Every Elvis Presley concert was the same in one respect. Thousands of people would shout song titles at the stage, hoping he might hear them and play the one they wanted. He rarely did — the set was the set. But in that crowd, most nights, there was one small girl who had a completely different arrangement with the man on stage. She could ask him for a song, and he would sing it.
She was his daughter. And in the memoir published after her death, Lisa Marie Presley explained exactly how it worked.
Her account of going to his shows is the warmest thing in the whole book. “Going to his shows was my favorite thing in the world. I was so proud of him.” She struggled to find a word big enough for what it felt like from the audience: “Electrifying is such a generic word, but it really is what it felt like. I loved watching him perform.”
Hurt | Elvis Presley (Live Music Video) 4K Remastered | Elvis In Concert 1977 | Rapid City
Then comes the line that makes this story. “I had certain songs that I liked — ‘Hurt,’ and ‘How Great Thou Art.’ I would ask him to sing those songs for me, and he would always say yes.”
Sit with that for a second. The biggest entertainer in the world, playing to arenas, working from a running order agreed with his band — taking requests from a child—every time.
And her two choices tell you something about her. She was eight or nine years old. She could have picked “Hound Dog.” She could have picked “Jailhouse Rock” or “Teddy Bear” or any of the fun ones. She did not. She picked the two hardest, heaviest songs in his entire live show.
“Hurt” is a monster. It demands a three-octave range and finishes with a long, climbing crescendo that most singers would not attempt. Elvis recorded it in 1976, in the worst physical condition of his life, and plenty of fans think it is the greatest vocal he ever put down.
“How Great Thou Art” is the hymn that mattered most to him. It won him a Grammy — one of only three he ever received, all of them for gospel. It is the song he sang when he wanted to sing for himself rather than for a crowd.
Elvis Presley – How Great Thou Art
So when Lisa Marie asked her father for a song, she was not asking for the hits. She was asking for the ones where you could hear him properly.
There is one more detail she included, and it is very funny and very ordinary. He always said yes — and he also always embarrassed her. Because he was still her dad, and dads embarrass their children, even when they are wearing a jumpsuit in front of twenty thousand people.
He would take her by the hand and lead her out onto the stage himself before the show, then hand her to somebody who carried her down to her seat, usually next to her grandfather Vernon. Then she would sit in the dark and watch her father hold an entire building in the palm of his hand — and wait to hear whether he was going to play her song.
He always did.