Lost or Forgotten Oldie of the Day: 1969 Elvis – If I Can Dream

1969 Elvis – If I Can Dream 

Two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Elvis appeared in a 1968 television show that came to be known as his Comeback Special. It had been three years since Elvis had recorded a single that even came close to the top ten. 

Songwriter Walter Earl Brown was asked to write a song for Elvis to perform at the end of his special. Walter knew how Matin Luther King’s death had affected Elvis, and he wrote a song that included quotes from the civil rights speaker’s speeches. The song was If I Can Dream, and Elvis is reported to have had tears streaming down his face as he finished recording the song prior to the show.

The record peaked at #12 on the Hot 100 in early 1969 and earned Elvis yet another gold record. More importantly, it helped kick-start his singing career again and led to three more top ten singles later that year, including his last #1 record on the Hot 100.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Can_Dream

My books are on sale on Amazon (or free with Kindle Unlimited) and contain a lot more Lost or Forgotten Oldies. You can visit my author page to see them and you can read them for free with Kindle Unlimited!

PS – Elvis had another half-dozen number one singles on either the Adult Contemporary chart or the Country chart, but his last Hot 100 chart-topper was Suspicious Minds in 1969.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: