Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

He was too busy gambling.
And stealing his own client too.

 

The Searcher was originally proposed to be even longer than it was, but I guess HBO was only willing to fund so much. As you note, Elvis’s amazing life and career could easily deserve a Ken Burns-length ten chapter documentary, with each chapter lasting two hours and covering individual periods such as the Sun era, as you note.

 

Agreed. As with Ken Burns’s Jazz documentary, whatever arguments hardcore fans may have with The Searcher, it remains a fantastic introduction for new fans.

 

Well, Ray Charles had already brought the song into the R&B realm of course. And by the time Elvis got to it, even Sinatra and Basie had taken a crack at it, so it was no longer really considered just a country song.

I agree. I like this version much better than the live version. It's really fantastic.

 

I'm not all that new and I bought it, I thought it was really good
As you suggest though a Ken Burns style documentary that is 95% about the music would be great

 

Elvis is one of the five or ten most iconic Americans who ever lived, his life and career deserve a Ken Burns-length documentary.

 

What's Ken's number.... I'l start working on him

 

I am right with you here about My Babe being one of the highlights of the whole album and the band is truly terrific on it with a seriously fantastic arrangement from Elvis's stupendous rhythm players. The driving power of that group and Elvis's quick chuckle midway in the performance never fails to put on smile on my face.

You say everything I would want to say here as well. The mixture of the TCB band with that orchestra was a novel approach at the time, and the arrangements by Bobby Morris, which were very good in there own right, would become even more complicated and spectacular with the contributions in 1970 from Joe Guerico and pianist Glen Hardin's charts. Legendary Nashville arranger Bergen White would also make a significant contribution to the arranging duties in Las Vegas, when he was requested by Elvis himself to do the arrangements for Polk Salad Annie as well as Walk A Mile In My Shoes and Bridge Over Troubled Waters. Elvis never seems to get the credit he deserves for his own ideas about mixing all these various sounds together in order to cover such a wide range of material and genres and to do it his way.

 

I'm offended by that remark

Just kidding, it's a pleasure to read and converse with other fans of EP

 

True, but Elvis' final days, is how many non fans remember him. I like The Searcher's format, they just needed more time.

 

Very well said, PepiJean. Excellent comparison.

 

My Babe
This is a great track. This is blues rock and really suits Elvis to a T. This track has a great rhythm and feel. The band is absolutely cookin', with Elvis singing a very effective vocal. Fantastic stuff.

 

Mystery Train/ Tiger Man
We get Elvis doing one of his little spoken intros, and I always enjoy them. Not sure what I find so appealing about them honestly, but whenever Elvis is having a waffle on stage, I enjoy it. Mystery Train is a classic that wasn't really particularly a hit, but it captures what was great about early Elvis, and Tiger Man is somewhat of a great coda to those early works. This band is such a great band, and really fires. I know little about Ronnie Tutt's history. but his playing with Elvis always seems to be exceptional.

 

Words
Pre-disco Bee Gees is another favourite of mine. This is a very good cover, but it is a little too staccato for me. It is still a very good version, but in this instance I'll go with the original.

 

I'm a fan of Lennon but I don't give a damn on his opinion on Elvis - especially when he released the last heartbeats
of Yoko's embryo on one of his records some 5 years later ("Wedding Album"..? "Life With The Lions"..?) or songs
affected by his primal scream therapy.

 

Sorry for jumping back here again in this topic as I just recently found this one and Elvis' early/ mid 60s recordings to me are one of the most interesting/ challanging times.
I thought Michael St. Gerard did an excellent job in the ~15 episodes of the "Elvis" tv series (1990). I think he also played Elvis in "Forrest Gump"..? To me he's the only actor so far that played Elvis and also looked like him - at least in the 1950s. With the exception of this series nearly always the actors are just the wrong ones for this job. I didn't like Dale Midkiff in "Elvis and me" (movie on Priscilla's book). No better did the actor portraying Elvis in "Heartbreak Hotel" beside Tuesday Weld ("Wild In The Country" in the late 80s). In this fictunal movie Elvis was still living in the 1980s and - surprise- should look like a 1969 version of him- only that the actor looked totally different. Kurt Russell to me was alright in the (John Carpenter..?) 1977 Elvis biopic (but then of corse he knew the real one from "It Happened At..."). Yes, Bruce Campbell was a lot of fun in "Boba Ho-Tep". Sometime ago I saw via YouTube the first movie on Elvis' meeting with Nixon ("Elvis meets Nixon", TV 1997, based on Jerry Schillings' memories). It was awful. There's no question this topic/ situation was bizarre as hell but when you try to create a whole movie around it and take an actor who doesn't look like Elvis and at the same time over-acts it in the end it's just a cheap and bad looking movie (guess who played Vernon: the Mamas & the Papas' Denny Doherty!).
I haven't seen the recent "Elvis & Nixon" movie but the trailer already leaves me annoyed as the actor has zero resemblance to Elvis.

 

My Babe is where the album really starts to shine, imo. It's tough, it's catchy, and I'm not sure if I've ever heard anything quite like it. I love how it builds to a crescendo with Elvis snapping off the words as if he's out of breath.

Mystery Train/Tiger Man is even better. I'm somewhat lukewarm towards the original single, but this version of Mystery Train is absolutely smoking, and the transition into Tiger Man is one of the best moments on the album. The song sounds utterly unstoppable, urgent, and full of energy. Love it.

This isn't my favourite version of Words (that would be the opening night TTWII version...which, incidentally, I was listening to on repeat for the better part of yesterday), but it's a fine performance of a beautiful song, and it works quite well after the previous uptempo/bluesy songs.

 

I find it very odd that The Searcher has - so far - only been released on DVD. I'm hoping if/when there's a Blu-ray release it will include additional footage left out of the broadcast/DVD edition.

 

Playing a bit of catch-up, but I remember buying a used copy of In Person (the single album) back in 1975. I was a bit wary (again, a kid spending his hard-earned allowance) but even back then, I was surprised how much the album 'rocked' relative to all the Elvis movie material I had seen on TV. I liked it back then, and still like it today. On I Can't Stop Loving You, what the heck is going on when the music stops and - I think - a woman in the audience is screaming? I know @SKATTERBRANE mentions above something was looped in here, I can't see why as it kills the flow of this otherwise good performance.

 

That will annoy me lol

 

God you're in a very lucky situation: seeing some Elvis movies (and some of his very best!) for THE VERY FIRST TIME. I think I saw every one of his movies at least 4-6 times. And I'll have to admit I have enjoyed nearly all except Double Trouble and Stay Away, Joe. And I'm not a fan of his haircut/ the blue jumpsuit/ his pale-white face-jet-black-hair-contrast/ the washed out 70s look in "Elvis On Tour".

 

Lukewarm on the original Mystery Train? Well it is one of my two all time favorite Elvis recordings (the other being My Baby Left Me). But to each his own. Yes, I also like the 69 Live version. But they are totally different approaches. There is a January 28, 1974 version of My Baby Left Me in which Elvis does a fairly decent job emulating his 1955 voice for the song, at least for the first part of the song.

 

Until I got the dvd of this movie I always thought this song had a similar fate as "Summer Kisses Winter Tears", "You're The Boss", "Let's Forget About The Stars" etc.- a cut scene and a song only surviving on a soundtrack album. I guess the German cinema version always had this song cut from the movie as all the tv screenings in the 1980s/90s (when I had to watch the movie "live" on tv because we hadn't a video recorder) didn't include this song. Not that I did miss a great scene... ;-)

 

Very true. It's its own thing. This to me is another sample of the special sound that Elvis and the TCB Band created. A gumbo of rock and blues with a twist of funk and some country. They perfected this recipe on "Polk Salad Annie" by 1972 in my opinion. By then, the song takes on a different level all together and their funky rock hybrid is fully formed.

"My Babe' is irresistible. Jerry Scheff's bass bounces off the rest of the band and is the secret weapon of the song. Each band member sparkles in their own way. A special moment on the album that is just fun to listen to.

 

Gram Parsons, who borrowed players from the TCB band for his recording sessions, called his fusion of country, R&B, rock, and pop “Cosmic American Music,” and Elvis did something similar in his 70s live show. Of course, he had been mixing up genres since he put a country spin on a blues song for his debut single.