In 1969 Elvis Presley was putting together a band. He hadn’t played a real concert in years, and now he had booked a run of live shows at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. He wanted the best players he could find, and near the top of his list was a guitar man named James Burton.
Burton was already a legend among musicians. For years he had played guitar behind Ricky Nelson, the teen singer who performed at the end of so many episodes of his family’s hit TV show. If you owned a television back then, you had heard James Burton play, even if you never knew his name.
Elvis picked up the phone and called him. The two had never met.
One of the first things Elvis said gave away a little secret about himself.
Here is Burton telling the story of that first call in his own words.
James Burton remembers the day Elvis Presley first phoned him
The show Elvis loved was “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” the warm family sitcom that millions of Americans grew up with. It starred the real-life Nelson family, and young Ricky would often sing a song to close the show, with Burton’s guitar right behind him.
Elvis had been watching all along. “He said, you know, I watch the ‘Ozzie And Harriet’ TV show, I watch Ricky sing and you play guitar,” Burton remembered. Then came the line that said it all: “it’s my favorite show.”
The King of Rock and Roll, home in front of the TV like everybody else, tuning in to catch a guitar player. The two of them hit it off right away. “I talked to him for two or three hours on the phone,” Burton said.
This wasn’t the first time Elvis had tried to get him, though. A year earlier, in 1968, Elvis wanted Burton for his big NBC television special, the show that brought Elvis roaring back to the spotlight. But Burton had to pass that time. He was already booked in the studio, recording with Frank Sinatra, the famous crooner who was a giant in his own right.
The timing finally worked in 1969, when Elvis called him himself. This time Burton said yes. He went on to lead Elvis’s band for years, staying right by his side until 1977.
Ricky Nelson, the young singer who first brought the two of them together over the airwaves, passed away in 1985.
Burton tells the whole thing in the clip above, including how those two or three hours on the phone felt from where he was sitting. It’s a sweet reminder that the biggest star in the world was, on a quiet night, a fan with the TV on.