The first official announcement of the ALOHA show came at a promotional conference held by RCA Records at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel in September 1972 during Elvis's annual summer season. Elvis was interviewed by RCA Records chief Rocco Laginestra who congratulated him on the upcoming Special and accompanying album release. This event was filmed and showed a rather nervous Elvis. Perhaps the thought of becoming the first artist to headline a worldwide satellite concert was playing heavily on his mind.

In November 1972, Elvis played three concerts at the Honolulu International Center and also gave a press conference at the Hawaian Hilton Village where he outlined plans for the upcoming broadcast. The benefit from the concert was to be the Kui Lee Cancer Fund. Kui Lee was a native singer/songwriter who had died from cancer in 1966 at the age of thirty-four. His widow, Nani Lee, joined Elvis at the press conference and expressed her gratitude to him for his involvement. The target for the Fund was $25,000 but, as Elvis himself was to point out during the actual show, the final figure raised was $75,000.

A dress rehearsal was filmed, before a 6,000 seat audience, on January 12th 1973, as a back-up to the worldwide transmitted show in case any technical problems arose over the satellite broadcast. Two days later, at 12:30am Elvis and Co. performed a show which was transmitted to countries which included Australia, New Zealand and Japan. In all, the show was beamed to around forty countries and was seen by an estimated 1.5 billion people. A 2-record set was released very soon after the shoW and went `Gold' within days with in excess of $1,000,000 sales. It shot to no.l in the U.S. album charts, but only managed no. I I in the U.K.

In April 1973, the show was screened to U.S. audiences with additional footage. making a 90-minute Special in total. In the U.K., where it was originally listed for transmission but subsequently withdrawn, the ALOHA show was not seen until March of 1978 - just a little late.