When Elvis returned to the stage in Las Vegas on July 31, 1969, after eight years immersed in Hollywood movies, he included one of his greatest hits “Are you Lonesome Tonight?” in his repertoire.
This song had been one of the best-selling singles of 1960, this Elvis hit was written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman in 1926.
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Often in his live performances, Elvis would swap out the actual lyrics of songs for humorous ones.
Some nights, when performing this song instead of singing the original paragraph: ”…You look at your door and imagine me there,” she would sing ‘You look at your bald head and wish you had hair…”
On August 26, 1969 at the Hotel International, on the Midnight Show, Elvis performed this song.
It is said that Elvis had seen a bald man with a toupee, who was at the first tables, and when the fans were fighting to get their handkerchiefs, in the midst of the commotion, the poor man dropped his toupee.
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Elvis was so amused that, as usual for him, he changed the lyrics of the song: “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hear…” (“You look at your bald head and wish you had hair… .”). Although he had already done it previously in other interpretations. After saying this, he had such a fit of laughter that he could not continue singing, only laughing out loud, while the soprano Cissy Houston (Whitney Houston’s mother) who was Elvis’ backing vocalist with the Sweet Inspiration, from July 31 to 28 As of August 1969, she was still trying to get around the situation by doing her choir work perfectly with her soprano obbligato.
When the song ended, the only thing Elvis could think of to say was: “Oh my God… that’s all man… 14 years as an artist down the drain…!!”
Needless to say, the audience was delighted and had a lot of fun just hearing Elvis laugh, he had a very contagious laugh. Elvis loved these situations, playing jokes, telling stories and making his audience laugh or inventing the lyrics of the songs, especially in these first years back on stage. Elvis’s sense of humor was always a great asset to him, and his ability to make others laugh was truly amazing.
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The biographer Peter Guralnick, made a review regarding this incident in which he said that the trigger could be the high-pitched and tenacious voice of the singer Cissy Houston, which triggered Elvis’s uncontrolled laughter; that it must have been funny to hear her sing with such a high-pitched voice and with such discipline that she couldn’t stop laughing.
Perhaps we will never know if it was for one or both, but the story of the bald man has been gaining strength among fans, and it is very consistent with Elvis’ change of lyrics in the song. This performance has become an underground legend among Elvis fans, until its official release on the eight-LP “Elvis Aron Presley” box set in 1980.
I invite you to listen to it, because you will have a really fun time. Here is a link to the song. Elvis changes the lyrics at minute 0’49 of the video.
Information provided by ELVIS. El Chico De Tupelo
Rosa Garcia Mora
https://m.facebook.com/102791652501100/
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