Peter Viney's Blog

Poole Lighthouse
Friday 11th October 2024

SETLIST

Party
Don’t Be Cruel
G.I. Blues
Wooden Heart
Can’t Help Falling In Love
What’d I Say (backing duo)
Hound Dog
All Shook Up
Memories
Kentucky Rain
In The Ghetto
If I Can Dream

INTERVAL

Also Spake Zarathustra (instrumental)
See See Rider
Burning Love
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling
It’s Now Or Never
The Wonder of You
Spanish Eyes
Johnny B. Goode
You Gave Me A Mountain
Teddy Bear
American Trilogy
Suspicious Minds
Unchained Melody
My Way
Band Intro instrumentals
Can’t Help Falling In Love (reprise)

ENCORE
Viva Las Vegas

It’s odd to see a very popular performer whom you have never heard, but most of the rest of the audience have. Ben Portsmouth has toured the world with his Elvis show, and that includes The International Hotel in Las Vegas. He won the best Elvis impersonator contest in Memphis in 2012. We booked last minute. I’ve been working on my Around & Around record collecting site on Elvis and the RCA label, and listening to Elvis continually for three weeks.

The audience were fans. They knew when to come up the front, when he gave out sweaty nylon scarves or threw teddy bears into the audience. These were regulars. Elvis is a half generation ahead of us. We’re Bootleg Beatles era with tribute bands ourselves, so many of the audience were older than us. They were reliving the experience and loving it. Ben Portsmouth is a great entertainer, a natural comedian with perfect comic timing too. He compared it to a Warner Holidays (for retired people) show. I believe he was speaking from past experience. There were lots of oldie jokes.

As ever, I looked up Set List.com and noted he did much the same set through 2022 and 2023. He has radically revised it here with new running order and some less obvious songs. He is at Poole Lighthouse with his nine piece Taking Care of Elvis Band. Drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, two female backing singers.

He’s not the first Elvis tribute act I’ve seen. Years ago we saw Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana with a Welsh Elvis tribute artist – a great show. Huge applause greeted Scotty Moore’s solo in Heartbreak Hotel. and he kept repeating it to greater and greater acclaim. D.J. Fontana was one of the most solid, hardest hitting drummers I have ever seen.

My problem with Elvis tributes is that they invariably skip my favourite period, 1961 to 1963. I’d level the same criticism at Baz Luhrmann’s film of Elvis (reviewed here). That is because there were no live performances to imitate, no particular costume to dress up in. Among my favourite Elvis songs are His Latest Flame, Little Sister, Return to Sender, Devil In Disguise, Good Luck Charm, She’s Not You, Follow That Dream. Oh, and Viva Las Vegas which they did do. Elvis tributes don’t go near them. Pre-army is easy- simple backing. Post army gives the chance to do the BIG ballads. Then they skip to the 1968 NBC Live Special to dress up in the black leather, then to the white bell bottoms, gold sequin Las Vegas hotel period. This is no different.

In the interval, the concessions stand was open. It is the most elaborate I’ve seen in its scope. They had:

Eight or nine CDs, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, tote bags, coasters, fridge magnets, signed photos, programmes, mugs, pens, baseball caps, cards – then snow globes! Glass baubles to hang on a Xmas tree!

Musically? The sound wasn’t great. Boomy mic, poor articulation of the bass and guitar. Poole Lighthouse is a perennial problem for bands. It’s a symphony concert hall. You can hear someone strike a triangle unamplified. I have spoken to sound engineers who have managed to get it right. It takes a lot of time. I’ve also been watching the 1968 NBC Special and the early 70s concerts. You don’t find a band that tight or accomplished (or that large) very often. The Taking Care of Elvis Band was not in that region, not that I would expect it to be. That’s not the point of the show.

The first set, I’ll describe as ‘Sliver lamé jacket.’ He had a big 1950s mic too. They started with Party, just the four piece section, and acoustic double bass. In the next intro, we immediately saw that he could do voices and get an audience on his side and laughing.

He announced The Jordanaires, and did Don’t Be Cruel with three acting out the Jordanaires, and just piano backing (with a bass line). That’s deep stuff in that I have The Jordanaires single (without Elvis) of Don’t Be Cruel.

There was a long enough intro for him to change into the GI military costume for G.I. Blues. The three piece horn section came onto the stage. Bass guitar replaced double bass. There was a good long trombone solo.

As I feared US Army in Germany could only mean Wooden Heart next. The keyboard player did the squeeze box on an organ sound. I’ve have always deeply loathed the song. My problem. He did it well. The audience didn’t have my distaste.

For Can’t Help Falling In Love, he invited a woman ‘older, please’ to come up on stage to be sung to. A chair was brought on. He knelt down. The fans were clamouring to be chosen. He did it well, kissed her cheek, and presented her with flowers. Ah, he really does have elderly lady appeal.

The two girl backing singers came on, he went off and the girls did What’d I Say on their own. This was to cover the change. The trumpet solo was good, but the vocal interpretation was ropey, shouty rather than soulful.

So we’re into 1968 and black leather … a long change and Trouble, which I thought one of his best numbers so far. At this point, it’s not the chronology of when songs were recorded, but that they were performed live in the era.

So we got Hound Dog segueing into All Shook Up. I wasn’t impressed with the latter having stopped to watch a father / son duo busking it absolutely brilliantly in Salisbury recently with just two acoustic guitars.

Memories is an unexpected one from 1968. That’s deep catalogue for most people. This is where the audience could come up to touch his hand.

He sat down and picked up acoustic guitar for Kentucky Rain. After that he played some Spanish licks with a funny “Manuel” Spanish voice.

In The Ghetto was my standout song from 1968. Always a delight to hear it from someone with the voice and the two backing vocalists excelled.

Then it was If I Can Dream. a vocal showpiece, with a long play out from the band.

THE INTERVAL

We had all guessed that part two was the Las Vegas Elvis.

Also Sprach Zarathustra was Elvis’s standard instrumental opening. Very well performed by the band. I thought the drummer exceptional throughout, but on this he had a chance to flash about and use all the drums.

See See Rider opened the set. As C.C. Rider / See See Rider so many have done it. I never liked the song finding it dull.

Burning Love didn’t make it. The original has bass guitar, piano and drums pushed up. The mix was poor, the bass too subdued in it. The band simply couldn’t hit the ‘spring’ or ‘bounce’ of the original. Elvis sang it with total urgency. I thought Ben Portsmouth was singing too high, sounding nothing like Elvis for a change, and it felt frenetic, too fast. The original was always fast, but this was 1976 Elvis rather than 1971. Racing at it and rushing it.

Then You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling. This marks the concert era where Elvis looked at his back catalogue and realised other people had better material than him. To me it was authentically ‘not good’ here, in that the Elvis version was always inferior to even the Cilla Black, which in turn was totally dwarfed by The Righteous Brothers, in Phil Spector’s greatest production. The bass wasn’t getting the sound. Bill Medley always sang it far better than Elvis ever managed.

There was a music intro, then he signalled the crowd into a singalong (except he didn’t sing early on) version of It’s Now Or Never. Lots of audience greeting and asides, but Elvis got bored of this and Love Me Tender and played around with them live.

The Wonder of You. As soon as the first note, his regular fans went up to the stage. They knew what ws coming. This was the sweaty scarf routine, where Elvis would wipe scarves over his perspiring self and hand them to the audience. He went through a whole sack of scarves then asked for more to be brought on. How many sweaty lengths of nylon did he go through? It was interminable, and he managed to sing through it. He seemed on more solid ground.

I was interested by the next bit. Is the set list writ in concrete? He looked at the band and called Spanish Eyes as if it had just struck him. This Al Martino hit is one of the “covers era” old songs Elvis perhaps wished he’d recorded. He was still handing out scarves too.

Johnny B. Goode was fine, but every bar band can do that well. I thought it a poor choice. If you want Elvis singing Chuck Berry, why not go for the hit, The Promised Land?

You Gave Me A Mountain was an unexpected one. He did it very well.

Teddy Bear was another routine, where he threw soft toys into the audience. If the row in front hadn’t had long arms the first would have hit us. Not that I wanted one.

American Trilogy is quoted as his favourite song, and that’s perhaps why it was one of his best performances of the night, with the horns and backing vocalists on top form.

Probably my favourite Elvis song of all, Suspicious Minds was next. Producer Chips Moman who did the Memphis basic recording was fuming that Elvis overdubbed strings in Las Vegas and brought in the fade in the middle, but it was a correct decision, and apparently Elvis’s own. I love the song. Few can do it. He can.

The Righteous Brothers again for Unchained Melody … OK, I know Jimmy Young did it in the 1950s among many others, but The Righteous Brothers were Elvis’s inspiration. Ben Portsmouth went to the keyboard, put it on piano sound and played it with solo piano. The keyboard player stood and held his mic. Maybe it’s in the set because Baz Luhrmann put it in at the end of the Elvis movie. He could certainly sing Bobby Hatfield (the Righteous Brother who sang lead on their version) even if I felt he couldn’t do Bill Medley, who sang lead on You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.

We got birthday requests, just like a Christmas pantomime. Except the first was 89 years old rather than the usual eight or nine.

Back to the covers of songs Elvis wished he’d found first, with My Way.

There was a section of band member intros (which you never catch) with solo demonstrations. The bass guitarist in isolation got a great crunchy sound that wasn’t apparent elsewhere. The guitar, keyboard and drum solos were excellent. Then a short reprise of Can’t help Falling In Love.

The encore was the only early 60s one. A song I love, Viva Las Vegas, even if Shaun Colvin did it better than Elvis.

He is a great showman, funny, relaxed, the audience love him. Most of the time he sounds like Elvis, though not on every song. He really does play to older women, and so there is a faint touch of cruise ship retiree material. I was once on a promotion trip to Spain, and speaking the first day in Malaga. I checked in to a huge hotel just before 8.30 the night before. The hotel receptionist said, ‘If you hurry, you’ll just make the Bingo.’ I glanced through the door at the hall. Several hundred holidaying English seniors, eyes down waiting for the caller. That would be his perfect audience.