Setting the record straight on Elvis Presley and Glen Campbell’s recording summit
In an alternate world, had Glen Campbell not connected so forcefully with the record buying public with the back to back “Gentle on My Mind” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” singles during the flower power-exhibiting summer of 1967, he very well could have been destined to be Elvis Presley’s lead guitarist in the TCB Band.
Seeking recruitments for his stage ensemble in July 1969, Presley’s top two choices were Campbell and Telecaster maestro James Burton. The latter got the job, since Rick Nelson had disbanded his original team of backing cats a year earlier. Burton played on all of the original teen idol’s hits dating back to 1957.
However, nearly every time a mainstream news outlet examines Presley’s and Campbell’s relationship, a glaring error emerges: Campbell supposedly played lead guitar on the King of Rock ’n’ Roll’s “Viva Las Vegas.”
According to Presley music archivist-Sony Music Entertainment reissue producer Ernst Jorgensen, who has the session contracts, masters, and penned the supreme Presley sessions book — Elvis Presley: A Life In Music — Campbell played guitar on only one Presley studio recording — a frenetic, albeit slightly watered down R&B cover of Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say” for the Viva Las Vegas soundtrack.
