Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

Really?!! The only thing that made the 1974 shows a rollercoaster ride was the drugs. When Elvis had the chance to deliver some really good varied shows for the big events such as MSG and Aloha, all he delivered were his Vegas shows but on the road - same songs all delivered in the same style, same poses, same big Vegas orchestrations and the classic hits thrown away at breakneck speed with no respect given at all to any of them. And of course once we got to 74, we had that mind numbing and boring "Amen" routine with JD Sumner. If you took the usual songs from virtually every show he did from 1971 onwards, chopped the tapes up to create separate songs, chucked them in the air and spliced songs from different shows together to , I doubt you would be able to tell they were from different shows or times. In fact FTD have a habit of doing something like that on their soundboards when they cannot offer a complete show - take songs from different shows or tours and add them in to fill the gaps. We probably only know because of the difference in the sound quality and that FTD tell us what they have done.

 

ANY DAY NOW

Music magic: vocally, it remains second to none. Elvis voice raises octaves and reaches lower registers effortlessly (well, almost if you listen closely to the outtakes), truely amazing.
The whole thing is pure Soul with a wonderful R&B vibe and a tasty arrangement from Chips Moman.
It was also a great idea to combine it with IN THE GHETTO - a recording more on the Country side compared to the soulful B-side.

A masterpiece.

 

Exactly. Once again this shows how Elvis's musical tastes were are lot broader and more eclectic than a great many of his fans. Just look at the very moderate sales of arguably his two best albums, Elvis Is Back! and From Elvis In Memphis. A great many of his fans apparently could not appreciate the depth and growth that Elvis was demonstrating on these absolutely stupendous albums. The range of material, the complexity of the arrangements, particularly on the latter album, are just breathtaking. One writer fathomed that perhaps Elvis had left his fans behind, musically speaking, when he did some of the more soul/country hybrid recordings at American Sound in Memphis. Perhaps he left some of them behind in Las Vegas as well. Elvis was never limited by labels like this is "too country" or this is "too MOR" sounding for my tastes. He was motivated by whether the lyrics and the melody spoke to him in some way. If it did, then he was more than willing to put the Presley stamp on it or at least give it a decent effort. I personally love many of those Las Vegas recordings, and I am not afraid to say so. I think Walk A mile In My Shoes, I Just Can't Help Believin', Proud Mary, You've Lost That Loving Feeling, Bridge Over troubled Water, Sweet Caroline, and American Trilogy are some of Elvis's finest vocal performances ever.

 

This is truly one of the finest posts I have ever read on this forum. Spot on, Jason, once again. Brilliant.

 

Thanks for explaining that fantasies are just fantasies.

Geez. Tough crowd.

 

Yeas but George didn't say that to Elvis....just that he wanted to say it. John Lennon said that George was making a mistake about not including some of The Beatles hits because George's fans probably wanted more old songs - not sure if he managed to communicate that through to Harrison but I am sure there were others who thought the same. McCartney realised what the fans wanted via the feedback he was getting - he started to include lots of the old popular Beatles hits because that is exactly what fans wanted and he currently does it too, and he treats those songs with true respect and not like Elvis who just did throwaway versions of his hits at warp speed. Elvis could have easily introduced a section into his shows where he discarded the jumpsuit and did just sit around with a few of the guys from the group and do the old hits a bit like he did on the 68 TV Show.

Do you really think that fans abandoned From Elvis in Memphis because they could not appreciate the depth and growth of Elvis’ new recordings, presumably then preferring albums like Paradise Hawaiian Style, Double Trouble, Clambake etc. The reality is that the hardcore fans purchased the album just like they did with the previous albums....after all, Elvis’ name was on it. And with initial sales of 500k copies, it was definitely the best sales of an Elvis album for a good number of years with Roustabout selling around 450k some five years earlier. But as far as "joe public" was concerned, the poor movie soundtracks of the previous 7 years had damaged Elvis’ reputation as a serious album artist. And as far as a new generation was concerned, Elvis was past it. In fact in 1964, a placard that was held aloft when The Beatles arrived in America simply proclaimed that Elvis was dead. In 1969, Elvis was the top of his game and his comeback was complete but within 18 months, it was tailing off and within another year, Elvis had moved to another rut, but this time, it was a touring rut from which there was no escape or desire to escape.

 

Often, there is a need to explain these things for certain fans who live in the Elvis bubble world where everything is deemed as being perfect no matter what Elvis did or would have done.

 

I didn't realise. I must have been having a negative reality inversion

 

Yes exactly. The Blue Hawaii soundtrack outsold From Elvis In Memphis and Elvis Is Back! combined and many times over.

Oh yes, his record setting gig at MSG in New York in 1972 (Elvis was the first artist ever to sellout 4 consecutive shows in a row) and that Aloha From Hawaii special seen by a record few hundred million people across the globe in 1973, demonstrate that Elvis's career was all downhill after 1969. Good grief. Elvis's career is complicated and even frustrating at times to understand, without making such a broad based and somewhat inaccurate statement. His Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis album from 1974 is also another stellar highlight of his live recording career.

 

Chips was trying to create new, fresh music by Elvis, not record a cover of one of the most famous songs on the planet. Little work was actually done on the song, with most of the takes representing false-starts. And while Elvis was allegedly the instigator, he moved away from the song relatively quickly and never returned to it to record a proper vocal. It is not surprising that additional work was done on the backing track, after all, RCA was paying for the session and expected the delivery of dozens of songs, so that fact that some overdubbing was completed just in the event Elvis decided to record a vocal is not a surprise. In any event, the song should have been permanently relegated to the vaults, uncovered in the early 1990's as an archival find for the Essential 1960's box set.

 

Huh? The whole point of the 'fantasy' is to imagine what-if scenarios because Elvis' choices at times were far from perfect. I don't think there's anyone participating in this thread who thinks otherwise.

 

Well, to be fair, Elvis' career as a recording artist and creative force was indeed tailing off. As a box office attraction, Elvis was still one of the biggest concert draws in the industry, hence the sold-out tours and run of shows at Madison Square Garden. By 1971/early 1972, the same artist that unleashed the fury in Burbank in 1968 and delivered perhaps his greatest secular album, From Elvis In Memphis in 1969, was releasing disjointed hodge-lodge LP's of leftovers and out-of-context tracks such as Love Letters and Elvis Now. The direction of his deteriorating recording career (and the end of his film career) cannot be camouflaged by a few big concert events and concert tours.

 

No it's me ... Elvis is all I listen to
Well the other albums threads are just a time consuming ruse

 

On the first Wings tour Paul only did one more Beatles song than George. It was more the arrangement changes which were an issue for George.

And yeah, plenty of people did pretty much tell him to stop with the Indian music and go back to being a Beatle.

 

Well, I don't see anyone on this thread taking that sort of position.

 

That last point isn’t true of the 1972 MSG shows: one of the reasons I like them is that the spotlight of New York did prompt Elvis to take the 50s hits more seriously than usual.

As for the same poses, same style, and all that, you can say that of Mick Jagger and the Stones, and of 95% of rock artists not named David Bowie. But let’s hold Elvis to an impossible standard, even though, as we were talking about a page ago, his 70s style was so different from his 50s and 60s style that it bothered George Harrison.

 

Nice call

 

It’s a known fact that his movie soundtracks outsold the studio stuff ~ there was cross marketing with the movie promoting the soundtrack and vice versa, but that does make your theory correct that fans were deserting his music because they could not appreciate the depth of something like FEIM. Elvis had guaranteed sales of a couple of hundred thousand copies of each record via his hardcore fan base. After Roustabout, it was indeed downhill in sales for the remainder of the decade for the soundtrack albums.

But I never said his career was all downhill after 1969. You are putting words in my mouth. I said that after 1970, Elvis got into another rut. There were peaks and troughs, but mainly troughs as the years went by It is somewhat irrelevant that Elvis’ 4 shows at MSG were all sellouts. Who would not want to go to see an Elvis concert given the opportunity and this is exactly the same with Aloha. Who does not want to see Elvis on TV. Elvis was extremely popular as a box office concert attraction, BUT that does not necessarily mean that the shows were great and truly memorable.

The events such as Elvis being at MSG and or the Aloha near worldwide broadcast were probably bigger than the actual shows. Here in the UK, our TV stations were not interested in buying the program as they felt the show was simply an average Elvis show that could have been given anywhere in the US...Vegas, Detroit...you name it. On the record front, sales were once again declining. After the Elvis Country album, Elvis never got back to giving us albums that were as great as FEIM or Elvis Country. We got the June 70 leftovers for Love Letters, an album from 1972 that proclaimed Elvis NOW yet contained one discarded track from 1969 and another from 1970, and after the Aloha show, another weak album entitled Elvis that in the main contained tracks recorded two years earlier plus a "live" track to pad it out. Regarding "As Recorded in Memphis", there is nothing stellar about it. It is just another Elvis concert, with a few highs but what made it special was that it was recorded in Elvis’ hometown. The album was certainly not a commercial success as such and neither were the remaining albums during the remainder of his life.

You cannot elevate Elvis’ career in the 70’s on the back of a couple of big events. The reality is that fans went to see Elvis because of who he was and not necessarily because he was putting on stellar shows ~ the loyal fans could never get enough of Elvis Presley ~ Just take a look at Elvis in Concert. Stadiums full or nearly full yet performances delivered by someone who probably wasn’t sure where he actually was for a lot of the time. The first show was a disaster. Bloated, pale, and incoherent, Elvis stumbled through it trying desperately to keep his performance together. At one point Elvis announced the song “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, then stopped as if to reflect on the title, before continuing to himself: “and I am, and I was …” The cameras and tape recorders caught it all, but CBS was certain that much of the show was virtually unusable. Their only hope hung on the second show, and it was barely good enough to justify completion of the special. Perhaps you should consider taking off your rose coloured glasses for a while and open your eyes and accept that Elvis got into a big rut in touring during the 70s which had a big negative impact on his studio recordings.

 

The things people don’t like about Elvis are part and parcel of things people do like about Elvis. You can’t say, “if Elvis had thought things through, he would have taken off the jumpsuit and played a tasteful unplugged set in the middle of his show backed by Scottie Moore.” He had a rootsy side in the 50s, sure, but he also changed the line “you may get religion” in Baby, Let’s Play House to “you may get a pink Cadillac,” and had his famous gold lamé suit custom tailored in 1957. The “Vegas” glamour was there from very early on, whether fans like it or not. If Elvis had made the sensible decisions people keep wishing he would have made, he wouldn’t be Elvis. He was bigger than good taste: “I sing all kinds” was his mission statement, not “I sing rock critic approved tasteful material.”

 

You are having a laugh aren’t you. Elvis gave one minute and 30 seconds to Love Me, less than a minute to All Shook Up, a medley of two other classics, Teddy Bear/Don’t Be Cruel came in at one minute and 49 seconds, Heartbreak Hotel at one minute 39 seconds. Yep, that is showing true respect to those classic tracks and delivered in a more serious manner.

 

Oh dear!!

 

If you listen to MSG shows and compare them other shows from 1972, you’ll hear that, in New York, Elvis delivers the 50s songs far more seriously and straight than he usually did. As with George Harrison not playing Don’t Bother Me and I’m Happy Just To Dance With You on his 1974 tour, I can’t blame Elvis for being tired of his juvenilia.

 

...aren't we supposed to be talking about the fabulous Any Day Now?

 

With all due respect, you stated the it wasn't all down hill after 69 and then just listed off things that you think are crap.

You have stated that anyone who thinks they are not crap is wearing rose coloured glasses.
Isn't it all together possible we just have a different opinion on these things to you.

Did you actually have anything to say positive about the magnificent album we are currently discussing?
So far all i hear is someone stirring the pot.

 

My go-to Any Day Now.