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Faded Love

May 20, 2010 | Other

Press-release

Recently, the 'Straight Arrow' team obtained a couple of great quality Las Vegas off-line recordings. These concerts were recorded using a 1972 portable Sony high-end cassette recorder equipped with two microphones. The microphones were placed apart from each other in the balcony seating, behind the mixing desk of sound engineer Bill Porter. Usually, such tapes are called a "booth recordings" and often are used for mixing in with a multi-track recording to obtain full depth of the sound. However, we call them "TWO-MIKE AMBIENCE LIVE RECORDINGS" - because that's precisely what they are!

The first volume of our mini-series is titled "FADED LOVE" (SA/SP 2010-01-02) and will feature the infamous February 15th, 1973 Dinner show. Elvis had the flu and appeared on stage against his doctor's advice. There was no Midnight show on this day. He was trying hard, but after seven songs he called the Stamps to the spotlight to sing a couple of gospels, and left the stage. During that time Charlie Hodge - true professional as always - introduced each song, adding a couple of jokes too. Elvis returned after some 20 minutes, and apologized for his voice problems. He finished with "Can't Help Falling In Love" and he was about to leave the stage, but he suddenly decided that this would disappoint his fans. To the audience’s surprise, he continued the show and tried to make up for his restricted vocal abilities with several rare performances. "Faded Love" is the very first known live-performance of his 1970 country-rocker, while country weeper "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is sung on stage for the last time. "Polk Salad Annie" was performed only twice in 1973 (listen to the only other live-version on 2009’s Straight Arrow's release "A Change Of Mind"!). During "An American Trilogy" Elvis changed the lyrics to: "Oh I wish I was - in the doctor's office" but otherwise sung a straight version of the song. Finally "Can't Help Falling In Love" was performed for the 2nd time and that made this show even more special. We decided to add an edit of post-concert fan's comments related to this show for historic reasons, too.

Unlike previous releases from Straight Arrow, this mini-series will be presented in cool looking digipacks with all necessary information and rare photographs.

Note: the Straight Arrow team is aware that this concert was released in 1992 on the CD "Las Vegas Dinner Show". However, it was a below-average quality audience-recording, in no way comparable with two-mike ambiance live recordings. Forget the old inferior outing and enjoy this new, clear, warm and ambient stereo sound!
"FADED LOVE" will be released on May 24, 2010.

Tracks

01. Introduction: Also Sprach Zarathustra - 02. C. C. Rider - 03. I Got A Woman / Amen - 04. Love Me Tender - 05. You Don't Have To Say You Love Me (with false start) - 06. Steamroller Blues - 07. You Gave Me A Mountain - 08. Fever / Elvis left the stage - 09. Walk That Lonesome Road (J. D. Sumner & The Stamps) - 10. Sweet Sweet Spirit (The Stamps) - 11. When It's My Time (Bill Baize & The Stamps) - 12. How Great Thou Art (Donnie Sumner & The Stamps) - 13. I Should Have Been Crucified (Ed Enoch & The Stamps) - 14. Can't Help Falling In Love #1 - 15. Faded Love (first live version) - 16. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (last live version) - 17. Polk Salad Annie (first of two versions performed in 1973) - 18. An American Trilogy (with false start) - 19. Can't Help Falling In Love #2 - 20. Closing Vamp / Announcements - 21. After show comments.

Approx. running time: 76:34

Source:Email
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Ciscoking wrote on May 20, 2010
A winner in awesome sound....!!!
You Dont Know Me wrote on May 21, 2010
Yes absolute beautiful sound this is THE version of this show to buy!~
drjohncarpenter0117 wrote on May 21, 2010
A digi-pack and awesome sound.......cannot wait for this to drop in my mailbox........thumbs up!
Crawfish wrote on May 23, 2010
Help! How did you get to order yours please? I went to Amazon and no such listing. Thanks.
Monster wrote on June 28, 2010
I haven't even finished listening to this show yet but I had to jump online asap to comment on how much the sound has been improved on this release. It was a pretty tough listen before due to the sound but this is as good as an audience recording gets in my view. You can hear every bit of dialogue this time around and there is a definite warmth to the recording. Elvis's voice sounds very dry and husky rather and he is clearly holding back in places. However that doesn't stop him belting out when it matters and American Trilogy gets the usual explosive treatment at the finish which must have killed his throat under the circumstances. Special mention must go to Charlie Hodge for holding the show together and entertaining the audience with his candid chat despite not knowing when or even if Elvis was going to return to the stage. Also Bill Baize's singing on When It's My Time is just incredible. An understandably strange show in surprisingly good sound. Possibly not for soundboard fans only but it does give a good impression of what it must have been like to sit in the audience that night wondering what was going to happen next.