On tour and Nixon 1970

Presley returned to the International Hotel in January 1970 for a month-long engagement, performing two shows a night.   Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six more attendance-breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome in Texas. In April, the single "The Wonder of You" was issued—a number one hit in Great Britain, it topped the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart, as well.    MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August, for the documentary Elvis: That's the Way It Is. Presley wore a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live performances in the 1970s.

Presley meets U.S. President Richard Nixon in the White House Oval Office, December 21, 1970Around this time Presley was threatened with kidnapping at the International.    Phone calls were received, one demanding $50,000—if unpaid, Presley would be killed by a "crazy man".    Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge.    The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows.    Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident.    After closing his Las Vegas engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on his first concert tour since 1958. Exhausted by the tour, he spent a month relaxing and recording before touring again in October and November.    He would tour extensively until his death, frequently setting attendance records.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a bizarre meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippie drug culture.    He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts.    Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility".    Presley told Nixon The Beatles exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture.    (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.    Belying his own comments, Presley regularly performed the Beatles songs "Yesterday", "Something", and "Get Back" in concert during the early 1970s.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley "One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation" on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization.    Three studio albums of new, non-movie Presley songs were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years.    The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus.    "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".