Speaking of the Christmas album, the packaging is pretty deluxe for a 'rock' artist (gatefold cover, inner booklet) - does anyone know if the retail price for it was higher than the average LP of the era?
The decision smacks of something the Colonel would do... Recycling old previously-released tracks to wring more dollars out of them. I have no idea if he really was the one behind it, but I'm sure he applauded the decision if he wasn't.
The situation was that people often had the choice of buying albums on several EPs instead of an LP. But the Christmas album is different. The EP wasn't released at the same time as the album - it was released months earlier. There wasn't a choice between buying the EP or the LP - it was a case of buying the EP and then having to buy it again to get the Christmas songs.
"Don't" Written By : Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller Recorded : Radio Recorders, Hollywood, September 5-7, 1957: September 6, 1957 B-side "I Beg of You" Released January 7, 1958 Format 45 rpm,78 rpm single Length 2:49 Producer(s) Leiber-Stoller "Don't" is a song performed by Elvis Presley, which was released in 1958. Written and produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, it was Presley's eleventh number-one hit in the United States. "Don't" also peaked at number four on the R&B charts.[2] Billboard ranked it as the No. 3 song for 1958.[3] The song was included in the musical revue Smokey Joe's Cafe, as a medley with "Love Me", and cleverly used in the key scene of the 1992 movie Daveright at the moment the President of the United States, played by Kevin Kline, has a heart attack while making love to a mistress, inside the White House. -------------------------------------------- This is a great Elvis love song and went to number one accordingly. This is a good indication of where Elvis was going. Although always playing some rock and roll songs, Elvis was much more drawn to doing ballads, and he did them so well.
The great David Gilmour from Pink Floyd does a very good version live, solo. The reach of Elvis and his music is often underestimated.
I Beg Of You Written By : Rose Marie McCoy & Kelly Owens Recorded : Radio Recorders, Hollywood, February 23-24, 1957: February 23, 1957. Take 34 -------------------------------------- The b-side of don't also was very popular and charted in its own right ... Chart (1958) Peak position U.S. Billboard Hot 100 8 U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles 4 This track is a little more of a rock song and has the Jordanaires doing their thing on the backing vocals. This is a very solid song and bounces along nicely.
When I heard the alternate master of "I Beg Of You" on the Elvis 50's Masters box set, I couldn't believe that they didn't release it instead. That version rocked as hard as "Hound Dog" or "Rip It Up"! I Beg Of You (Alternate Master)
Also, Presley goes through so many different timbres of voice on this one making it a real standout. Such beautiful vibrato, whilst still rocking, and kicks it up a notch w/ the (rarely heard) vocal growl which is quite popular in country music...
And what a marvelous backing vocal arrangement. One quick question: How often did Bill Black switch to his stand-up bass in this era? I thought the acoustic stand-up was phased out by this period, no? I understand it is a ballad thus lending itself to a stand-up bass instrumentation but in general wasn't he (or other bassists on Presley's recordings) straight electric?
...Bluntly, " Don't " is, as a song, a real product of its era...the " How far can I go/Pleeeeez let me touch you THERE!/ don't be a pr*ck-tease!!!!!!!!!!! " " song!!! mark winstanley, post: 19593614, member: 36538"]"Don't" Written By : Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller Recorded : Radio Recorders, Hollywood, September 5-7, 1957: September 6, 1957 B-side "I Beg of You" Released January 7, 1958 Format 45 rpm,78 rpm single Length 2:49 Producer(s) Leiber-Stoller "Don't" is a song performed by Elvis Presley, which was released in 1958. Written and produced by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, it was Presley's eleventh number-one hit in the United States. "Don't" also peaked at number four on the R&B charts.[2] Billboard ranked it as the No. 3 song for 1958.[3] The song was included in the musical revue Smokey Joe's Cafe, as a medley with "Love Me", and cleverly used in the key scene of the 1992 movie Daveright at the moment the President of the United States, played by Kevin Kline, has a heart attack while making love to a mistress, inside the White House. -------------------------------------------- This is a great Elvis love song and went to number one accordingly. This is a good indication of where Elvis was going. Although always playing some rock and roll songs, Elvis was much more drawn to doing ballads, and he did them so well. [/QUOTE]
The doubled sided hit single of Don't/I Beg Of You shows off Elvis's fantastic versatility between balladeer and rocker. Did anyone else ever show such range and diversity at the time? I think maybe only Charlie Rich and Ray Charles would show the true musical range that Elvis had during this next decade.
I have some catching up to do on the songs we've gotten to, but first, I think there are a couple of points that need to be made about Elvis's career and the evolution of his style as he movies into the 60's and beyond. First, I want to comment on why Elvis didn't throw his hat in the ring and try to compete for 'relevance' in the era of the Beatles. It's been pointed out ad nauseum that he didn't write songs, and that was his big barrier - and that is part of the problem, but there's more going on that needs to be noted. In art theory, we recognize a split between Romantic (Emotionally Driven) work and Classical (Intellectually Driven) work. All art exists on a spectrum, containing elements of each, but one is always dominant, and it is rare that an artist can be equally effective at both ends of the spectrum. Romantic art is something that prizes stylistic expression, the immediate aesthetic experience, and the artist's relationship to the subject above all else. It is almost impossible to separate the work from the person when it comes to Romantic art. Classical art is different, it's all about concept, composition, and the ordered use of rules to communicate with an audience. It's all about the work, and the author can effectively 'disappear' into it. Rock N' Roll, in it's first generation, is a heavily Romantic genre, and Elvis is a heavily Romantic artist. They're very invested in style, and expressing the artist's needs and feelings on a visceral, elemental level. That sex is so heavily tied up in those needs, and they were expressed so clearly in the rocker's style. When the Beatles come along, they move rock toward a more Classical bent. The values of composition and concept come to the forefront. For the first time, a Rock artist is appreciated by people who train in Classical music conservatories as something other than 'greasy kid's stuff', they are noted for the way they use the rules of music and fine composition in their work. Style becomes less of an emphasis, as do the matters of the "Id" (subconscious needs, desires, and drives). It's because of this latter change that the Beatles make rock a "safe" place for younger kids and it sees wider adoption by the middle class. The Beatles, despite their long hair, were viewed as more respectable than the detestable likes of Presley, Richard, Berry and Domino - and Jerry Lee Lewis. In effect, Rock Music becomes a thing for middle class white kids, and it stops resonating with people of Elvis's socio-economic background. Poor white kids move to country or folk music. Black America abandons rock for Soul. Think about that - in the Pre-Beatles world at least half of the major rock acts were black, after the Beatles, there's only one major black rock artist - Jimi Hendrix. Now, in 1966, when the Stones come into their own, they start dragging Rock back toward it's Romantic roots, and the scene becomes more varied and widely accessible. My point in all this is that when the music scene left Elvis in the early-middle sixties, it left him in a profound way. To my second point -- In order to understand how this shift in Rock could pass seemingly without challenge from Elvis, we need to examine changes going on in Elvis's style and personal life and how the timing of those changes had a negative impact. Elvis's work breaks down into roughly four major stylistic periods - each of which happens to incidentally be separated by a gospel album. They are: 1954-1960. 1961-1965, 1966-1970, and 1971-1977. The first era is obviously the most celebrated and undoubtedly the most important, because it represents the very foundations of his style. This is when he was a raw, visceral force, and this era is distinguished by Elvis's drives to reconcile all of the opposing cultural forces he admires into a single coherent style - black blues and hillbilly country music, sacred gospel and profane sexuality, aggressive masculine and vulnerable feminine sensibilities, the polished class of a Dean Martin with the gut-bucket wailing of an Arthur Crudup. There is an interesting theory (with which I agree) that suggests that Elvis's drive to reconcile opposites derives from his being a twinless twin. Twinless twins often try to find someone to replace their missing twin, someone that they can bring in to fill this void in their identity, and for Elvis that was his mother. They had their own unique language, were closer than most people thought was healthy. Elvis began the process of reconciling their differences by dying his hair black to match hers, and wearing eye makeup. By all accounts Gladys (and particularly her death) loomed large in Elvis's psyche. I would argue that her death was the event that caused the first major shift in Elvis's style. It is interesting then, that Elvis reaches the mountaintop of this first-era style in the Elvis Is Back sessions, after Gladys's death. I would argue that we get something of a delayed reaction artistically, because Elvis is Back is largely comprised of ideas and songs Elvis was working out while in the army, probably beginning before his mother's death -- but certainly before it had fully registered psychologically. So, the second era opens with Elvis experiencing something of an identity crisis. He's less sure of himself -- of who he is and who he wants to be. In the 1961-1965 era, the sexual component of Elvis's style doesn't entirely disappear, but it's downplayed. As is his southern-ness. His aesthetic becomes that of the vaguely romantic matinee idol, containing the Pop-sophistication that we find in the 'Elvis Is Back' sessions, but none of it's underlying grittiness. He still records some major work in this era, but there's less of it, and his style evolves less in these five years than in any other time in his career. He seems to be stuck in neutral, and each succeeding session brings (for the most part) diminishing returns, until he flames out entirely in 1965. He's only brought back to artistic life when he finds an external mooring for his identity when he married Priscilla and tries to start a family in 1966. All of things aspects of his identity suppressed in his second era, become features in the third, and finally his style begins to evolve again. I'll comment on the third and fourth eras more fully when we get there, but you can see how Elvis's second era being transposed with the incredible growth and development of Rock N' Roll in the age of the Beatles did an immense disservice to his artistic reputation, one that he's still yet to fully recover from. There's still some good, creative work being done in that era, and I look forward to getting to talk more about it when we get there.
You make some great points but there was no mention of the Colonel in there. There are notable differences in management between Elvis and The Beatles. I've read that a reporter asked Colonel Parker what he saw in Elvis the first time he watched him perform that impressed him. Colonel Parker's response was something like: "I didn't watch his performance, I watched the reaction of the audience while he performed. That told me what I needed to know." Colonel Parker during this first stage of Elvis' career did little to quench the fires of controversy. As long as they spelled Elvis' name correctly, it was still publicity. Elvis turned the music world upside down. Vulgar yet vulnerable in his performances was in stark contrast to the era of calm postwar tranquility that was portrayed up until that time. Elvis had the sound, attitude, and look of Rock and Roll! This image was an international sensation. Even The Beatles were highly inspired to do what they did by him. Once Elvis was drafted, the Colonel wanted Elvis to come back much more "family friendly". During this time, Elvis' world had turned upside down. A one two punch of he was no longer the superstar rocker ,but a private in the Army and the death of his beloved mother that was his rock in many ways had really set him adrift from his artistry. When Elvis came back, the Colonel really went to work toning down Elvis to be more family friendly. The Elvis Is Back album was really the last glimpse of rocker Elvis until 1968. The Colonel was great at getting Elvis top dollar for his work but he could care less about artistry. Elvis didn't really buck the Colonel until 1968 and that cost him in relevancy in the 1960's. As great as the 1968 comeback was, it came so late in the decade that it highlighted what could have been. In 1968, Elvis wasn't throwing off The Beatles dominance. He was throwing off the years of complacency and safe, profitable career moves. Brian Epstein on the other hand first saw the Beatles and was impressed by them. They were raw and he carefully polished them and the act. By the time Beatlemania is in full swing, they are no longer the rowdy, leather jacket wearing bar act but a very polished, courteous yet playful, professional and musically cohesive group. At this point around late 1963, Elvis and The Beatles almost have a similar image. Both were very safe rock performers. It only took The Beatles a year or so to move beyond the moptop introductory phase and really explore what they could do. This is the critical time for Elvis in the 1960's. While great music was exploding all around, Elvis continued to do it the Colonel's way and get the paycheck. That five year period from late 1963 to late 1968 was so profound that Elvis never really recovered from it career wise.
...Brian was struck by those tight leather trousers, too (nudge nudge)! 2, post: 19597412, member: 61340"]You make some great points but there was no mention of the Colonel in there. There are a notable differences in management between Elvis and The Beatles. I've read that a reporter asked Colonel Parker what he saw in Elvis the first time he watched him perform that impressed him. Colonel Parker's response was something like: "I didn't watch his performance, I watched the reaction of the audience while he performed. That told me what I needed to know." Colonel Parker during this first stage of Elvis' career did little to quench the fires of controversy. As long as they spelled Elvis' name correctly, it was still publicity. Elvis turned the music world upside down. Vulgar yet vulnerable in his performances was in stark contrast to the era of calm postwar tranquility that was portrayed up until that time. Elvis had the sound, attitude, and look of Rock and Roll! This image was an international sensation. Even The Beatles were highly inspired to do what they did by him. Once Elvis was drafted, the Colonel wanted Elvis to come back much more "family friendly". During this time, Elvis' world had turned upside down. A one two punch of he was no longer the superstar rocker ,but a private in the Army and the death of his beloved mother that was his rock in many ways had really set him adrift from his artistry. When Elvis came back, the Colonel really went to work toning down Elvis to be more family friendly. The Elvis Is Back album was really the last glimpse of rocker Elvis until 1968. The Colonel was great at getting Elvis top dollar for his work but he could care less about artistry. Elvis didn't really buck the Colonel until 1968 and that cost him in relevancy in the 1960's. As great as the 1968 comeback was, it came so late in the decade that it highlighted what could have been. In 1968, Elvis wasn't throwing off The Beatles dominance. He was throwing off the years of complacency and safe, profitable career moves. Brian Epstein on the other hand first saw the Beatles and was impressed by them. They were raw and he carefully polished them and the act. By the time Beatlemania is in full swing, they are no longer the rowdy, leather jacket wearing bar act but a very polished, courteous yet playful, professional and musically cohesive group. At this point around late 1963, Elvis and The Beatles almost have a similar image. Both were very safe rock performers. It only took The Beatles a year or so to move beyond the moptop introductory phase and really explore what they could do. This is the critical time for Elvis in the 1960's. While great music was exploding all around, Elvis continued to do it the Colonel's way and get the paycheck. That five year period from late 1963 to late 1968 was so profound that Elvis never really recovered from it career wise.[/QUOTE]
...I like your post a lot, but one point - In the Sixties sense. anyway. tend to think young fans and performers of folk/singer-songwriters as even more tending to be middle-class, even upper-middle class (Fans and starting out performers, not old-timers brought up to perform). than post-Liverpool Lads rock. ngofthejungle, post: 19595725, member: 22453"]I have some catching up to do on the songs we've gotten to, but first, I think there are a couple of points that need to be made about Elvis's career and the evolution of his style as he movies into the 60's and beyond. First, I want to comment on why Elvis didn't throw his hat in the ring and try to compete for 'relevance' in the era of the Beatles. It's been pointed out ad nauseum that he didn't write songs, and that was his big barrier - and that is part of the problem, but there's more going on that needs to be noted. In art theory, we recognize a split between Romantic (Emotionally Driven) work and Classical (Intellectually Driven) work. All art exists on a spectrum, containing elements of each, but one is always dominant, and it is rare that an artist can be equally effective at both ends of the spectrum. Romantic art is something that prizes stylistic expression, the immediate aesthetic experience, and the artist's relationship to the subject above all else. It is almost impossible to separate the work from the person when it comes to Romantic art. Classical art is different, it's all about concept, composition, and the ordered use of rules to communicate with an audience. It's all about the work, and the author can effectively 'disappear' into it. Rock N' Roll, in it's first generation, is a heavily Romantic genre, and Elvis is a heavily Romantic artist. They're very invested in style, and expressing the artist's needs and feelings on a visceral, elemental level. That sex is so heavily tied up in those needs, and they were expressed so clearly in the rocker's style. When the Beatles come along, they move rock toward a more Classical bent. The values of composition and concept come to the forefront. For the first time, a Rock artist is appreciated by people who train in Classical music conservatories as something other than 'greasy kid's stuff', they are noted for the way they use the rules of music and fine composition in their work. Style becomes less of an emphasis, as do the matters of the "Id" (subconscious needs, desires, and drives). It's because of this latter change that the Beatles make rock a "safe" place for younger kids and it sees wider adoption by the middle class. The Beatles, despite their long hair, were viewed as more respectable than the detestable likes of Presley, Richard, Berry and Domino - and Jerry Lee Lewis. In effect, Rock Music becomes a thing for middle class white kids, and it stops resonating with people of Elvis's socio-economic background. Poor white kids move to country or folk music. Black America abandons rock for Soul. Think about that - in the Pre-Beatles world at least half of the major rock acts were black, after the Beatles, there's only one major black rock artist - Jimi Hendrix. Now, in 1966, when the Stones come into their own, they start dragging Rock back toward it's Romantic roots, and the scene becomes more varied and widely accessible. My point in all this is that when the music scene left Elvis in the early-middle sixties, it left him in a profound way. To my second point -- In order to understand how this shift in Rock could pass seemingly without challenge from Elvis, we need to examine changes going on in Elvis's style and personal life and how the timing of those changes had a negative impact. Elvis's work breaks down into roughly four major stylistic periods - each of which happens to incidentally be separated by a gospel album. They are: 1954-1960. 1961-1965, 1966-1970, and 1971-1977. The first era is obviously the most celebrated and undoubtedly the most important, because it represents the very foundations of his style. This is when he was a raw, visceral force, and this era is distinguished by Elvis's drives to reconcile all of the opposing cultural forces he admires into a single coherent style - black blues and hillbilly country music, sacred gospel and profane sexuality, aggressive masculine and vulnerable feminine sensibilities, the polished class of a Dean Martin with the gut-bucket wailing of an Arthur Crudup. There is an interesting theory (with which I agree) that suggests that Elvis's drive to reconcile opposites derives from his being a twinless twin. Twinless twins often try to find someone to replace their missing twin, someone that they can bring in to fill this void in their identity, and for Elvis that was his mother. They had their own unique language, were closer than most people thought was healthy. Elvis began the process of reconciling their differences by dying his hair black to match hers, and wearing eye makeup. By all accounts Gladys (and particularly her death) loomed large in Elvis's psyche. I would argue that her death was the event that caused the first major shift in Elvis's style. It is interesting then, that Elvis reaches the mountaintop of this first-era style in the Elvis Is Back sessions, after Gladys's death. I would argue that we get something of a delayed reaction artistically, because Elvis is Back is largely comprised of ideas and songs Elvis was working out while in the army, probably beginning before his mother's death -- but certainly before it had fully registered psychologically. So, the second era opens with Elvis experiencing something of an identity crisis. He's less sure of himself -- of who he is and who he wants to be. In the 1961-1965 era, the sexual component of Elvis's style doesn't entirely disappear, but it's downplayed. As is his southern-ness. His aesthetic becomes that of the vaguely romantic matinee idol, containing the Pop-sophistication that we find in the 'Elvis Is Back' sessions, but none of it's underlying grittiness. He still records some major work in this era, but there's less of it, and his style evolves less in these five years than in any other time in his career. He seems to be stuck in neutral, and each succeeding session brings (for the most part) diminishing returns, until he flames out entirely in 1965. He's only brought back to artistic life when he finds an external mooring for his identity when he married Priscilla and tries to start a family in 1966. All of things aspects of his identity suppressed in his second era, become features in the third, and finally his style begins to evolve again. I'll comment on the third and fourth eras more fully when we get there, but you can see how Elvis's second era being transposed with the incredible growth and development of Rock N' Roll in the age of the Beatles did an immense disservice to his artistic reputation, one that he's still yet to fully recover from. There's still some good, creative work being done in that era, and I look forward to getting to talk more about it when we get there.[/QUOTE]
Well, you make some fine points before this last statement, about Tom Parker's negative role on Elvis's very sluggish middle to late 60's period, but I so disagree with your last sentence here. Beginning in 1966 and right before the television special, Elvis again was making some pretty interesting music. The gospel album was stupendous to say the least, and in fact from 1969 until about 1973 we have some of the highlights of his career with the Memphis American Sound recordings and his domination of the Las Vegas residency at The International. He also conquers New York with the most sold out consecutive shows at MSG, has two strong and one award winning concert documentary within a couple of years. His career than peaks more or less with the Aloha From Hawaii global telecast in 1973. He has several stellar studio albums from 1969, 1970 and 1971, not to mention several fantastic live Vegas concert albums. I think he more than recovered from the lull of the middle 1960's, and in fact it was his own personal demons and Parker's lack of imagination as a manager that drove Elvis into the dire condition that he would find himself in by the middle of that decade.
"Dont" - this does nothing for me unfortunately, even if it is well sung. "I Beg Of You" - a reworking of "Don't Be Cruel", so pretty uninteresting for that.
I think these two observations go hand in hand really. I agree with both (although i am very much removed from the era via age) To a large extent I feel the Colonel was very shrewd in terms of making a buck, and that's fine, but not generally conducive to artistry or creativity. To some degree, I think Elvis coming from a very poor background was sidelined somewhat by his success. Like the hungry boxer that gets fame and loses "the eye of the tiger" (sorry, couldn't resist) ... Also the want to be an actor sidelined him to some degree, and I personally think he could have done very well in the field, but feel he was never taken very seriously ... I think companies knew that doing what they wanted, they would make a buck, but doing what he wanted to, there was more risk, and in business they will generally take the sure fire buck over the risky one. The movie years still gave us some good albums and singles, but I doubt anyone could deny there was a little of the fire in the belly missing. I personally don't dislike those movie albums. There are a couple that are a bit so so but some, to me, are still very good, and I don't think any of them are void of good songs and performances ... but there are certainly some less inspiring songs and a few stinkers. I know it's futile, but I often wish that Elvis saw the writing on the wall earlier in terms of the movie career and pulled the pin on it. I also wish that somewhere around 1963-65 he had shaken the colonel's hand and bid him farewell. I really wish that during the come back special and memphis album that the natural move was to let the colonel go, but sadly it wasn't to be. In all seriousness, I know everybody got excited about the beginning of the Vegas period, but I wish the colonel had been dismissed and the dangling carrot that he held out to Elvis via the whole Vegas thing had been ignored. Elvis could have got an excellent manager, and would most certainly have toured anyhow. Perhaps a good manager wouldn't have worked him into his grave, and perhaps Elvis could have been given the confidence to step back into the control tower, instead of being the bell boy of his career.
Don't get me wrong I am a great admirer of Elvis' and The Beatles music in it's entirety, warts and all. I even like Elvis during the movie years although the music seemed like a top notch race horse pulling a rickety apple cart many times. You are correct about Elvis having great post movie career highs like From Elvis In Memphis, Madison Square Garden, and Aloha. I often wonder what could have been if Elvis had bucked the Colonel and Hollywood and stopped making "Elvis movies" after Viva Las Vegas. I know it's a lot of big ifs but if he had shaken off the complacency in 1965 and demanded better material, what would have happened? There are five 1950's rockers that I think had the chops to do great things in the mid 1960's. Chuck Berry( he did), Buddy Holly ( gone too soon), Johnny Cash (country and folk icon), Jerry Lee Lewis( was great in country music), and Elvis ( had that lifelong aura of cultural icon that transcended short-term trends. Ignored opportunities mostly). I'm a big fan of Elvis' 1970's material but the movie stuff just watered down his artistic work like the great gospel projects and a few other times that he was engaged and didn't phone it in during the mid 1960's. Like The Beatles' music, I'm sad that there wasn't more.
