Virginia

Elvis Back In Richmond: Forty-Eight Hours To Memphis now available

/ TY / 7 Comments

Forty-Eight Hours To Memphis: Recorded Live On Stage In Richmond, Virginia – March 18, 1974, the latest Elvis Presley release from Sony’s Follow That Dream collectors label, hit the United States on November 1.

Ernst Mikael Jorgensen & Roger Semon produced the CD, which captures Elvis’ fourteenth appearance in Richmond—his third at the Richmond Coliseum.

The Richmond show has received a new mastering by Vic Anesini. Though presented in mono from a tape copy, apparently the concert was professionally recorded and mixed in multi-track.

According to Robert Frieser’s liner notes, the original multi-track recording is either missing or erased. Speculation is that it was a backup for the album Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis, which took place two days later at the Mid-South Coliseum.

The March 18 Richmond Coliseum concert was only six days after his March 12 appearance there. After visiting other cities, the tour swung back through Richmond due to a rapid sell out of the earlier show.

Richmond references
Track 04 at 0:02: Elvis says, “It’s a pleasure to be back here in Hampton Roads, uh, Richmond! Just kidding, just kidding.”
Track 15 at 2:23: Elvis says, “I’d like to thank the John Marshall hotel, where everybody’s staying, for taking care of us over there.”
Track 21 at 0:00: Elvis says, “You’re a fantastic audience, you really are. Until the next time here in Richmond, I’d like to wish you an affectionate adiós.”

As with other releases on Sony’s FTD collectors label for Elvis fans, the only physical store in the US authorized to sell the CD is Good Rockin’ Tonight, a Graceland gift shop in Memphis. However, the CD may be obtained online from a variety of other Elvis stores, including Graceland’s ShopElvis.com.

The CD comes in an oversized, 7-inch digipack that includes a 16-page booklet with photographs from the show. It marks the first official release of a Richmond Elvis concert.

Forty-Eight Hours To Memphis (2011)

Forty-Eight Hours To Memphis (2011)

Forty-Eight Hours To Memphis

Live At The Richmond Coliseum, March 18, 1974
01) Also Sprach Zarathustra/
02) See See Rider
03) I Got A Woman/Amen [edited with Memphis, March 20, 1974]
04) Love Me
05) Tryin’ To Get To You
06) All Shook Up
07) Steamroller Blues
08) Teddy Bear/Don’t Be Cruel
09) Love Me Tender
10) Long Tall Sally/Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On/Your Mama Don’t Dance/Flip, Flop & Fly/Jailhouse Rock/Hound Dog
11) Fever
12) Polk Salad Annie
13) Why Me
14) Suspicious Minds
15) Introductions By Elvis
16) I Can’t Stop Loving You
17) Help Me
18) An American Trilogy
19) Let Me Be There
20) Funny How Time Slips Away
21) Can’t Help Falling In Love/
22) Closing Vamp

Bonus Songs
23) Sweet Caroline [Tulsa, March 1, 1974]
24) Johnny B. Goode [Memphis, March 17, 1974]
25) That’s All Right [Memphis, March 17, 1974]

Jimmy Cool freezes the competition in Elvis Trivialities #6

/ TY / 3 Comments

Anton Jeldres Tiselj (AKA Jimmy Cool) was first to correctly answer Elvis Trivialities #6. Not only does Jimmy receive a set of bragging rights, but he also earns a spot among The Mystery Train’s Night Riders.

And the answer is…

Roy Webber is the name of the mayor who asked Elvis if he was going to sing “I Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog,” in the movie Elvis On Tour.

With MGM cameras rolling for the documentary, the Roanoke, Virginia, mayor met Elvis on a Woodrum Field tarmac on April 11, 1972, when the singer arrived for his appearance at the Roanoke Civic Center that evening. Webber presented him with a key to the city, which Elvis verified would fit the bank vaults. Webber also gave him a guitar-shaped floral arrangement, which Elvis proceeded to accidentally break.

Elvis and Roanoke, Virginia, mayor Roy L. Webber (1972)

Elvis and Roanoke, Virginia, mayor Roy L. Webber (1972)

Here’s the story behind what appeared on screen. Besides being mayor, Webber was also a florist. The guitar was actually made by his his company, Roy L. Webber Florist. He was in the middle of his second stint as Roanoke mayor, which began in 1968. He first served as mayor from 1949-1954. While still in office, Webber passed away in 1975 at the age of 71. However, his floral business remained open for over thirty years after that.

* * *

The next question could come along at any moment. It might be later today. It might be next month. Or, maybe not until next year. The best way to have a chance of joining the ranks of Jimmy Cool and other past winners is to subscribe to The Mystery Train using the feature below this post. That way, you’ll be notified by email as soon as a new post appears.

Congratulations again to Anton!

The Mystery Train’s Night Riders

  • October 1, 2011: Anton Jeldres Tiselj (AKA Jimmy Cool) (1:01)
  • September 9, 2011: Steve Brogdon (0:17) <— Record time
  • August 6, 2011: Thomas (2:26)
  • July 9, 2011: Thomas (5:26)
  • June 23, 2011: Fred Wolfe (0:18)
  • June 22, 2011: Ty stumps the train (no winner)

Elvis Talks: Richmond, Virginia, and the Mosque Theater

/ TY / 2 Comments

Here’s a piece from a March 24, 1956, Elvis interview that took place at the Warwick Hotel in New York City. Elvis mentions one of his shows in Richmond, Virginia:

Reporter: “What’s your biggest kick? I mean, what’s been your really highest point of excitement since you’ve been…you know, the one peak? […] I’m thinking of, you know, one night that really made you feel…”

Elvis: “One night… well, one particular night was when in Richmond, Virginia, […] whoever it was booked me […] came on stage in the middle of my act and presented me with this scroll, and all these hundreds of names on it that were there. And it read in the scroll that I had drawn the biggest crowd that had ever been to Richmond before in that particular auditorium, the Mosque Theater. It was the biggest crowd that’d ever been in the auditorium before.”

This reporter (Robert Carlton Brown) treats Elvis with more respect than a couple of the others I’ve posted recently. Of course, Elvis was not nearly as controversial in March 1956 as he was in August 1956, the time of the other two interviews I mentioned.

Like the others, you can hear this entire interview on Young Man With The Big Beat: The Complete ’56 Elvis Presley Masters, available now on Sony CDs and Digital.

48 Hours To Memphis: Recorded Live On Stage In Richmond available for pre-order

/ TY

Available now for pre-order is the anticipated-turned-controversial CD 48 Hours To Memphis: Recorded Live On Stage In Richmond, Virginia — March 18, 1974.

The North America/Worldwide version of Elvis Presley Enterprise’s ShopElvis.com reports that the CD should arrive to US addresses on or around October 31. I know what’s going to be cranked up at my house Halloween night!

Direct link: Pre-Order Elvis Forty Eight Hours to Memphis FTD CD (Mono) — ShopElvis.com

As with other releases on Sony’s Follow That Dream collectors label for Elvis fans, the only physical store in the US authorized to sell the CD is Good Rockin’ Tonight, a Graceland gift shop in Memphis.

Online, FTD CDs can be obtained from a variety of other Elvis stores.

In the 1970s, Elvis performed live on four dates at the Richmond Coliseum, spanning 1972 through 1976. The March 18, 1974, concert was only six days after his March 12 appearance there. The tour swung back through Richmond due to a rapid sell out of the earlier show.

Elvis fans around the world highly anticipated the CD after revelations several weeks ago that it would feature a previously unknown multi-track recording of the event.

However, a more recent announcement that the source of the CD is a mono tape thought to have been mixed down from the apparently lost multi-track has made the release controversial and anti-climactic for some. As for me, I’m still excited about it.

48 Hours To Memphis (concept cover art)

The 48 Hours To Memphis title reflects that Elvis closed out his tour two days later with a concert in Memphis. An edited version of the Memphis show became the July 1974 album Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis. A song from that album earned Elvis his third and final Grammy Award.

48 Hours To Memphis marks the first official audio release of an Elvis concert in Richmond. Though MGM filmed a 1972 concert at the Richmond Coliseum for the movie Elvis On Tour, it used only a tiny portion of it in the documentary. Warner Brothers has never released the remaining Richmond footage, nor has Sony made any plans as of yet to release the audio. Elvis On Tour instead prominently featured a concert in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

From ShopElvis.com, here is the full product description:

Please note: Contrary to previous informal information given, please be advised that this is a MONO release.

Derived from what must have been a full professional 16-track multi track recording, the sound is absolutely great, and Elvis is in top form. The booklet is full of great pictures from the actual show and informative notes. The CD comes in a 7″ digi format with a 16 page booklet.

Recorded Live on stage in Richmond, Virginia. March 18, 1974″

Tracklisting

Live At The Richmond Coliseum: March 18, 1974
01) Also Sprach Zarathustra/
02) See See Rider
03) I Got A Woman/Amen [edited with Memphis, March 20, 1974]
04) Love Me
05) Tryin’ To Get To You
06) All Shook Up
07) Steamroller Blues
08) Teddy Bear/Don’t Be Cruel
09) Love Me Tender
10) Long Tall Sally/Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On/Your Mama Don’t Dance/Flip, Flop & Fly/Jailhouse Rock/Hound Dog
11) Fever
12) Polk Salad Annie
13) Why Me
14) Suspicious Minds
15) Introductions By Elvis
16) I Can’t Stop Loving You
17) Help Me
18) An American Trilogy
19) Let Me Be There
20) Funny How Time Slips Away
21) Can’t Help Falling In Love/
22) Closing Vamp

Bonus Songs
23) Sweet Caroline [Tulsa, March 1, 1974]
24) Johnny B. Goode [Memphis, March 17, 1974]
25) That’s All Right [Memphis, March 17, 1974]

Elvis Shocker: 1974 Richmond concert is a multi-track recording

/ TY / 5 Comments

48 Hours To Memphis, capturing Elvis’ March 18, 1974, concert at the Richmond Coliseum in Virginia, will feature a recently discovered 16-track recording of the event.

48 Hours To Memphis (concept cover art)

48 Hours To Memphis (concept cover art)

Instead of the typical soundboard recording most fans expected, it turns out that this is actually a fully mixed, professionally-recorded show. “Taken from a tape copy (2 channels mix-down) of a 16-track recording, the show is complete (with some tape damage that has been fixed/altered),” notes the Elvis In Norway site.

Two days after the Richmond concert, Elvis closed out his tour with a live appearance in Memphis. RCA also recorded that performance at the Mid-South Coliseum in multi-track. It appeared in an edited form a few months later as the album Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis.

Questions abound. Did RCA record Richmond as preparation for that Memphis concert album? Or did RCA originally conceive the album as a tour compilation? How did RCA seemingly lose this multi-track recording and any record that it ever existed?

Sony’s Follow That Dream collectors label will release the CD in September, packaged in an oversized, 7-inch digipack and including a 16-page booklet with photographs from the show.

See below for the tracklisting. Is it September yet? Elvis is coming to town!

Live At The Richmond Coliseum: March 18, 1974
01) Also Sprach Zarathustra/
02) See See Rider
03) I Got A Woman/Amen [edited with Memphis, March 20, 1974]
04) Love Me
05) Tryin’ To Get To You
06) All Shook Up
07) Steamroller Blues
08) Teddy Bear/Don’t Be Cruel
09) Love Me Tender
10) Long Tall Sally/Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On/Your Mama Don’t Dance/Flip, Flop & Fly/Jailhouse Rock/Hound Dog
11) Fever
12) Polk Salad Annie
13) Why Me
14) Suspicious Minds
15) Introductions By Elvis
16) I Can’t Stop Loving You
17) Help Me
18) An American Trilogy
19) Let Me Be There
20) Funny How Time Slips Away
21) Can’t Help Falling In Love/
22) Closing Vamp

Bonus Songs
23) Sweet Caroline [Tulsa, March 1, 1974]
24) Johnny B. Goode [Memphis, March 17, 1974]
25) That’s All Right [Memphis, March 17, 1974]

FTD releases are official products and available from various online stores. They originate in Denmark and then ship to retailers, so there is sometimes a two or three week delay after the release date before the CDs arrive for those of us in the US.

Back In Richmond

/ TY

An Elvis Presley concert recorded in Richmond, Virginia, will soon become an official album. In September, Sony’s Follow That Dream collectors label will release 48 Hours To Memphis, a CD that captures Elvis’ March 18, 1974, concert at the Richmond Coliseum.

In the 1970s, Elvis performed live on four dates at the Richmond Coliseum. The March 18 concert was only six days after his March 12 appearance there that same year. The tour swung back through Richmond due to a rapid sell out of the earlier show. An audience sign in 1972’s Elvis On Tour modified the state tourism slogan to say, “Virginia Is For Elvis Lovers.” This clearly was still the case two years later.

I’m glad that they gave this CD a creative title, rather than just slapping a song name on it. Richmond is about 13 hours from Memphis by car – and much shorter, obviously, by plane. The 48 Hours To Memphis title reflects that Elvis closed out the tour two days later with a concert in Memphis on March 20. An edited version of the Memphis show became the July 1974 album Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis.

To the point of sounding like a broken record, I’ve noted several times here that I missed out on seeing Elvis perform live due to being only two years old when he passed away. I have intentionally avoided the bootleg versions of concerts like this for years in hopes of someday enjoying official releases. 48 Hours To Memphis will be a very special way to think of what might have been. Thank you, FTD.

Hey Sony, isn’t it about time for an Elvis On Tour boxed set?

/ TY / 7 Comments

I started to do this in reply to Mike Hermenet’s comment on my Trilogy post, but decided to make a new post about it instead.

Though the 40th anniversary of That’s The Way It Is in 2010 essentially went unobserved by both the main Sony label and its Follow That Dream collectors label, I’m with Mike in hoping that the 40th anniversary of 1972’s Elvis On Tour will capture Sony’s imagination in 2012.

Elvis On Tour deserves a 3-CD treatment on the main label:

Disc 1: April 9, 1972, Evening Show, Hampton Roads, VA
Disc 2: April 10, 1972, Richmond, VA
Disc 3: April 16, 1972, Greensboro, NC

And then, to complement the above, there should be an Elvis On Tour: The Rehearsals – Volume II CD on the FTD label.

Or perhaps swap out one of the concerts from the set and release it on FTD, and put the disc of newly released rehearsals on the main label boxed set instead – since some may find three concerts from the same week to be too repetitive for a mainstream release (who are these imbeciles?).

After last year’s poorly handled Blu-ray release of the film, I’m not holding my breath for Warner Brothers to release anything new as far as Elvis On Tour video footage next year. I hope I’m wrong on that account, though.

There is, at least, some hope for additional audio releases to go with those from the past.

Thanks for commenting, Mike, and for the quick post idea.