Kirk Kerkorian, chair of Trans International Airlines and landlord of Caesars Palace, was the man behind the International Hotel, built in 1969, a 30-storey, 1,510-room building costing $50 million dollars. It was the largest hotel in the world. The hotel opened on July 2, 1969. It featured a 2,000-capacity showroom, the largest in Las Vegas. It was built on the site of a defunct racetrack. It was considered a risky project to build such a hotel off the famous Las Vegas Strip; a big star was needed for the showroom.
Colonel Parker did not want Elvis to be the first performer in the showroom, considering that the building was new and it might be prone to niggles. So, Barbara Streisand was the first to play the showroom. The Colonel was proved correct, and critics noted that some elements of the hotel were not finished when Streisand performed. They also noted that Streisand looked lost on the huge stage and spent a lot of time singing to the orchestra rather than the audience. The hotel also had a 500-seat theatre in which Peggy Lee performed. Lee received more favourable reviews.
Meanwhile Elvis was busy putting together a new band that would feature lead guitarist James Burton, who had played for Ricky Nelson in the 1950’s and was by then one of the most respected session musicians in the recording industry, Jerry Scheff on bass, Ronnie Tutt on drums, John Wilkinson on rhythm guitar, Larry Muhoberac on piano (Elvis knew him from soundtrack recording sessions, but would be replaced by Glen D. Hardin in 1970), plus two sets of backing singers The Imperials Quartet and The Sweet Inspirations. The Sweet Inspirations featured Whitney Houston’s mother, Cissy. Whitney would say years later, after she went with her mother to Las Vegas to see Elvis, “You don’t actually MEET Elvis, you LOOK at Elvis. He was amazing to look at, and it was a moment I’ll never forget.” Whitney was six years old at the time. The core band would then be boosted by the resident International Hotel orchestra led by Bobby Morris (Joe Guercio and his orchestra would join Elvis from 1970).
Rehearsals began in Los Angeles on July 18, 1969, before the group headed out to Las Vegas on July 24. One hundred songs were learnt, featuring Elvis hits, recent recordings and songs Elvis wanted to sing from other artists. When it came to the hits from the 1950’s, Elvis wanted them re-vamped, telling the band not to try and play them like they had been played back then. Elvis wanted a fresh, contemporary sound. The new band worked hard, and immediately all clicked with Elvis. Ronnie Tutt would say later, “’He had such charisma – I mean, the guy had it. And upon meeting him and looking into his eyes, we just clicked. And from that particular moment on, I watched him, and I watched his eyes, I watched his movements, I watched everything he did. And as he told me, ‘What impressed me about you, Ronnie, was the fact that you weren’t looking around doing your thing, you were watching me. Everything I did, you got and accented it’.” Elvis and the band had a week of rehearsals with the resident orchestra before Elvis’ opening night. The Colonel was busy too, getting all his merchandising ready.
Opening night was July 31, 1969. There would be just one show that night, the dinner show, at 10:30 pm. For the following four weeks, Elvis would do two shows a night, an early evening show as well as the dinner show, fifty-seven performances in all. Between July 31, 1969, and December 12, 1976, Elvis would perform 636 times at the hotel; every performance sold out, breaking all attendance records.
Everyone wanted to see Elvis’s opening night on July 31, 1969. Among those in the audience were actors Carry Grant and George Hamilton, entertainer Sammy Davis Jnr, songwriter Burt Bacharach, singers Petula Clark, Dionne Warwick, Paul Anka and Viva Las Vegas co-star Ann-Margret.
As opening night got closer, Elvis became increasingly more nervous. This was not like the small audience of a few hundred that were invited to the recording of the TV show. It was an audience that would also include members of the world’s press. Elvis knew he had to get it right.
Elvis took to the stage in a black two-piece loose-fitting suit based on a karate Gi. From the moment he walked out on stage, the audience was on its feet, cheering. Elvis walked over to the microphone, nodded to the audience, grabbed the microphone, and ripped into “Blue Suede Shoes”. The audience’s reaction never let up. For the first part of the show, Elvis performs his early hits, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, “Jailhouse Rock”, “All Shook Up”, before going on to perform more recent hits and recordings from the American sessions, including “Memories”, “In the Ghetto”, and “Suspicious Minds”. Along the way, he brought out a guitar stool and played “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” using his electric Gretsch. Elvis believed that when people came to a live performance, they wanted to see a show and required more than they could hear on record, so he would mix things up and include The Beatles “Yesterday”, Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You”. He closed with “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, which would become a tradition for the remainder of his career.
The reviews were ecstatic. The London Evening Standard wrote that he was, “sensational – better than any of us could ever have imagined.” Newsweek wrote, “There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.”
Rhythm guitarist John Wilkinson said the band was not prepared for the audience reaction, saying, “They wouldn’t shut up, all through the first song they kept shouting and cheering, they couldn’t get enough of him.” Mac Davis, the songwriter of “In the Ghetto”, said, “I never saw anything like it in my life.”
