Why didn't Elvis record anything from Gram Parsons?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by peerke, Sep 20, 2007.

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  1. peerke

    peerke Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Belgium
    As Gram was rich enough to hire the TCB band for his first solo album, at least some of the musicians must have mentioned anything about that promising singer/songwriter to the King. And I think his material must have suited Elvis Presley percfectly.

    So, I was wondering, why didn't he? By then he refused to keep his choise of songs limited to those offered by his publishers.

    And which of his songs would you have loved to hear him sing?
     
  2. Chris M

    Chris M Senior Member

    Wow. Never throught of that. Elvis would have nailed $1000 Wedding.
     
  3. 905

    905 Senior Member

    Location:
    Midwest USA
    Ooh Las Vegas
     
  4. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I don't know that Elvis would have been aware of Gram... he had no hits and was just a cult hero of sorts (and not even to the degree he is now). I get the impression (based on his cover choices) that Elvis mostly listened to country stations in the 70's, which of course didn't play Gram. And Elvis didn't really spend time with his musicians outside of rehearsing/recording/performing, so it doesn't necessarily follow that any of them would have mentioned working for Gram. Those guys did a lot of sessions, so GP may have been just another gig to them.

    A lot of Gram's lyrics might have been too esoteric for Elvis. "Sin City" would musically be a good fit for him, but I don't know about the lyrics. "In My Hour of Darkness" might work well, too.
     
  5. jligon

    jligon Forum Resident

    Location:
    Peoria, IL
    How Much I('ve) Lied.

    Wrong Elvis I suppose.
     
  6. Gregory Earl

    Gregory Earl Senior Member

    Location:
    Kantucki
    Good thread and good question. :righton:

    "$1000 Wedding" and "In My Hour of Darkness" would have been excellent songs for The King to cover. Wow! Now I'm going to be pulling out the Parsons vinyl this weekend and imagining what his interpretation of it would have been like.

    Cool thought.
     
  7. johnny33

    johnny33 New Member

    Location:
    usa
    two words: Colonel Parker.
     
  8. willy

    willy hooga hagga hooga

    Elvis and Emmylou duetting on 'Love Hurts'.
     
  9. bluesbro

    bluesbro Forum Hall of Shame

    Location:
    DC
    My answer as well
     
  10. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    Sort of like Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup in the 50s, I guess. :shh:
     
  11. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=114785&highlight=elvis+gram+parsons

     
  12. JLGB

    JLGB Senior Member

    Location:
    D.R.
    Or Bill Monroe.
     
  13. John DeAngelis

    John DeAngelis Senior Member

    Location:
    New York, NY
    In the Reggie Young interview I posted the link to in the steel guitar thread, he tells the story of Chips Moman playing "In The Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds" for Elvis in the recording studio. A few minutes later, one of Elvis's people tried to get Chips to sign over the publishing, as was standard with Elvis at the time. Chips told the guy that if it was gonna be that way maybe everyone including Elvis should just leave the studio. When Elvis heard that, he sent all his hangers-on and business people home and everyone just focused on recording.
    That said, I think by the time Gram Parsons was writing his stuff, Elvis had gotten a bit more conservative, in addtion to the publishing stuff and wouldn't have cut the songs had he heard them.
     
  14. John DeAngelis

    John DeAngelis Senior Member

    Location:
    New York, NY
    You're not suggesting that Gram Parsons wrote "Love Hurts" are you?
     
  15. pig whisperer

    pig whisperer CD Member

    Location:
    Tokyo, Japan
    Didn't Gram mention his meeting with Elvis in one of his songs. I remember something about the king being in a "haze".
     
  16. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    I disagree. To name just one example, in 1973/74, Elvis covered Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues." O'Keefe was at least as much of a cult songwriter as Parsons, and "Good Time Charlie" was a pretty "modern" song lyrically - arguably more modern than the songs Parsons was writing at the time.
     
  17. jpmosu

    jpmosu a.k.a. Mr. Jones

    Location:
    Ohio, USA
    This is really going out on a limb, but...

    I believe that many of Elvis' cover choices were governed by the songs' publishers. In other words, Elvis seemed to choose songs that were, how shall we say, financially advantageous to him.

    So, even if Elvis knew the Parsons songbook, maybe those songs just cost too much.

    Just a theory...
     
  18. willy

    willy hooga hagga hooga

    :rolleyes: I didn't suggest that he did, cos he didn't of course......but it is a favourite song of mine :agree:
     
  19. BRush

    BRush Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    "Good Time Charlie" was a sizeable hit. The closest that Gram came to having a hit, was maybe one of the Stones songs he's associated with "Honkytonk Women" or "Wild Horses". I can't recall if Elvis covered any Stones or Dylan songs.

    I've spoken to the great James Burton a couple times, he's very proud of the Gram Lp's that hes on.
    James tried to leave Elvis' band to tour behind Emmylou Harris, but Elvis made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
    By 1970 Elvis seemed removed from any cutting edge music, most of the songs he covered were songs from Top 40. I think Col. Tom, the drugs and the Memphis Mafia cut him off from doing any interesting material. Too bad, he had such a voice.
     
  20. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    There is no doubt that many of Elvis's cover choices were governed by the song's publishing. However, when Elvis took a personal interest in a song, those rules could go out the window. As was noted above, this happened during the 1969 Memphis sessions. Peter Guralnick's biography also documents an incident that occurred in 1967 when Elvis cut Jerry Reed's "Guitar Man" with Reed on guitar on the session. Some of the Colonel's/RCA's lackeys approaced Reed about giving up a cut of the publishing, and Reed said something to the effect of "Hell, no, it's my song, and if that's the way you're going to play it, you can just forget that we ever recorded this track." Reed won that battle, in large part because Elvis had responded to the song to such a degree.

    I don't know whether or not Elvis ever heard a Gram Parson's record, but if he had, I cannot imagine him not responding to songs such as "$1,000 Wedding." Some people still seem to think that Elvis was just some kind of mindless country bumpkin, I guess.
     
  21. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    I know it's alleged that Gram co-wrote "Wild Horses" with Keith, but I've never heard it suggested that he had anything to do with "Honky Tonk Women." I've always heard that if anyone besides Mick and Keith should have received a credit on "Honky Tonk Women," it would have been Ry Cooder.

    In 1966, Elvis covered Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," which at the time had not yet been recorded by Dylan. Elvis learned it from Odetta's Odetta Sings Dylan album, which sort of tends to disprove the theory that Elvis never listened to "cult" or off-the-mainstream-radar music. There are also extant home recordings of Elvis singing an interesting rearrangement of "Blowin' in the Wind" from the mid-60s, and there are also 70s recordings of Elvis jamming on "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "I Shall Be Released."
     
  22. I've heard that Mick Taylor should be credited with augmenting the arrangement. Maybe I got the names switched.
     
  23. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    Bingo.
     
  24. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I imagine in the early 50's there were blues stations that played Crudup, and that was how Elvis learned of him. Were there any stations that played Gram to any substantial degree in the early 70's? If so, which type? Elvis in the 70's was not the same as Elvis in the 50's in terms of seeking out diversity of new music... based on the covers he chose, in the 70's he was mainly (if not entirely) listening to country stations as far as new music was concerned, and they certainly were not playing Gram. How many new songs did Elvis cover in the 70's that were not country chart hits?
     
  25. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    I disagree. I know no one agrees with me on this, but I think that Elvis's mid-70s Olivia Newton-John covers ("If You Love Me, Let Me Know" and "Let Me Be There") show that he was ahead of the curve in recognizing interesting new sounds in the pop/country genre. The Country Music Association, or whatever it was called, famously formed to protest Newton-John's music as "not country" enough, but Elvis never cared about such narrow-minded genre distinctions. He recognized the fresh, swinging rhythmic feel of those Newton-John songs and did great covers of them, the same way he had done great covers of "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" in the 50s.

    I'm not sure how well-known tracks such as "Fairytale" and "Moody Blue" were at the time Elvis recorded them. "Moody Blue" may have been written specifically for him. I don't fully buy the argument that Elvis's only exposure to music in the 70s was coutry radio. In a recent thread we discussed the contents of his record collection, and he reportedly had Mott the Hoople and Allman Brothers records in his personal collection at Graceland in the 70s.
     
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