Fifteen years and a few weeks to the day that a Memphis, Tennessee, radio station sparked a tidal wave of Elvis Mania in the southern U.S. and beyond, Elvis’ 1969 revival began with a performance at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 31, 1969. The show was the first of 57 sold-out concerts that broke Sin City’s attendance and gross records, cementing Elvis Presley’s status as a jumpsuit-clad Las Vegas icon.
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Fervor over Elvis was so high in the Nevada desert that a local coffee shop made a meal special that was inspired by one of Presley’s go-to covers at his Las Vegas performances.
Local Coffee Shop Creates Meal Deal For Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley took over Las Vegas from the end of July to the end of August in 1969, marking a career revival that some worried would never come. Presley had been busy with films leading up to the comeback concert, and moreover, the songs that he did put out weren’t charting very well. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll had seemed to find his footing once again, delighting thousands of people at a time, twice a day, for a staggering 57 sold-out performances.
Capitalizing on the Elvis Mania taking over Sin City, a local coffee shop decided to make a meal deal in honor of the King. “Elvis Poke Salad” came with corn muffins and honey for $1.95. (Adjusted with inflation, that’s about $17.34 today—so, you know, not the cheapest plate of greens and muffins.) The poke salad special referenced Presley’s cover of “Polk Salad Annie,” originally by Tony Joe White, which Presley included in many of his Las Vegas shows.
For those who live north of the Mason-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi River, poke salad is a Southern dish made from the leafy greens of the pokeweed. Pokeweed is, well, a weed that can grow incredibly tall with a thick, rhubarb-like stem, dark red berries, and white flowers. The berries and flowers, while appealing to look at, are toxic. To make poke salad, you boil only the dark, leafy greens of the pokeweed, preferably twice to ensure no toxins remain.
It’s a classic Southern dish, especially for rural families who grew and foraged their own food, which Presley mentioned in his introduction for the song, saying, “Some of y’all have never been down South too much, so I’ll tell you a little story so that you’ll understand what I’m talking about.”
The Career Revival Garnered Mixed Reviews Overall
Elvis Presley’s career revival in Las Vegas in the dog days of summer 1969 propelled him back to the cultural frontlines—at least for the thousands of folks streaming into the desert city to see him. But of course, a lot had changed since he had left his rigorous touring schedule for a more static lifestyle as a film actor. The rest of the musical world had caught up, in terms of suggestiveness, and not everyone thought Presley’s comeback was all that great.
“The typical body turbinations,” Variety wrote, “leave him huffing and puffing after several particularly wild onslaughts to recapture the early physical and sexual image.” Billboard was kinder, writing, “It was not the Elvis with the rough edges of the middle 1950s on stage Thursday. It was a polished, confident, and talented artist, knowing exactly what he was going to do and when.”
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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