The night Elvis put the leather back on

By 1968 Elvis had not played a concert since 1961. Colonel Tom Parker had steered him into a cycle of interchangeable Hollywood musicals, and the singer who had once caused a moral panic on television was turning out songs about clambakes. Parker sold NBC a Christmas special of carols. The young director, Steve Binder, had other ideas, and Elvis, to Parker's surprise, went along with them.

The programme was taped in June 1968 at NBC's Burbank studios. Its heart is the "sit-down" segment: Elvis in black leather, on a small square stage surrounded by the audience, with his original guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana, tearing through the early hits, sweating, laughing at himself and visibly relieved to be a musician again. The finale was written for him in a matter of days after Robert F. Kennedy was shot that same month. Elvis had told Binder he wanted to say something, and Earl Brown wrote If I Can Dream, which he sang in a white suit in front of his own name in red lights.

When it aired on 3 December it was NBC's highest-rated show of the season, watched by 42 percent of the American television audience. Within a year he was back on stage in Las Vegas, and the last decade of his career, the jumpsuits and the touring, all runs from this hour.