during the likes of What Now My Love and An American Trilogy.
Let’s now go back to the first disc, which is a reissue of the music first heard on the From Hawaii to Las Vegas FTD. This is a cassette recording of a rehearsal from January 25th. The difference here is that the FTD runs 5% too slow, and MRS corrects that, meaning that Elvis no longer sounds half asleep. The key tracks here are the rarities, such as I’m Leavin’ It Up To You and Faded Love, with the latter arranged in the same way as heard on the Lake Tahoe Mother’s Day show from later in the year. Quite why Faded Love didn’t make the regular set list is something of a mystery, as it works well.
The biggest rarity here, though, is Separate Ways, heard in two versions – one with and one without the orchestra. It’s great to be able to hear it in this arrangement, but it’s easy to see why it (probably) didn’t make it to the live shows. It’s not a dynamic enough song for that setting. The sound improvement – if there is one at all – is slight, but the key benefit of this release is hearing these songs at the right speed. The FTD at 5% slow means it is getting on for a semitone out, and that is very significant.
A quick note on the packaging. This digipak includes a decent sized booklet, but MRS’s booklets have started to get a little lazy, I think, with only one page given over to text, and the rest being nice-but-unremarkable photos. If MRS are aiming at a more general audience than FTD, surely that audience would like to have more context on what they are listening to? There was, for example, more text in The Early Engagements release from a few years back. That’s not to say this isn’t nice packaging – it is (although the front cover picture has some strange grey patches, and I can’t for the life of me work out why), but there could definitely be more in-depth notes.
For £31 for a 4 disc set in a classy digipak with booklet is pretty good going, and there’s much to enjoy here – and possibly enough good music in good sound to make us re-evaluate a Vegas season that has previously largely been dismissed.
Shane Brown is the author of Reconsider Baby: Elvis Presley – A Listener’s Guide, a detailed examination of Elvis’s recording career, covering all master recordings and many more besides.
Beyond Boundaries 