Straight Arrow will release Rattling Plates, Aces'n'Eights - From 'booth tapes' Vol. 5 soon. It contains the Friday, August 24th 1973 Dinner Show in Las Vegas, NV.
Imagine being a singer, and really putting your heart into a song. At the same time, your audience is having dinner, and some of them plainly don’t give a hoot about you or your singing. They are talking loudly, making noises with their plates, smoking one cigarette after another… Doesn’t sound very enticing, does it?
By 1973, it was clear that Elvis’ Las Vegas shows had a negative effect on the singer. But even at this stage, he was still impressive as a singer and a performer, and especially on those nights where he really turned on the power, there was nobody like him in Vegas - or anywhere else, for that matter.
The August 24th 1973 dinner show is unreleased in any form and was sourced from an original, excellent sounding 'booth' tape. What is perhaps most surprising, is that Elvis was still quite focused three weeks into the engagement. In earlier years, the standard had sometimes slipped a bit in the third week, even as early as August ’70! Now he delivers a strong show, with ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and ‘Big Hunk O’ Love’ being the show highlights. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ was not a regular during this season up to this point, but he delights the audience with a snappy version of his first million seller. And who knows, at this stage he may well have concluded that he’d found his own ‘Heartbreak Hotel’…