Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel - 11 August 1970, Dinner Show - Re-edited with Stereo audio

Chronologically the second track that Elvis recorded for RCA, Heartbreak Hotel would become the song that would begin to get him noticed on a national and international stage after his move from Sam Phillips' Sun label. That first recording session took place on 10 January 1956 in Nashville, and in all three songs were recorded that day. Many prominent British stars of the sixties, including the Beatles, attribute their desire to become involved in the music business, and their first musical influence, to hearing this recording on the radio, and how different it was to the usual output over the airwaves. Unsurprisingly, with a setlist heavily loaded towards his hits of the fifties, Heartbreak Hotel was included in the setlist for his return to live performing on 31 July 1969. Apart from the closing show, it was curiously absent from his second Las Vegas engagement, before it was reinstated to the setlist for Elvis' famous three day, six show engagement in the Houston Astrodome. During the filming of Elvis - That's The Way It Is, it was performed at five of the six shows during production, apart from the opening show, but none shown in the original movie. The 12 August 1970 midnight show version, however, was played behind a filmed montage of Las Vegas' plethora of casinos. The footage of that rendition was finally seen in 1992 as part of the Lost Performances and that rendition remains one of the finest live examples of the song performed by Elvis. In all four of the five renditions were filmed in their entirety, and the version from the dinner show of the 12th replaced the midnight show rendition in the 2001 re-edited version of the movie. This version from the 11th August dinner show, remains one of two versions of which the footage is still officially unreleased. Elvis would continue to perform the song throughout the seventies. His renditions of the song would soon lose the grit and edginess of the 1969 and 1970 versions, although occasionally Elvis would pull a cracker out the bag such as in New York at Madison Square Garden, but this would be the exception and Elvis would perform the song for the last time in Baltimore on 29 May 1977. As with all of these videos, to get the most out of them and the re-edited audio, I highly recommend you use ear / headphones and turn the volume up as much as you dare!