Elvis in Las Vegas 1956. The Artist’s Disappoinment
The truth is that what happened in Las Vegas in April 1956 was not what Elvis expected a couple of weeks earlier, on April 23, when he made his debut at the Venus Room at the New Frontier in Las Vegas.
Elvis performed at the New Frontier Hotel, in the Venus Room, from April 23 to May 6, 1956. During these two weeks, he didn’t rest a single day, giving two shows a day.
“I’m so scared, I think I’m going to burst” That’s how Elvis felt.
Although the young Elvis, 21, might not have admitted it publicly at the time, you could feel it in him and hear the regret in his voice. Perhaps it was because of the dazzling lights, perhaps it was because the late hours of the morning were so distant, perhaps because he felt that audience was so far from him… in Sin City. Perhaps it was because he had spent the last two weeks working to win over an audience that was as polite as it was skeptical and stunned.
Colonel Parker had secured a contract for Elvis, Scotty Moore, Bill Black and DJ Fontana, for a two-week engagement at the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.
But Las Vegas, in 1956, wasn’t ready for Elvis yet. In fact, at that time, neither Las Vegas nor the rest of the prudish, conservative society of the time was ready.
Las Vegas… an inflexible, stony city that only welcomed those of its own kind; and Elvis, back then, wasn’t that kind of city. It’s not that Elvis wasn’t a well-deservedly prestigious artist, which he was; and that he didn’t offer magnificent shows, which he did. But he was too transgressive for such a hermetic, traditional, and mafia-controlled environment.
That maneuver by Parker, even today, is still considered one of his biggest missteps, although the truth is that it was part of a much more complex plan.
DJ Fontana said, “I don’t think people were ready for Elvis. We worked with the Freddie Martin Orchestra, and there we were, making all that noise. We tried everything we knew. Usually, Elvis could get the audience on his side. It didn’t work that time.”
Parker wanted to try a new direction for his boy and tried it with a classic, more conservative, more adult audience, so he decided to schedule these shows in Las Vegas. But people were used to something that had nothing to do with what Elvis had to offer. Elvis was fresh, energetic, a transgressive artist in his purest form. For two years, he’d been leaving a trail of frenzied teenagers in his wake. He was an explosive mix of sexuality, rhythm and blues, gospel, country… the genesis of rock and roll.
Uninhibited and innovative, he went against the grain, breaking with all convention, with all the classic musical and cultural norms of the time. As DJ Fontana once said, “There we were, making all that noise.” And perhaps that’s all that Las Vegas audience would hear, since their ears weren’t yet capable of, nor ready to, hear Elvis.
Las Vegas thrived musically on its Big Band, the shows of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and a style of music in line with more classical musical culture. An audience that was more interested in the glamour, the alcohol, and the gambling den next door than in the “noise” these kids were making.
That small “failure” for Elvis, in the end, was just one more example that that adult, glamorous, and wealthy audience wasn’t up for what Elvis was offering. It was nothing more and nothing less than a society clinging to its status and its conservatism, and Elvis was putting that in danger. But the feeling of disappointment and failure would remain stuck in Elvis’s mind like a thorn that, fortunately, he was able to remove years later.
Still, Elvis was not unfazed by the magic of Las Vegas.
Las Vegas fascinated him. He loved it and vowed to return, even though he couldn’t imagine what the future would hold for him and how it would become, for him, the city that would forever be associated with his name, the city that adored him, the city he admired, and the city where Elvis left his eternal mark.
But for that, he would have to wait until 1969, for a triumphant and unprecedented return to the stage at the Hotel International, to show the world that his power on stage remained untouchable, and to make Sin City fall, this time, at his feet, forever…
Las Vegas was no longer a Mafia paradise. Tourism and visitors to the city were very different. Las Vegas was now geared toward the general public. And Elvis was an artist who had matured and evolved, but he still retained his essence, his sexuality, his aggressiveness on stage, and this was his moment.
But that’s another story…
Article written and provided by Rosa García Mora. https://www.facebook.com/rosa.garciamora.12
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