Trivia / Elvis (NBC TV Special)

• Corpsing: At some points Elvis cracks up, most noticeably during "Love Me Tender", where he adlibs certain lines, laughing with them as he goes along.
• Cut Song: Quite a bit of material was recorded for the show but not used.
  • The "Memphis" part of the "Guitar Man" production number was shot as a bordello scene where the ladies lure Elvis in and start singing "Let Yourself Go" to him, before he finishes the song. NBC's Standards & Practices department approved it, but the show's sponsor Singer decided it was too risqué and had it cut. It was restored in later video releases.
  • Reruns replaced "Blue Christmas" with "Tiger Man".
  • "A Little Less Conversation", slated to be his current single when the show would be broadcast (to promote the late autumn release of Live a Little, Love a Little), was originally going to be included, but never got past rehearsals. The version Elvis recorded for the show was later released and became the basis of the "Elvis vs. JXL" remix that was a massive worldwide hit in 2002.
• Follow the Leader:
  • The basic format of the special—a legendary icon fronts a retrospective of their career by performing their classic numbers in a variety of settings—was clearly inspired by Judy Garland's various TV specials and her Judy Garland Show weekly series from earlier in the decade. Even the famous ELVIS lighted backdrop is a riff on the JUDY lights◊ used in the Garland show, which were enough of a trademark that Allan Sherman had parodied them in his own 1965 TV special. Harsher in Hindsight, given how Garland and Presley ended up both dying from complications from drug abuse in their 40s.
  • When MTV Unplugged debuted, critics noted that it was basically this special's "boxing ring sit-down" segments (where Elvis informally runs through some songs for a small audience with a stripped-down band) used as the framework for an entire series.
• He Also Did: Steve Binder has the unusual distinction of having directed both this show, often considered the best TV variety special ever made, and the consensus choice for the worst variety special ever made, The Star Wars Holiday Special (for this show Binder was involved from the get-go, while for Star Wars he was brought in after the original director quit and the show had already become a jumbled mess).
• Throw It In!: The "sit-down" portion of the show came about because Elvis started doing informal jam sessions with his former bandmates Scotty Moore (guitar) and D.J. Fontana (drums) in his dressing room during filming breaks. Producer/director Steve Binder watched them and thought it might be interesting to incorporate something similar into the show, so he set aside an evening of taping and had Presley, Moore and Fontana assemble with Elvis's friends Charlie Hodge, Alan Fortas^note Whose uncle Abe Fortas was a Supreme Court justice at the time and Lance LeGault in front a small audience. There was no script or rundown; Binder just had Elvis and the rest perform whatever they felt like doing, and he'd see if there were any bits worth using. It turned out so well that much of it ended up in the show, and the entire performance was later turned into an HBO special of its own (Elvis: One Night With You).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Colonel Tom Parker famously conceived the show as a basic Christmas Special with Elvis just running through holiday standards. The producers quickly realized that Elvis returning to his musical roots would be a much more compelling hook, and, with Elvis himself on-board with the idea, Parker reluctantly agreed to the overhaul, with "Blue Christmas" ending up as the show's only Christmas song (and even then it was always considered an Elvis song, so it fits the special's theme perfectly).
  • Originally, the show was going to close with a spoken statement by Elvis expressing his feelings about the state of the world, particularly the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Eventually it was decided that the better route was to have him sing a song that expressed similar sentiments, so the show's vocal arranger Walter Earl Brown wrote "If I Can Dream" to fill the slot.