The Last Tour

Back in 1977, RCA Records wanted to release a new Elvis album, but they only had six unreleased songs in the can. Obviously, that's not enough songs for an album. They couldn't get Elvis into a recording studio to tape anything else, so they followed him around on tour, hoping he would perform some songs he hadn't previously recorded. It ended up that he played only three "new" songs during that tour. To save tape, no complete concerts were recorded. Only a few select songs were taped at each show. So what we have here is 23 songs taped at 12 different shows between March 26, 1977 and May 3, 1977. The sound quality is very good. It's among the best sounding Elvis live recordings, strictly from an audio point of view. Of course by the time, Elvis wasn't half the performer he used to be, so from a performance point of view, it's inferior to older recordings. But for the most part, the performances here are decent, although there is a "been there, done that" feel to a lot of them. Probably the most interesting recordings here are the undubbed versions of the three songs that ended up on Elvis's last album (Moody Blue). The songs are "If You Love Me (Let Me Know)", "Unchained Melody" and "Little Darlin'". The one that sounds the most different is "Unchained Melody", which apparently had quite a bit of overdubbing done on it. Here it is Elvis at the piano accompanied only by a guitarist. While this isn't Elvis at his best, it should be of interest to Elvis's most devoted fans.