The sun was already coming up over Las Vegas. Tom Jones had two shows to do that night at Caesars Palace. But up in Elvis Presley’s hotel suite, the singing hadn’t stopped, and the song Elvis kept going back to was Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me, Lord.”
Tom Jones told the story to talk-show host Tavis Smiley, in an interview that is still posted on his official website.
Two Headliners on the Same Strip
In those years, both men were playing long engagements in Las Vegas. Elvis Presley was at the Hilton. Tom Jones was at Caesars Palace. The two had become close friends, and Elvis liked to come see Tom work. Sometimes he even walked out on stage while Tom was in the middle of a song.
In a 2010 conversation with NPR, Tom Jones added an important detail. When Elvis finished an engagement at the Hilton, he would stay on in town for a week or two just to see Tom perform. So on the nights they went back to his suite, Elvis wasn’t working. Tom was.
Gospel Singers and an Electric Piano
Elvis loved gospel music, and he always had singers around him. Tom Jones remembered four or five, sometimes six of them in the suite, along with an electric piano. They knew all the gospel songs, and they would sing all night.
For Tom, this wasn’t foreign ground. He grew up going to a Presbyterian chapel in Wales, where the congregation sang hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross.” He told NPR those hymns weren’t so different from the American gospel songs he later fell in love with.
“He Wouldn’t Let It Go”
Tom Jones said the singing usually landed on one of two songs: Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” or Kristofferson’s “Why Me, Lord.” Kristofferson had the song out at the time, and Tom said Elvis loved it, and so did he.
The trouble was that Elvis didn’t like to stop. Once he got hold of a song, Tom said, he wouldn’t let it go. As the sky got light, Tom told Elvis he had to get back to Caesars Palace because he had two shows that night. Then he tried to leave.
“So I would be trying to get out the door and he’d start again.”
And every time, Tom said, he had to turn around and get back into the song.
Kristofferson’s record was released in 1973. It reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country singles chart that July, climbed to No. 16 on the Hot 100, and went gold. Tom has also placed the start of his gospel nights with Elvis in the late 1960s, so the singing in that suite seems to have gone on for years, with “Why Me, Lord” joining in once Kristofferson’s song came out.
Where the Song Went Next
Elvis Presley didn’t leave “Why Me, Lord” in the hotel suite. On March 20, 1974, he sang it in front of his hometown crowd at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, sharing the microphone with his bass singer, J.D. Sumner. That concert became the album Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis, which topped Billboard’s country albums chart.
The Question Elvis Asked
There was one more thing Tom Jones carried out of that suite. One night after the shows, while they were singing together, Elvis asked him if he had ever recorded a gospel album. Tom said he hadn’t yet, but that he would one day.
He kept that promise in 2010, at 70 years old, with Praise & Blame, an album of gospel and blues songs. One of them was “Run On,” a song Tom said he knew from Elvis and that they used to sing in his suite in Las Vegas.
Elvis had recorded his own version of it back in 1967, on his gospel album How Great Thou Art.