His first #1 since '62, and his last, and I think one of his finest. It's a pity he couldn't continue releasing material this good.
I loved this one but my renewed interest in Elvis began with In The Ghetto, continued with Suspicious Minds and afterwards, Kentucky Rain and the equally superb Burning Love. The Vegas Elvis was rather unfortunate, like he was back-sliding to the mid 60s and all those crappy movie songs.
Poor DeeDee, she really suffered under Dionne's shadow which is a shame since she made some really nice records. More Soul than the Pop her sister cultivated. Here's the original version of the tune made famous by Betty Everett and later, Linda Ronstadt (which we'll get to later): Dee Dee Warwick - You're No Good - The original version!
There was as much behind-the-scenes strife, albeit in a different vein, as with his next-to-last #1. In both cases, music publishing was involved. His prior #1 before this, "Good Luck Charm," was the subject of countless lawsuits and countersuits between co-writer Aaron Schroeder and Gladys Music (the ASCAP arm of Hill & Range's Elvis publishing interests), leading to Schroeder never writing another song for "The King" - and helping contribute to the downward slide in his material up to his '68 comeback. With this song, American Studios and Press Music owner Chips Moman refused to yield all or even part of the music publishing to H&R's BMI Elvis wing, Elvis Presley Music - and what's more, Moman kept the copyright on that. Then Col. Parker tried to block its release, only to be outflanked, outgunned and outmaneuvered by a key RCA executive, Harry Jenkins, who'd attended some of the sessions and unequivocally took Presley's side with respect to the song's potential. It seems the stereo version, from what I'd heard, didn't have the false fadeout as the mono - and what's more, on the ending, the same bass line is heard all through the stereo. Whereas on the mono, after the first two loops, they switched to a somewhat different bass line heard after the "I can't walk out" line, first out as they commenced their false fade-out and -in. The mono is clearly the way to go on this one: On Cash Box, Elvis would only have one more #1 after this.
A fantastic last hurrah for the King. It doesn't sound much like 1969 to me, but it sounds brilliant in any case.
Another fun fact: This song was the last played by Roby Yonge on WABC Musicradio 77 in New York in the early morning hours of Oct. 21, 1969 before he commenced (at 12:38 A.M.) his infamous "Paul Is Dead" broadcast that, within an hour and 10 minutes (give or take), brought an end to his run at the station two weeks before his contract was to expire (and was not renewed). (By the time Yonge was taken off the air by legendary program director Rick Sklar, the song heard before his last-minute replacement, Les Marshak, was first heard, was the prior #1, the aforementioned Temptations chart-topper "I Can't Get Next To You.")
"Suspicious Minds" has an interesting history. Wish I could recall it really well. Mark James, DeeDee Warwick and B.J. Thomas were all associated with Scepter records and they all recorded the song. BJT expressed disappointment that his own version didn't hit but since Elvis had gone so long without a major hit and because of the quality of the record, BJT later expressed his happiness with that record's success.
At 4:20, "Suspicious Minds" was also one of the longest, if not the longest, studio track ever cut by Elvis. Certainly it was his longest to reach #1.
I love "Suspicious Minds" and have special memories of the time: http://www.rocknroll-schallplatten-forum.de/viewtopic.php?p=108396#108396 I also have versions of this song from Candi Staton and Dwight Yoakam.
"Sugar Sugar" - Even though it was written for a cartoon, "Sugar Sugar" is solid pop song with great hooks. "Suspicious Minds" - I'm not a fan of Elvis's Vegas era but this is a great record.
'In The Ghetto' was also a hit this year as well right? #3 peaking? Was this a comeback year for him?
Oh, believe it. But between that and "Suspicious Minds," there was a movie-music single, the middling-charted "Clean Up Your Own Back Yard," from his next-to-last "Elvis movie," The Trouble With Girls. One of which co-stars was the original voice of Velma on the Scooby-Doo cartoon series, Nicole Jaffe - who was somewhat nearsighted in real life, and a read-through within the onset of production for the first season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! where she temporarily lost her reading glasses formed the basis for a recurring gag of Velma wandering about, virtually blind as a bat, sans her glasses. After her days of voicing Velma were over, Ms. Jaffe would go on to become a talent agent in her native Canada. Kinda family resemblance there, no?
Not Elvis' - his was recorded at American Recording Studios in Memphis, produced by Chips Moman. One wonders, though, how Elvis would've fared, musically, with "The Swampers" backing him up either at Rick Hall's Fame studios or Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, rather than the post-1970 sessions that admittedly never topped the quality and quantity of what he turned out at American in January and February 1969.
While we're talking Elvis tunes circa '69, Candi Staton's version of Suspicious Minds has been mentioned a few posts back and while that one features a disco flavor, her '72 rendition of In The Ghetto adheres to what Elvis laid down. And I just love her smokey voice.
That's Chris Clark??? She really can sing! Now, why couldn't they get that from her back in 1966? She would have had a better career. All I remember is "Love's Gone Bad".
Sammy Davis Jr did In the Ghetto before Elvis. His version is a total disgrace Notice it 'samples' Crimson and Clover
"In the Ghetto" is one of my least favorite Elvis songs. I do admire any song that calls attention to a topic that needs it, as that one certainly does, and for that reason I want to like it. But I never have.
I've always loved "In The Ghetto". Man, I got so excited when I saw Candi had done a version of "Suspicious Minds" - I thought, wow, that could really work. Unfortunately the arrangement is disco-awful. But her version of "In The Ghetto" is fantastic, although Elvis does a stunning job on it as well. In fact I think it might be just about his best vocal - it's remarkably sincere for someone who seemed to have become totally divorced from sincerity about a decade before.
It seemed there were some who could fit in the Motown system, and some who didn't. Sounds like Ms. Clark was in the latter category, unless I'm reading it wrong . . .
"In The Ghetto" - which I've also liked for years - was surely the most explicitly "socially relevant" tune Elvis ever attempted. (In a vaguer sense, so was "If I Can Dream.") The 1968-69 period would have to have been Elvis' best, not only in his vocals and the material he recorded (in the sense of their being on par with the quality of his '50's work and his 1960-61 recordings) but also his appearance. I've long thought it a shame that the leather jacket-wearing Elvis of his "comeback special" wasn't shown among the options for the Postal Service's Elvis stamp (sandwiched between his '50's and Vegas '70's eras). One actress who'd worked with him on his final "Elvis film," Change Of Habit, remarked about his particular diet and it was just one small clue as to his final years (she'd said something to the effect that if the pills didn't kill him, what he ate over the years would have) - and noted that it did not include salads or healthier fare. A shame that, after 1970, in his music, Elvis once again became "totally divorced from sincerity" - and that was before his divorce from Priscilla.
The logo of the label on which it was released - Weed - seemed to be an "answer" logo to that of Stax after that label hooked up with G+W.
