Elvis Presley - So many albums - like an insane amount of albums!

it got here today woo hoo .... let the spin begin

 

Awesome!! Enjoy the ride

 

Well said, my friend.

 

As this is going to be a road of discovery, in part, for me, I am going to do an album thread. It's going to be a mammoth task, so all help and input will be appreciated.
Before someone says it has been done before, I could not find anything, except for the odd album here and there.

Elvis Presley - The Album Thread

 

I think that is a stupendous idea and it will be a thrill to follow you along the path and comment along with all the other Elvis experts out there like Shane, MastroDavis, POB, and kingofthejungle (gosh, where has he been? One of our most intelligent Elvis experts on this great board) and so many others. Sorry, I am writing this fast and I know there are a ton of names I should mention, but you get the idea. Oh Gosh, Gilly T, one of our only brilliant female experts that chime in occasionally and gives us a unique and thoughtful perspective from the group of people that made Elvis a star in the first place.

 

I don't pretend to be an expert, and I hope that the experts aren't offended or annoyed, it just seems much lesser artists, in terms of global impact get these threads and it seems fitting Elvis should be represented.
I will be relying on the experts to fill in my many gaps. As you know I am a big fan but have lived with the 50's and 60's boxes as my Elvis catalog. I figure it might be cool to discover the albums and present them for others to also.

 

Both of your points make sense.

From a sales point of view, I see what you are saying. But how relevant was he in the artistic arena. Who can name those last two "hits" and how much of their success had to do with the fact that he had just died? Regarding those packed arenas, how many of those ticket buyers were there because of his latest albums and how many were actually there because he was a nostalgia act? Albeit a very big nostalgia act.

Which brings us to my second post above. ( http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/elvis-presley-so-many-albums-like-an-insane-amount-of-albums.768653/page-13#post-19313658 ) Those artists had their stellar comebacks in the midst of the CD age and I would argue that their later-day success wouldn't have happened without the rise of CDs and the rediscovery of older music. Elvis would have had the same opportunities if he had lived into the 80's. But the business did not recognize that potential from older artists in the late 70's.

Undoubtedly it would have made a big difference if Elvis had taken the role in the 1976 remake. Elvis desperately wanted to do a serious movie role, Barbara wanted him to do it and the movie studio wanted him to do it. But according to Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick, the Colonel tanked that project by making demands that he knew the studio would reject, and then convincing Elvis that they were trying to take advantage of him. Tom Parker would do anything in his power to keep his control over Elvis. That's the real tragedy.

 

Its fantastic and no one is all knowing when it comes to the vast recording catalogue and career of Elvis Presley. In fact, I sometimes learn more from the newer converts to Elvis than us old timers as we can get a little jaded and too set in a ways. Reading other peoples opinions on Elvis here has gotten me to re-exmine some of my choices from time to time. I sometimes dismissed his movie period almsost out of hand, except for the great hit singles of course, but than I realized over the years and from reading the various threads here on this forum that he has a more than a few great cuts among the dross of those soundtrack albums. It will be great to have all the experts and everybody elsie recommend songs that I might have overlooked or even whole albums that I might have not given enough attention to. Let the shenanigans begin on your new album thread! I mean that in the best way possible.

 

You make some good points as well here. Moody Blue was actually released the year before as the lead single for the album that would come the following year, so it actually got to number one country, number two Easy Listening and 31 in the big pop chart well before he died. I know a lot of artists today that would kill for that sort of crossover success. Moody Blue is a great song actually and written by Mark James, who of course wrote Elvis's ultimate modern hit single, Suspicious Minds. The flip side, Elvis's truly great re-make of the George Jones classic, She Thinks I Still Care, also reached number one on the Billboard Country chart.

Now the other double sided hit, Way Down/Pledging My Love is a little more complicated as far as its chart history. IIRC, it did reach number one on the Billboard Country Singles chart before he died and did cross into the top 40 Hot 100 chart as well, but after he died it re-gained a bullet and moved as high as 18 on that chart to give him another top twenty pop hit. Way Down also went to number one in Britain, no doubt aided by his death.

Nevertheless, you have Elvis with two double-sided number one country hits before he died and some pretty decent, though not spectacular, top 40 play on the pop charts. I believe that this does kind of dispel the popular myth that he was no longer having hit records right before he died. Oh, and both of Elvis's last studio albums went to number one on the Billboard Country Album chart as well and they did it before he passed away. They also hit the upper reaches of the Billboard 200 album chart as well. It might have been only the top 100 album chart at that time as I cannot seem to remember for sure right now. He was still a successful recording act to say the least and the country-pop movement was a big one at that time so do not dismiss his country chart success, which was where he really first begin his career more or less.

 

There was an "album by album" thread started a few years ago, but it fizzled out:

The Elvis Presley Album by Album thread, revisited

Elvis has such a massive catalogue that it is understandably hard to keep such a thread alive.

 

i searched it .... oh well .. i'll give it a go

 

After 1972, for the most part, Elvis' commercial album success was somewhat moderate. The country chart placings from the 1970's do not accurately reflect the general, overall appeal (or that thereof) that Presley's albums generally experienced during the last 4-5 years of his life. His albums were always good for modest sales of 300,000 give or take, with singles often charting somewhere between 25-50 on the major charts, but he rarely had bona fide hits on his hands on major U.S. charts. Had Elvis not passed away on August 16, there is no way "Moody Blue" would have moved into the top five and sold a million copies. While no one is dismissing his success on country charts and in secondary markets during the mid-1970's, such success also should not be misrepresented.

 

You seem like you are up to the task! Thumbs up for your passion on the topic.

 

if you have a mind to, please participate. I have appreciated your input here.

 

I lost interest. The first thread I did took ages.
Elvis Presley Album by Album Thread
Good luck to you Mark and happy listening. I will participate.

 

beautiful, cheers,
I did look but i never seem to find stuff in the search.

 

I think it's a shame that as his career aged, he seemed to be regarded as a joke or has-been. I'm sure material selected and (mis)management is mostly to blame. So many missed opportunities.

 

I do not believe I have in any respect. If you have a beef with the Billboard chart numbers or Elvis's sustained ability to sell out arena concerts during the last phase of his career, I am afraid I cannot do anything to help you out on that issue.

 

The October 3, 1977 airing of "Elvis In Concert" certainly did not help the final chapter of his career. Through "Elvis In Concert," Elvis became ridiculed, and the unflattering imagery from the special influenced generations of cheap impersonators. It is understandable why CBS went forward with the special, the network had concert footage from Elvis' final tour, but it is unfortunate that the footage was so damaging and that the special's format lacked compassion and artistic integrity. That said, at the end of the day, it was Elvis who did not deliver quality work and forced CBS to work with mostly substandard performances.

Some fans have argued that a re-edit would have substantially improved "Elvis In Concert," but upon closer examination, CBS really was quite limited with what it could do. One or two song substitutions were not going to save the television special. At the very least, the estate should have considered going into damage control to negotiate a postponement along with some sort of concept re-edit that would turn the project into a tribute rather than the appalling spectacle that was aired.

 

I think there was certainly a touch of misrepresentation in your post. To suggest Elvis was still a dominant market force because of some successful country chart placings is misleading (the irony also being that he did not promote himself as a country artist, nor work in country circles). The country charts did not represent mainstream success and sales. As a mainstream album and singles recording artist, Elvis largely had been delivering mediocrity during the post-1970 period, with the exception of the "Burning Love" single. Generally, he was not moving millions of units per album release and did not produce any major mainstream radio hits (he had moderate radio success in the U.S., but outside of "Burning Love," his work was largely irrelevant). He had greater chart success in the U.K., but like the country charts, it was a secondary market for Elvis and did not represent the sales figures of mainstream charts and markets.

No one has ever stated that Elvis was no longer a major box office attraction during the 1970's. He toured incessantly, and as the decade progressed, he took his live show through a growing number of secondary markets to keep up the pace and the revenue streams.

 

There are so many facts here that are blatantly false, I will not take the time to comment on them all after this post, because you have a strong habit of wanting to go around in circles endlessly with people that do not share you music tastes or aesthetics on all things Elvis. I call it beating a dead horse. Your natural bias against country music and Elvis's later 1970's period recordings are rearing its ugly head once again. Elvis toured on the country circuit early in his career, got his biggest breakthrough slot as Hank Snow's opening act and ended up being managed by Tom Parker, the recent manager of one of country music's all time biggest acts, Eddy Arnold. Elvis's first number one song was on the country chart and not the pop chart.

Elvis had a real love and appreciation for country music and the country-pop sounds that you seem to like to denigrate and dismiss on this great forum frequently. You see Elvis's career as a spiraling downward arc with his voice and shows more or less falling apart after 1971, and you regularly dismiss some of his greatest vocal performances, simply because they do not match your view of Elvis as a great, young and virile rocker, who betrayed his following by recording "schmaltzy" country-pop material. If you do not think country music was an extremely important part of Elvis's DNA, you and I see things very differently indeed. Elvis himself said he loved country music and that the Grand Ol' Opry was among the first music broadcasts he ever heard. He also said he would not consider himself, "Strictly a country singer", because I believe he hated to be confined to one style or brand of music, something I have always admired about the man.

If you do not think country music was a powerful commercial force on the radio in the 1970's, you need to recognize that there were more radio stations that played country music in the United States than any other single music format during this time and well after Elvis was gone. You dismiss his country music chart achievements out of hand, because they do not fit it with the type of artist you wanted Elvis to be and you seem to be fairly bitter about it, judging by many of your past posts. I'm sorry that his producer choices and musical tastes in the latter part of his career do not seem to match your preferences, but as Johnny Cash use to say, "I Don't Like It, But I Guess Things Happen That Way." I will give you the last word on this issue as I know you seem to always need it, so I will not be responding to your next post on this subject.

 

You can understand, though, why a man in his forties, who had gone through quite a life, wanted to sing about things beyond teddy bears. What you are suggesting is that he became an oldies act and nothing more, and who wants to live in the past? It's exactly what Ricky Nelson sang about in Garden Party: "if memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck."

What's more, by sidelining his old hits, he wasn't bucking the trend, he was going with the trend. Check out what other 50s singers were doing at the time. Neil Sedaka (the 2nd biggest selling artist of the late 50s and early 60s) resigned his early hits to a seven minute medley for much of the 70s. Ricky Nelson only included a handful in his act. Bobby Darin was the same, mostly singing covers of songs by the likes of James Taylor, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles in the early 1970s. Jerry lee Lewis's live album from the period includes a bunch of country covers rather than any of his hits. That's the way it was at that time - we might not like it now, but that's unimportant. These were singers who were trying to remain current, not ones who wanted to live in the past.

 

Unfortunately the trend now is just play your hits, and forget about new material and deep cuts. Otherwise, the audience hits the restroom or gets another beer.

 

or just hits facebook on their phone lol

 

First of all, I have no "natural bias" against country (in fact I have a sizable country collection, including many "schmaltzy" recordings from Charlie Rich) or against Elvis' later-1970's recordings, many which I personally enjoy. Furthermore, I do not dismiss his 1970's era country chart achievements out of hand, but I also do not misrepresent their significance. And never have I stated or implied that Elvis should have remained a young and virile rocker.

With regard to Elvis and his initial exposure on country-associated radio stations and country-associated personal appearances during the 1953-1955 period, that has little to do with his 1970's era recording career, and frankly, comes across as a desperate attempt to misrepresent Elvis as a legitimate country performer with notable aspirations in the country music genre. What Elvis was pioneering musically circa 1953-1955 was in some ways undefined and certainly not country from a 1950's era traditional country standpoint. Some of his initial radio and venue exposure was also due to geography, not genre per se (although he clearly fused country with other genres and was influenced by the genre). Elvis changed the world during that era, and he did not change it because he was a country artist.