Starting their voyage to the top again on this day in 1981, Moody Blues release perhaps their most successful album, Long Distance Voyager. It was their tenth studio album and it became their second #1 in the U.S. and Canada, spending 10 full weeks atop the charts in the latter where it went triple platinum.
At home, although it did make #7, the reception was cooler and it was their lowest charting album in a full decade there in the UK. The prog-rockers were by that point already “veteran cosmic rockers”; having been on the scene since 1965. However, there was a sense of renewal on this record, the first they were able to record in their own English studio (they also released it on their own Threshold Record label.) It was also noteworthy for being the first without the band’s legendary keyboardist Mike Pinder, who’d quit after the previous album; his place was filled quite well though by newcomer Patrick Moraz.
The album contained two of their most enduring, and upbeat singles “Gemini Dream” and “The Voice”. The former became their second #1 hit in Canada and got to a respectable #12 in the U.S., “The Voice” also made the Canuck top 10 and American top 20 (a third single, “Talking Out of Turn” was a hit in Canada but nowhere else.) Strangely, they didn’t even make the British charts which at the time were beginning to be very dominated by new wave sounds, which makes the album’s quality and popularity surprising.
As allmusic note, “progressive rock bands stumbled into the ’80s” which made this 4-star record “impressive.” they particularly singled out “The Voice” as a “sweeping and majestic call to adventure.” Rolling Stone ranked it as one of the 20 best albums of the year, saying “no new twists, but this is exactly how it should be…dignified, eloquent and like a good sherry, should warm the hearts of…their fans and any others who choose to listen with fresh ears.” That it did, that it did.
In 2018 the Moodies were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame which point out how their “new sound (in the ’60s) influenced an entire generation of musicians, including Yes and Genesis.” Sadly they also called it quits that year, with Graeme Edge retiring; he and Mike Pinder (the last of the original members) have both passed away since.
It was a different age. Back when people watched TV and had patience and thus themes from their shows made it onto radio. Back then people didn’t mind spending two minutes to watch the opening credits, it seemed, and hear a catchy tune which in the case of most sitcoms, seemed to fill in the entire backstory of the whole cast. (Case in point, check out the opening from the early-’90s hitThe Nanny... it details the shop the nanny used to work in, her breakup with a boyfriend, why she knocked on her new bosses’ door… if they’d put out an extended version it would have probably listed her antipersperant of choice!).
Thus on this day in 1976, for the second time in the young Bicentennial year, the #1 single was a theme from a TV show – “Welcome Back” by John Sebastian. The theme from Welcome Back Kotter followed the theme from SWAT to the top of the charts and revitalized Sebastian’s career. He’d had fame in the ’60s with the Lovin’ Spoonful (“Do you Believe in Magic?”, “Summer in the City“) but hadn’t done much commercially in the ’70s until he got the call for the new Gabe Kaplan sitcom. He was commissioned to write a theme for the show after he was shown a pilot of it; rather like the later theme from Friends, it was written originally specifically for that purpose and was short – just under a minute in fact. When the public clearly loved the ditty, Sebastian added another verse and chorus and quickly it was put out as a single, with some pressings actually titled “Welcome Back Kotter” despite the character’s name not being used in it. Although the TV show, which ran four years is primarily remembered for introducing a young John Travolta to the world, the song is a little more ingrained into our culture. Sebastian says is a fave of his “because it bought me my house!” That was helped on a little by Canadian sales; it reached #2 there. Elsewhere the love for Sweathogs, and hence their theme song seemed less intense.
The same week, the theme from Happy Days , another teen-oriented comedy, was also in the top 20 and would eventually hit #5.
Most musicians dream of having an internationally-famous single. Few ever achieve it, fewer still do it twice. An every once in awhile, those who hit the top find that a smash hit can end up being a bit of a mixed blessing. Enter Katrina and the Waves. The British band with the American singer who’d hit gold in the ’80s with “Walking on Sunshine” had an encore on this day in 1997 when they won the Eurovision Song Contest with “Love Shine A Light.” It gave their career a much-needed shot in the arm…but ended up being largely responsible for their end.
The Eurovision Song Contest is quite a big deal in Europe. It grew out of an Italian music contest begun in 1951, and organizers saw it as a way to heal and reconcile Europe while wounds from WWII were still fresh. They started a contest where every country on the continent could pick one song from one of their artists and play it at a big show, with a winner being voted on. It officially kicked off in 1956, was televised across the continent right away (making it one of the world’s longest-running annual TV programs) and it’s continued through to this day, with the unfortunate exception of 2020 when the pandemic caused it to be canceled. The show not only showcases musical talent, but since it’s held in the previous year’s winning country, it is also a competitive event which helps promote tourism in the winning lands. Over 50 countries have taken part, including almost all of Europe’s plus more recently Australia, some Middle Eastern and north African ones. Ireland has chalked up the most wins, seven. It can boost the career of the performers to be sure, yet although Olivia Newton John, Lulu and Celine Dion (representing Switzerland at the time) have taken part, few well-known names have emerged from it and only one real big name act and song have won – Abba with “Waterloo” in 1974. This might be because although popular, as Katrina Leskanich of the Waves says, “people who take this contest seriously are the kind of people who get into Miss Universe.” So yes, Eurovision is quite a big deal…but in the same sort of way American Idol is a big deal over here. So how did a slightly dusty popular pop-rock group of the ’80s resurrect themselves through it in ’97?
Well, here a lot of things happened coincidentally. Warner Brothers were interested in signing the band who’d not had a hit that decade, but they clearly said they needed to hear a hit single to help sell before they’d provide the contract. Guitarist Kim Rew, the main writer for the band, was a supporter of a charity called The Samaritans, who offer mental counseling and other forms of help in the UK. He’d written a cheery “anthem” for the organization, designed to back bouncy, feel-good commercials one might expect. Katrina and the waves had recorded it, but didn’t use it because (again in the words of Katrina) “it’s too cheesy.” But Warner Brothers liked it, and someone in the band was friends with someone in the Eurovision office. They contacted the band about whether they’d be interested in competing. The record label said “we want you to do it” and Leskanich told the contest “we have this song called ‘Love Shine a Light’ (but) it’s too cheesy, too ‘Abba’… it’d be perfect for you!”
So they entered the British semi-finals, paying 250 pounds (about $500 now) to do so, and won that in February of that year…without Rew. The songwriter/guitarist didn’t want to have his band associated with the commercial jingle, and sat out.
Winning the British segment got them to the Eurovision stage in Dublin, where they were 24th of 25 performers on the night. Katrina had a couple of backing singers, Miriam Stockley (who’d go on to appear on the recorded version) and Beverly Skeete. Bassist Vince de la Cruz took over from Rew on guitar, while a session bassist played that off-stage, drummer Alex Cooper doing his usual thing. The crowd went wild, and they got about 79% of the vote…the biggest landslide in the contest’s history to that point, besting even Abba’s total.
Warner was pleased, put out the single and album Walk on Water out quickly and the single, which was a big hit in Europe. It got to #3 in the UK, #2 in Austria, and was a top 5 hit in many countries including Ireland and all of Scandinavia, where in Norway it went gold. Over on this side of the ocean, where few pay attention to Eurovision, the song barely even got noticed despite the band’s earlier smash “Walking on Sunshine” being an almost constant-presence on pop and oldies radio by then. “The song was quickly forgotten,” Katrina admits, and when it was so too were the Waves. They split up in 1999, largely because they felt their credibility as a rock act was now shot. Ironically therefore, the Eurovision stage ended up being Katrina and the Waves “Waterloo.”
Neo-hippie singer/songwriters were a dime a dozen around the end of the ’60s. But as the ’80s neared an end, not so much. Which is part of what makes today’s birthday girl so special. Happy 60th, Tracy Chapman! Having a folk song suddenly make a resurgence on country charts over three decades later is a bit special too, come to think of it.
Not only did Tracy come along about two decades after her genre had peaked, she broke ground as well by being a Black artist in one of the more exclusively-white areas of music. She remembers being given a ukulele by her music-loving mom when she was just three, but wanting to play guitar when she saw Hee Haw on TV! Her mom again obliged, and by the age of eight, young Tracy was learning that instrument. Although she grew up in a poor neighborhood in Cleveland, she was smart and hard-working and won a scholarship to a ritzy private Connecticut high school, which in turn led her to university in the ’80s, where she got a degree in anthropology. She told PBS’ Tavis Smiley that the contrast between the poor, largely Black neighborhood she grew up in and the wealthy and largely-White schools she attended later on had a major influence on how she saw life, and the music she listened to.
After university, she’d become a popular cafe performer in Boston when she got signed to Elektra Records, who went out on a bit of a limb. As journalist Siobhan O’Neill reminds us, in the late-’80s artists like Tiffany, Whitney and Roxette were the rage and “a young Black woman singing socially-aware folk tunes about poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence was the polar opposite of what was topping the charts.” Sparse, acoustic guitar driven personal narrative songs weren’t exactly burning up Billboard at the time. Nonetheless, Elektra gave her room to do her thing, and it paid off. Her self-titled debut album hit #1 in a range of countries, including the U.S., where it’s 6X platinum. In Britain, it did even better going 9X, while it’s platinum or better in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
It was helped along greatly by the world-weary “Fast Car”, a top 10 hit throughout much of the world. The song about the struggling waitress with hope for a better tomorrow won her a Grammy for Best Female Pop Performance and helped her snag the Best New Artist one as well, while across the sea, she took home Brit Awards for Best International Female Artist and Breakthrough Artist of the Year. Around that time, she was involved in playing Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday party and concerts for Amnesty International. As VH1 point out, “along with 10 000 Maniacs and R.E.M., Chapman’s liberal politics proved enormously influential on American campuses.”
Although she failed to capture lightning in a jar again – none of her seven subsequent studio albums were chart-topping, although her next three or four still earned various platinum awards and she did OK on the charts with songs like “Gimme One Reason” and “Talkin’ About A Revolution” – she remained popular throughout the ’90s and as allmusic say, “helped restore singer-songwriters to the spotlight.” Fittingly, she was one of the headliners during the first Lilith Fair tour.
Chapman was pretty quiet for over a decade, save for a Greatest Hits CD in 2015, which included a popular live performance of “Stand By Me” she’d done on Letterman’s show. After that but before last year, the only time she’s been in music news was when she sued rapper Nicki Minaj for sampling her song “Baby Can I Hold You” on one of her records. Although a judge refused to block Minaj from releasing her own song, she did pay Chapman $450 000 to avoid a trial.
Things changed quickly last year when country artist Luke Combs did a cover of “Fast Car”. His manager said “Tracy is one of his favorite artists. So his goal was never to change the song. His goal was to honor the perfection that it is.” That he did and the song took off, largely with country fans, and became his sixth #1 country chart hit. However, it had crossover appeal and went to #2 overall in the States and Canada and #18 on the newish Billboard Worldwide chart and grabbed him a double platinum single. It also vaulted her version back onto the charts (getting to #42 at home) and has reportedly earned her at least a half million dollars in songwriting royalties since Luke came out with his. “I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there,” she said of it. She became the first Black artist to win a Country Music Association award for writing their Song of the year. She and Luke performed the song together at the Grammy Awards this year, one of the few real highlights of the show.
But we might not be seeing a whole lot of her again soon. The very private Chapman (she says “I have a public life, that’s my work and my private life.”) is still involved in a number of human rights’ charities, advocating on behalf of her Cleveland’s public schools and even being a judge at the Sundance film Festival.
It was a good day for the Chief “Jersey Boy” back in 1975. Frankie Valli scored his first “solo” #1 hit single with “My Eyes Adored You.” It was his first significant hit in some eight years and a full decade or more since he’d ruled the airwaves with The Four Seasons, who’d scored four #1 hits in the early ’60s including “Walk Like A Man” and “Sherry.”
Although this lovely ballad of unrequited love was put out as just Valli, it was little different than other Four Seasons songs. The rest of the group sang backing vocals and it was recorded as the Four Seasons. However, after bouncing around between record labels for years, they’d landed at Motown, which didn’t like the song. When they didn’t put it out, Frankie bought back the recording himself (purportedly for $4000) and got it released on Private Stock Records. Good for him and that small label, not so great for Motown! The rest of the band did OK though; the return of Frankie’s voice to the radio helped the single “December 1963” which was listed as Four Seasons, not just Valli, go to #1 in 1976. In fact, that song sat on top of Billboard this day 48 years back.
Although it certainly suited Valli and is one of his signature tunes, “My Eyes Adored You” was written by Kenny Nolan and Bob Crewe. They also wrote “Lady Marmalade”…which was the song that bumped this one out of #1. Nolan later came . Nolan later came close to having a #1 of his own; his recording of “I Like Dreaming” hit #3 the next year.
Remarkably, although he’s 89, Frankie is still touring with the Four Seasons, actually playing at the Radio City Music Hall in New York tonight.
Recently we looked at Kiki Dee, a singer whose career really took off once she was signed to Elton John’s Rocket Records. Today we look at a singer whose career was resurrected after being signed to that same company by Elton. Not bad going for a record company which only lasted a few years! And happy birthday, Neil Sedaka! The one time teen heartthrob turns 85 today.
Sedaka was born and raised in New York City, the son of immigrants with Lebanese and Polish backgrounds. He seemed naturally musically-inclined and when a second grade teacher told his parents that, his mother took a part-time job to buy him a piano. He excelled at that and played fine classical music, but as a teen, he began to get interested in the early rock and R&B sounds of the day, from Elvis to Little Richard. He turned his attentions that way, to his mother’s chagrin… until she saw his first “five figure” royalty cheque, at which point she thought maybe pop music wasn’t a bad way to go!
That cheque may well have been for “The Diary”, his first single that made the charts, back in 1958. He put out his first album in ’59, when his career really began to take off with a string of hits in fairly rapid succession. Among them were “Oh Carol”, which he wrote for his high school girlfriend – Carole King! It was a top 10 at home and made it to #1 in Italy. He became very popular in Italy, and recorded some of his songs in Italian for that market, as his manager was advising him to concentrate more on the European market, since Elvis seemed to dominate American radio but wouldn’t go overseas to tour, thereby possibly limiting his superstar potential in those foreign markets. The strategy seemed to work well for Neil, but he was far from overlooked at home too. He had hits like “Happy Birthday Sweet 16”, which made it to #6 in the U.S., “Calendar Girl”, a song RCA took out newspaper ads for (“Neil Sedaka’s brandnew single is really hot stuff!”) and made a video for – a few singles had videos made that appeared on Scopitone video jukeboxes which were briefly popular in the mid-’60s – resulting in a #4 hit, which went to #1 in Canada.
There was “Next Door To An Angel”, a #5 hit in 1962 and his biggie, “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”, his first #1 song domestically. He was indeed, a teen idol and a major hit-maker…until the rise of the Moptops. The Beatles and the British Invasion they started changed the music world seemingly overnight and Sedaka’s singing career quickly declined and put him into obscurity. “Beatles,” he’s said, “not good!”
His career wasn’t totally ruined by any means though. He’d taken a job at the Brill Building as a songwriter, working within yards of that old girlfriend of his, Carole King, who was by this time married to Gerry Goffin. Neil wrote a number of songs for artists like Connie Francis, who had a hit with his “Stupid Cupid”, and played piano as a session musician there. Later he’d write a very early hit for a Swedish group which became Abba; “Ring Ring” made it to #1 in their homeland. But Neil still felt like he could be a star in his own right even after a decade had passed without any chart success. Thankfully for him, Elton John thought so too.
“I’d always been a Sedaka fan,” John said, “we couldn’t believe our luck” in signing him to his fledgling record company. Having that kind of backing, plus 10CC playing the instruments for him made his Rocket debut, Sedaka’s Back, live upto its name. “Laughter in the Rain” from it hit #1 in 1974, a dozen years since his last top 10 entry. The album also contained a song that Neil co-wrote that didn’t do much for him. But did plenty for another artist. “Love Will Keep Us Together” became the smash that put the Captain & Tennille onto the music map, and doubtless earned Neil a lot more of those royalty cheques his mother liked!
A couple more hits followed along quickly. There was “Bad Blood”, with Elton singing along with Neil (though oddly not credited on the record) which also hit #1 in the States and became his biggest-seller ; and “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”. Again. He re-recorded his early-’60s smash, doing it a bit slower and less giddily than his original, and it too was big, making it to #1 in Canada, and #8 in the U.S. As such it’s the only song to ever be recorded twice by the same artist that each made the top 10.
Although after one hit in 1980 (“I Should Have Never Let You Go”) his career again took a downturn commercially, he has no reason to feel bad – and interviews seem to suggest he indeed is a contented enough man. He has 21 American top 40 hits to his credit and has been married since 1962. They had two kids, one of whom, daughter Dana, is a professional singer as well. And his work was recognized. Among his fans is Ben Folds who remarkably enough says Sedaka was his main inspiration to become a songwriter himself. Fittingly, Neil was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in 1983.
He was on top of the music world 40 years back. Can he be again soon? Well, time will tell, but Billy Joel is back.
On this day in 1984, he had just hit the U.S. top 20 with “An Innocent Man”, the title track off his retro-sounding 1983 album that would sell ten million copies. The song would eventually make it to #10, as had the previous two singles off it, “Tell Her About It” and “Uptown Girl” and he’d already scored eight top 20 hits in the ’80s before that album.
But in 1993, after putting out his River of Dreams album, he seemed to pull the plug on his recording career, at least as a pop performer. The album closes with “Famous Last Words”, which says succinctly at its end “and those are the last words I have to say, it’s always hard to say Goodbye, but now it’s time to put this book away – ain’t that the story of my life.”Of course that was just a song, but coupled with statements he made around then, it seemed like it was a manifesto of his career path. And indeed, he has stayed largely away from putting out new music in the three-plus decades since, although he did surprise. First by putting out a decently-reviewed classical music record in 2001, and second by seemingly stepping up his touring. That included his “residency” at Madison Square Garden in New York, where he’s played over 140 concerts, including monthly for many years leading up to the pandemic. That run is scheduled to end, he’s said this summer.
Besides a little-noticed song he put out on Valentine’s Day 2007 for his then-wife, TV cook Katie Lee, and a Christmas tune that year, “Christmas in Fallujah”, there’d been zip in the way of new songs from the Piano Man. So it was a major surprise when he suggested last month that new music might be on the way, and yesterday he delivered, releasing a new single – “Turn the Lights Back On.” If “Famous Last Words” could be seen as confessional and metaphorically a lyrical look at his career, it’s perhaps no coincidence that the new one could be as well. In the chorus he sings “I’m late, but I’m here right now… did I wait too long to turn the lights back on?”
The song is a piano-driven ballad, much like most of the ones which made him famous in the mid-’70s. An orchestra building behind him seem to be the only other instrumentation. Joel went to Freddy Wexler (who co-wrote it with Billy) to produce it, another little surprise as despite sounding quite traditional in Billy’s style, Wexler is noted for working with much newer pop stars like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber.
His website reports the song as available on streaming services now and being released in a limited quantity 7” vinyl single… no word on what the b-side might be. Nor on if it is a forerunner of a full album or just a one-off track.
It might not return Billy to the status of a “Big Shot” on the charts again, but if asked if we welcome a return to the studio by Billy, we say “This is the Time”.
Two big comebacks in one on this day in 2005 – rock music and Green Day. That because the California punk trio jumped to the top of Billboard‘s album chart for the first time. That might not seem unusual now, in retrospect, but one has to note that doing so, they had knocked Eminem out of the #1 spot, and he had been the fourth straight rap artist to go to #1. And two weeks later, they’d be knocked off the top spot by another rapper still, The Game. And let’s not forget, as Rolling Stone put it, “in 2004, Green Day was essentially dead in the water.” They’d had diminishing results since their major label debut, Dookie, a decade prior, and had waited about four years to put out this one, their seventh album overall. As the charts show, rock music itself wasn’t terribly in vogue at the time in the States, at least.
Green Day accomplished the comeback with the most ambitious thing they’d done by far. A sort of concept album, involving a character called Jesus of Suburbia, a disillusioned teen looking at the world around him bleakly. Of course, this was the time of the Iraq war and growing dissatisfaction with President Bush, who many assume was the intention of the album title. It contained some good old fashioned retro surf punk but also their most complex and melodic pop-leaning material to that point, at least in “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”… a song which would win them a Grammy for Record of the Year.
“Boulevard” was one of three songs off it that went to #1 on Alternative Rock charts, along with “Holiday” and the arguably-George Bush-inspired “American Idiot.” And add in “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, which made it to #2. Not surprisingly, the album also went to #1 in Canada, Australia, the UK and more. In Canada it went diamond (their only such success), and it also was their best showing in Britain where it was 8X platinum. In their homeland, it managed to hit 6X platinum, best since Dookie.
A few years later Billy Joe Armstrong of the band helped turn the album into a Broadway musical. Rolling Stone list it among the top 300 albums of all-time, suggesting “this album transcends boundaries and genres to stand the test of time, as one of the best rock albums of our time.”
So were Green Day “saviors” of rock back then? Arguable, but we’ll see if they can do the same again, as Saviors is the title of their latest album, which came out earlier this month.
An example of irony at its worst 43 years back. John Lennon hit #1 on the U.S. singles chart this day in 1980 with “Starting Over”…less than three weeks after he was murdered.
The song was the lead single fromDouble Fantasy, his triumphant return to the music world (along with his wife Yoko Ono) after a five year absence during which he tried to get his life back in order and concentrate on his marriage and young son Sean. He picked the song as the first single, apparently not because he was convinced it was the best song on the record, but because it seemed appropriately relevant to his life. He had rather started his personal life over and was about to do the same with his professional one.
Now while it is sadly true that death boosts an entertainer’s career and legacy, “Starting Over” seemed likely to be a big hit anyway. Billboard, for one singled out the single, calling it an “uptempo, fresh-sounding rocker (with an) irresistible melody.” It was one of the happier-sounding songs Lennon had done in some time, with great vocals he said he’d deliberately made to sound a little like Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley. Released at the end of October, it had already made it to #6 in the U.S. in the final chart before Lennon died.
It became Lennon’s second chart-topper in his adopted homeland; back in his birthplace (that is to say the UK), it had made it to #1 the previous week. That was his first solo British #1 song, remarkably; its follow-up, “Woman” also made it to the top there early in ’81, with his classic “Imagine” in between for four weeks. That song had been a hit when it was first released, but only made it to the top of the pops in Britain after it was re-released as a single posthumously.
“Starting Over” also made it to #1 in Canada, Australia and Ireland and in the U.S. led off ’81 remaining on top, eventually spending five weeks at #1 and as recently as 2013 being ranked by Billboard as the 62nd biggest-seller of all-time. One can only wonder how far his career might have risen in the 1980s had he really had that chance at “Starting Over.”
33 may be young to have been labeled a “has been”, but more than a few people were suggesting that was exactly what Elvis Presley was by the time he hit that age. So, aiming to reverse that trend, he staged a triumphant comeback of sorts this day in 1968. His first TV special, officially just entitled Elvis (but usually referred to as “the Comeback Special”) aired 55 years ago tonight on NBC.
By this point, Presley’s career was definitely on the downward slope. He’d not toured for seven years, with him devoting much of his time to his movie career which was beginning to flounder badly due to mediocre roles in often ho-hum movies and an increasingly rapid production schedule. Musically, his last big hit had been “Cryin’ in the Chapel” in ’65 and his last #1 single, in 1962. Colonel Tom, his manager was getting alarmed (though seemingly long-determined to keep repeating his career mistakes) and RCA Records were as well. Elvis biographers Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx summed it up as “Elvis was viewed as a joke music-lovers and a ‘has-been’ to all but his most loyal fans.” They came up with a plan to get him back in the spotlight – a TV special.
Originally it was designed to be a purely Christmas special, but as it neared being green-lit, it was decided to change it to a more mixed bag showcasing the many sides of Elvis – the rock star, the humble singer, the religious man and yes, a lover of Christmas. It was decided to have him perform live (in a California studio) over several days in June of that year, recording a “stand up” part of earlier, rock songs, a Gospel segment, a Christmas song and even a sit-down bit where he could talk and joke in a scripted manner with some of the crew and audience and play acoustically. It’s said that might have been where MTV later came up with the Unplugged idea. Elvis cold even speak personally about how the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King effected him. He’d especially been saddened by King’s killing; not only was he a great believer in the minister’s pathway for the nation he hated how the murder took place in his Memphis, which “only confirmed everyone’s worst feelings about the South.” Presley made sure a powerful, semi-Gospel song was written just for the show, “If I Can Dream.” He had costume changes and showed his many sides that way too, introducing his white suit that would be so synonymous with his later years, and at times wearing an all leather outfit.
NBC had high hopes for the one hour show, and they weren’t disappointed. It got 42% of the total audience and was the year’s most-watched show in the U.S. Reviews for the most part were quite good too. The New York Times, for instance, said “parts of (it) were unbelievably stagey, but other parts were believably effective.” The Chicago Tribune was more complimentary, declaring “it’s great to have the old Elvis back”. They figured he was once again “dynamic, compelling, incredibly sensual.”
The special was put out as an LP around the time it aired – his first live one. It reached #8 in the U.S. #4 in Canada and surprisingly perhaps, #2 in the UK. It wasn’t a gigantic seller, but went gold by the next summer and eventually platinum. So too the eventual DVD release (in 2004, including some outtakes and scenes edited from the TV show), which has sold over 300 000 copies at home. “If I Can Dream” hit #12 on the singles chart… not a wildly popular return to form, but certainly the best showing from him for a couple of years.
Did the comeback work? Well, something did. After years in the music desert, Elvis came back with three big top 10 hits in ’69 – “In the Ghetto”, “Daddy Don’t Cry” and the classic “Suspicious Minds”. It was indeed the dawn of a new Elvis.
A Sound Day 