Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

From a friend's collection...

 

How Great Thou Art is my favorite Gospel album. It is also one of my favorite Elvis albums regardless of genre. "Run On" is one of my favorite songs.

I have a deep affection and emotional connection to this album. I was raised in a very religious home here in Fort Worth. I had this on 8 track and I would put it in the old Zenith console in the living room and crank it up and just run all over the house when "Run On" would come on. I was about 5 years old. But the other, more somber songs had a great effect on me. I really pondered on the lyrics and it helped me build a personal relationship with God at a very early age.

To this day, I get teary eyed everytime I hear a song like "Where No One Stands Alone".

I love Elvis' other gospel albums, but to me, How Great Thou Art is the pinnacle.

 

ditto

 

Elvis' version of How Great Thou Art is IMO the definitive recording. The emotion and build-up give me chills. No one else's version comes close. And while there's quite a few outstanding versions of In The Garden (Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, in particular), the Elvis recording just captures 'that moment' and mentally takes me to a different level of reflection than the other versions do.

 

I am in total agreement with all three of your thoughts here. Elvis's version of How Great Thou Art really is a tour de force in every sense of the word. He uses all the great qualities within his vocal arsenal; range, power, and most importantly, sheer passion and commitment. I consider myself a Christian, but I have to tell you that a lot of contemporary religious music bores me to death. I am really picky about my religious music as much of it sounds predictable and pedestrian to my ears. I am rarely impressed with contemporary Christian music these days, although I have to say that Lauren Daigle has been a pleasant surprise to discover. Of course Elvis's studio and live versions of How Great thou Art would earn him two of his three Grammys over the years, and one can immediately see why you say that Elvis' version is the "definitive" recording. Just below Elvis's version, I would put Carrie Underwood's live version with Vince Gill on guitar. Just like Elvis, Carrie really holds nothing back on her great vocal and sounds totally spent by the time the song comes to its climatic end. I also enjoyed Elvis's tender and passionate reading of In The Garden as well.

 

One exception: Mahalia Jackson's version.

 

I love Mahalia, and she is truly one of the greatest voices to grace the earth, but I find her version to drag a little for my taste

 

The first two-thirds are a bit slow, but the climax is a roof-raiser.

 

Elvis was a great admirer of Mahalia. Many people are enamored by various live versions of HGTA by Elvis. But the studio version is the sublime and most excellent version to my ears.

 

That's a beautiful version: I love it!!

 

In The Garden was special to my mom. One of her grandparents love it and sang it often (she told me). And my mom, being the original Elvis fan, also loved Elvis' version. Alas so do I.

 

I appreciate that he did something different with this album rather than repeating the acoustic approach of His Hand in Mine. I love both albums, but I think I enjoy the uptempo rock tracks on How Great Thou Art the most of anything on either record. There's a sense of raw energy and enthusiasm in them that's really great.

I guess I'm in the minority about the title song of this album though. It's not one of my favorites, veering too far into the bombastic and overwrought for me. With the slower gospel songs, I prefer when he takes a subtler approach, as he does on In the Garden, which I do think is a great performance.

 

How Great Thou Art grew even more bombastic in concert in the 70s, and I say that as someone who has no problem with An American Trilogy.

 

I love Mahalia Jackson as well and have all of her Christmas albums in my rather large holiday library. I know Elvis really appreciated her powerful voice as well, even with her rather narrow vocal range, but she more than made up for that with the amount of passion and sincerity she brought to any song. I loved it when Elvis would tease the Sweet Inspirations on stage in Las Vegas that he was going to "bring in the Supremes with Mahalia singing lead," if they did not quit laughing at him. Priceless stuff.

 

I would submit that bombast, or rather a larger-than-life epic sound, is appropriate to the nature of both of those songs. But I have problems when that quality is applied to more down-to-earth material, like "My Boy," or when the orchestration and arrangement are bland and too Vegasy.

 

You beat me to the punch as I was going to say that I love some of those Phil Spector like orchestrations (some might suggest that many of his productions had a bit of overkill in the instrumentation), when they serve the musicality of the song. I will be highlighting a lot of those Vegas/Nash orchestrations that accompanied many of Elvis's better songs in the 1970's. As I said before, it is all about whether the arrangement serves the song or brings out something in the song that might be suggested by the string or horn additions. For awhile it was seen as cool or hip for pop music critics to criticize any additional orchestrations or merely dismiss them as "sweetening" techniques in post production. If you had suggested this definition to Frank Sinatra about Nelson Riddle's fantastic arrangements on his iconic songs from the American popular songbook, he probably would have slapped you in the face. The additional use of strings or horns can add something very special to a song (think of the terrific horn arrangements by Bergen White on Polk Salad Annie or Walk A mile In My Shoes) or it can distract from an already great and dynamic rhythm arrangement (think of Elvis's live versions of Burning Love and Hurt). While the additional horns might not have been too intrusive to either song in a live setting, they merely drew attention away from the great bass lines and drum playing on the original studio versions of the songs to my ears.

 

I like the bombast on An American Trilogy, as it fits the dramatic nature of the song. I like it on Hurt. But to me bombast and gospel music do not go together. The bombast undercuts the necessary sense of reverence. I suppose it's because I was raised a Lutheran, and the church music I grew up with was understated to the extreme.

 

Oh yeah, both my mother's family and my step mother's family are Lutheran. The church is VERY reserved and understated. The funerals I have attended there recently bored me! I could barely sit through them.

 

I was raised Pentecostal/Apostolic. Drama and bombast were the name of the game!!!!

 

Well the ONLY religious music I listen to is Elvis' as I am an atheist. But I can appreciate the culture in which I was raised.

 

I love His Hand In Mine because the overall vibe is lighter than air and joyous. If I could only listen to one Elvis song, I’d pick Milky White Way. The bombast of How Great Thou Art turns me off as well. But I agree with you @czeskleba that Run On is a fantastic uptempo track on this album.

 

Thank you both for your opinions. I look forward to hearing more Elvis albums on vinyl.

 

As seen by the back photo, it appears that there was a photo shoot just for this album. Have any other photos from that shoot appeared elsewhere? I wonder why nothing from that session was deemed acceptable for the front? I think Elvis' collar kind of makes him look like a clergyman, though. The look of reverence is good, but maybe the collar is a step too far.

 

There is a certain raw purity and tenderness to Elvis's vocals on the His Hand In Mine album that is hard to beat. I like your pick of Milky White Way as well. It has to be one of his greatest vocal performances ever. If I had to pick only one song from either album, it would probably be In My Father's House as there is something majestic and heavenly about his singing and how his voice goes from baritone to tenor range. I never get tired of hearing his voice on that song. Pure heaven to my ears. Oh, and I agree with you and Jason about Run On being the best uptempo song on either album. I know Tom Jones sure liked that version as well as he more or less copied Elvis's version note for note as I recall, when Tom recorded his version of it for an album a few years ago.