Elvis Presley - Just Pretend - 11 August 1970, Midnight Show - In HD and Re-edited with Stereo audio

In 1992 when ’The Lost Performances’ was released on Home Video we caught a glimpse of Elvis performing songs on stage that many of us never knew had been performed live. In the days before the internet and with the Elvis bootleg CD circuit still in it’s infancy it was rumour, speculation and articles in fan club magazines which fuelled our imaginations. I, myself, as a seventeen year old could barely afford to buy collect the back catalogue never mind the other treasures that could be acquired even then. One of the songs which was released on that ’Lost Performances’ was ’Just Pretend’, a song which was synonymous with TTWII already since the studio master was on the original 1970 album. During the six shows filmed by MGM, Elvis performed the song twice and both versions at successive midnight shows on the 11th and 12th of August 1970. The song itself would be one of the few songs recorded in Nashville in June 1970 to survive the setlist deep into the seventies. Although others from these sessions would be visited through the years only ’You Don’t have To Say You Love Me’ and ’Bridge Over Troubled Water’ would endure as long with the latter surviving until the very end. It must be said though that of the three mentioned ’Just Pretend’ was largely ignored from March 71 through until December 75 with the exception being the surprise inclusion in his show in Hawaii on 18 November 1972. During Elvis’ Vegas engagement of December 1975, an engagement arranged in response to the abandoned August stint, the song had a renaissance with Elvis performing it in the majority of those shows. The final version from the closing show of that engagement shows Elvis in good voice and is very similar to those first two renditions but with the soprano provide by Kathy Westmoreland in this instance whereas on 11 and 12 Aug 70 it had been Millie Kirkham. This version featuring Ms. Kirkham is of course the version included in both “Lost Performances“ and the 2001 re-edited That’s The Way It Is movie. Strangely, however, Elvis’ introduction of the song in the latter is taken from There Goes My Everything from the same show. As with all of these videos, to get the most out of the re-edited audio, I highly recommend you use ear /headphones and turn the volume up as much as you dare!