By the end of the 1960s Elvis was the great uniter: gathering all the music he loved in one great democratic embrace
The 1960s may have been a wildly transformative decade in the history of popular music, but for Elvis Presley, it was something of a black hole.
But for that 1969 comeback, and at least a year or two after, Elvis was at his peak as a stage performer, and he created a show that not only revitalized his career but also changed the face of Las Vegas entertainment. Las Vegas also needed a boost. At the beginning of the decade, with Sinatra and the Rat Pack riding high, the town was the white-hot center for live entertainment in America. By the end of the ’60s, however, the golden years were fading fast. The arrival of the Beatles, the rise of the counterculture — all of it was making Vegas look decidedly worn. None of the major rock artists of the era — the Stones, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin — wanted anything to do with the city.
Elvis handpicked a new backup band , added two backup singing groups , and filled out the sound with a 40-plus-piece orchestra. The high point of the show was a galvanic, seven-minute version of a song almost no one in the crowd had heard before: “Suspicious Minds,” which would be released during his Vegas run and give him his first No. 1 hit in seven years.
He brought in a new kind of audience: not the Vegas regulars and high rollers, but a broader, more middle-American crowd
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