On December 3, 1968, at 9 p.m. Eastern, NBC aired a 50-minute television special called simply Elvis. Today we know it as the ’68 Comeback Special. At the time, no one knew if it would save Elvis Presley’s career \u2014 or end it.
Elvis was 33 years old. He had not performed live in seven years. Since 1961, he had focused on movies \u2014 Girls! Girls! Girls!, Viva Las Vegas, and more than 20 other films. The movies made money, but the music had gone quiet. Many people in the business believed the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was finished as a live performer.
In 1967, his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, began negotiations with NBC for a television special. Parker wanted a conventional Christmas program, with Elvis singing carols. The network had paid $1,250,000 for a package that included the special, a film, and a soundtrack.
Producer Bob Finkel thought a Christmas special was too safe. He hired a young director, Steve Binder, who had directed the rock concert film The T.A.M.I. Show. Binder did not want carols. He wanted a concert that would show who Elvis really was \u2014 a singer, not just a movie star.
Binder met Elvis in May 1968 and told him the truth. Television, he said, gives you instant results. “If you do this special, the next morning you’re either going to be the biggest hit in this country or you’ll be the biggest disaster.”
Elvis took the risk.
Filming took place in June 1968 at NBC Studios in Burbank, California. There were sit-down sessions on June 27, where Elvis sat in a small circle with his old bandmates, guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana, and just played \u2014 no orchestra, no production, just the songs that made him famous. There were stand-up shows on June 29, with a full orchestra. The opening was a big production number. The closing was something no one expected.
That closing song was “If I Can Dream.” It had been written for the special after Elvis spoke with Binder and producer Bones Howe about the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and Robert Kennedy in June 1968. Both deaths had affected Elvis deeply. The song was a plea for peace and tolerance, and Elvis sang it in a white suit, alone on stage, as the final moment of the show.
When the special aired on December 3, 1968, it became the most-watched show of the television season. It earned 42 percent of the television audience and topped the Nielsen ratings for the week. The soundtrack gave Elvis his first Top 10 album in three years. “If I Can Dream” became his first Top 20 single in two years, reaching No. 12 on the Billboard charts.
The comeback did not stop there. The special led to “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds,” the album From Elvis in Memphis, and his triumphant return to live performance in Las Vegas in 1969.
Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi. On July 5, 1954, he recorded “That’s All Right” at Sun Records in Memphis with Scotty Moore and Bill Black. By 1956, he was world-famous, with five No. 1 hits that year alone, including “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” and “Hound Dog.” In March 1957, he bought Graceland for $102,500.
He died at Graceland on August 16, 1977, at the age of 42. More than 500,000 people visit Graceland every year.
But on that December night in 1968, for 50 minutes, the King was back. He had risked everything on one television show \u2014 and America watched.
If you watched it that night, you remember where you were. That is what a comeback sounds like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On December 3, 1968, at 9 p.m. Eastern, NBC aired a 50-minute television special called simply Elvis. Today we know it as the ’68 Comeback Special. At… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3760,"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3759\/revisions\/3760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailytrusted88.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}