Duke Bardwell wasn’t a household name, but for two years he had one of the best seats in music. He played bass for Elvis Presley in 1974 and 1975, standing just a few feet from the King for 181 shows. Bardwell passed away earlier this month at 83.
He gave a lot of interviews over the years, and the same night kept coming up.
March 20, 1974. Elvis was finally playing Memphis, the city he came up in, at the Mid-South Coliseum. For a man who’d already conquered Vegas and most of the country, coming home to play for the hometown crowd meant something. The band could feel it.
Then, as they walked toward the stage, a man stopped them. He had a paper and a pen, and he wanted everyone to sign before they went on.
The man was Tom Diskin, right hand to Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom Parker. Bardwell had no clue what he was signing or why. He just knew nobody had said a word about paperwork before a show.
Duke later made a film about his time in the band, and he tells this story in his own words.
Duke Bardwell’s own film about his years in Elvis’s band
Here’s what the paper was. A release form. And that’s how the band learned, seconds before they hit the stage, that the whole show was being recorded for a live album.
“We had no idea that we were going to do it,” Bardwell told Elvis Australia back in 2016. His first thought, in his own words, was simple. “‘LIVE ALBUM?!?'”
That record became “Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis.” And it holds one of the proudest moments of Elvis’s later career. His performance of the old hymn “How Great Thou Art” from that very night went on to win him a Grammy, for Best Inspirational Performance.
So the band played one of Elvis’s Grammy nights without even knowing the tape was rolling.
You can hear that performance from Memphis right here.
Elvis sings “How Great Thou Art” live in Memphis, March 20, 1974
Listen to the room when he reaches for the big ending. That’s a hometown crowd, and they knew exactly what they were hearing.
Bardwell carried that night with him for the rest of his life, and he carried his feelings about Elvis too. For all those miles on the road together, what he said about the man he stood beside was short and plain. “I never stopped loving him.”