On August 26, 1969, Elvis Presley was midway through another midnight show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Then one small joke completely destroyed his ability to keep a straight face.
Elvis began singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, one of the most serious ballads in his catalog.
But during the spoken section, he decided to change the words.
Instead of singing the normal line, Elvis joked:
“Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?”
And that was it.
He started laughing.
At first Elvis tried to recover. He lowered his head, covered his face and attempted to continue.
But every time he thought he had regained control, another laugh escaped.
The entire performance began falling apart in the funniest possible way.
The recording heard today comes from the August 26, 1969 midnight show at the International Hotel. Elvis’s official music site confirms that RCA was recording the performance that night.
Elvis Presley – “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Laughing Version
This is the official Elvis Presley release of the famous laughing performance from Las Vegas.
One detail makes the recording even funnier.
While Elvis was struggling to sing, a high soprano backing vocal continued behind him with almost perfect seriousness.
The backing singers that night included The Sweet Inspirations, The Imperials and Millie Kirkham. Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mother and a member of the Sweet Inspirations, has long been associated with the soaring vocal heard during the performance.
There is also a famous story explaining why Elvis laughed so hard.
According to a popular version, a bald man near the stage reacted to Elvis’s joke by lifting or losing his toupee.
The problem is that the story has never been firmly verified by a reliable eyewitness.
What we can actually hear is Elvis changing the lyric himself and then completely losing control while the backing vocal continues.
That alone is funny enough.
The performance might have disappeared as just another concert blooper.
Instead, RCA eventually released the “Laughing Version” in 1980 as part of the Elvis Aron Presley box set.
Then something even stranger happened.
The recording was issued as a single in Britain in 1982 and actually reached No. 25 on the UK Singles Chart, spending seven weeks in the Top 75.
A performance Elvis could barely finish had become a charting record.
That may be why fans still love it so much.
There was no choreography, no carefully planned comedy and no polished ending.
It was simply Elvis Presley being caught in a completely human moment.
He changed one line to make the audience laugh, then ended up laughing harder than anyone else in the room.