Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

For whatever it's worth (and I'm in my 30s, for the record)...before I was an Elvis fan, I knew My Way solely as a Sinatra song, and I knew Always On My Mind as a PSB song that was a cover of an Elvis song.

...and the only version of My Way that I've ever liked is the EIC version, and although I appreciate Elvis' performance of AOMM, the PSB version is far and away my favourite version.

 

The PSB version of the song was #1 UK (and in several other countries), #4 US. Willie's version was #1 US country, #5 US Hot 100 and won a grammy for song of the year. Elvis' version topped out at #15 US Country, #20 US Hot 100. I'd agree that more people are aware of the PSB and Willie versions than Elvis'.

 

This is so well said my friend that I just had to highlight it. You are a real leader when it comes to posting upfront and brave positions on Elvis's very eclectic music choices. I am really curious to see how you continue to evaluate his 70's material as we get to those albums later in the thread. I will try not to be bashful when praising some of my personal favorites, but quite honestly, I have never been afraid to run up against the conventional view on Elvis or anything else for that matter. I do think it is a shame when some fans might feel intimidated to voice their own thoughts about what they actually love music wise when it comes to Elvis, which is a shame given how diverse and eclectic his own tastes were in music. I have often said that Elvis's own music range and versatility is what makes it so hard for his fans to agree on almost anything when it comes to his music.

I have learned a lot too from this board and as someone who has been exposed to Elvis's music since the 60's, I thought I had a pretty clear understanding of his great catalogue. Well, Mark's thread on the 60's soundtrack recordings completely changed my opinion on the quality of this material. I knew the highlights, but had dismissed the great majority of these soundtracks as trivial or not worth taking the time to listen to. I was primarily infatuated with three distinct periods of Elvis career; The early 60's voice, The late 60's rebirth, and a great deal of early and late 70's Elvis recordings. I became a diehard Elvis fan around 1976 and in no small matter it was his last two studio albums that sealed the deal for me. @mark winstanley's great 60's album thread and @SKATTERBRANE and @DirkM knowledge and love for a lot of this material got me to re-examine and listen to Elvis's soundtrack material for the first time carefully. It was an eye-opening experience, and I had no idea how many quality recordings Elvis recorded during these times that I had so readily dismissed out of hand.

I hope I can add some helpful analysis and share a little of my enthusiasm for what I think are some of Elvis's superior 70's recordings. I certainly do not like them all and there is some weaker songs and performances scattered among the best of the albums, but it is still a voice that radiates a lot of beauty and passion to my own ears.

 

I guess I would count myself in the pretty rare, but not totally exclusive, fan base that love both Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. I tried to see Elvis live about two years before he died and it was an epic fail. I was successful in seeing Frank Sinatra three times live in concert and he was fantastic. I know they are completely different artists and I can actually remember a time when I thought the sound of Frank's voice was very monotonous and boring next to Elvis's velvety baritone. Let's just say that I have completely changed my mind about that last statement.

I know that My Way was written for Frank Sinatra by Paul Anka and of course the lyrics fit Ol' Blue Eyes so well. I love his version. It's truly one of, if not thee, Frank Sinatra signature tunes. Yet, Elvis does something rather incredible with his various studio and live versions of My Way, and I think Dave Marsh says it better than I ever could in his splendid essay for the 70's Elvis box set, Walk A Mile In My Shoes:

There probably isn't another singer in the half-century since World War II who would have had the nerve to attempt such an expropriation of the other most famous singer in the world. There definitely isn't another singer of our period who, having taken on the task, could have pulled it off. The myth that Elvis became nothing more than lazy in the seventies dies right here as the Presley version of "My Way" succeeds in obliterating all the others, and not because of something special in its arrangement or production (which altered nothing important from earlier renditions), or because it fits Elvis' voice better than Sinatra's (if anything, the converse might be true), or in the end because it fit the details of Elvis' life more superbly than Sinatra's (too close to call). No, Elvis won this competition for a far simpler reason: because of the way he sang.

 

The most successful version of Always On My Mind is by Willie Nelson, yet it has 54 million YouTube views for one video of it and four million on another. That's 58 million total.
Elvis' version has over 140 million views. One with 119 million and others in the 4 to 7 million range.
That's way more than twice as many views for a Elvis version that was a B side verses a version by a living country iconic legend who transcends country audiences and was a huge crossover charts artists and who's version was a number 1 country song and top 5 pop song and multi grammy and country music award winner.
Elvis by no means took My Way from Sinatra but posthumously he took Always On My Mind from everyone who recorded it.
Let me add on Apple Music it's the 15th most streamed Elvis song.

 

I washed My Hands In Muddy Water
Written By :
Joe Babcock

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, June 4-9, 1970: June 7, 1970. take 1

This is probably my favourite track on the album to be honest. We have a country-blues rock track that bounces along nicely and Elvis is right into it. There's a feeling of "I lived this" going on. The band is fired up, and it just comes together beautifully.
I'm not sure about the horn section on here, but it doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the song.
There is a real rave up jam feeling here, and that could well be one of the enthusiastic first take things, and may well be why they chose take 1 as the master.
Great track.

 

Make The World Go Away
Written By :
Hank Cochran

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, June 4-9, 1970: June 7, 1970. take 3 splice with work part take 1

Again this is in my favourite tracks on the album. Sure we have a somewhat syrupy string arrangement, but that has never been something that bothers me one way or the other, it just depends on the song.
Elvis sells this song with a committed vocal. Again I can see Elvis living every moment of this song, and I am sure he spent a great deal of his iconic status life, wishing that to some degree the world would go away.

 

For the record I wasn't stating that Elvis version of Always On My Mind was better, more popular, or any other thing..
All I was saying was that from where I have been, and who I have talked to, there is a large portion of the community that see it as an Elvis song.

 

I WASHED MY HANDS IN MUDDY WATER
Here is a song that could easily fit in a Country album - which it did - but that could have also been part of a Pop/Rock LP and on a (Rhythm &) Blues concept record too! That's Elvis' magic. He really was a genius when it came to blurry those musical borderlines. And almost 50 years later, it's still works pretty well. The overdubs on the original output are not bad at all but I still prefer the undubbed / uncut version available in the "Elvis Country" FTD edition. Less polished, more rock'n'roll. A true highlight, not only from the LP but from the whole decade too.

 

I'll give My Way to Sinatra, but there is NO WAY I am giving Always On My Mind to Willie Nelson!

 

Give it B. J. Thomas, Gwen McCrae or Brenda Lee, they recorded it before Elvis.

 

It might just be my favorite track on the Elvis Country album as well. I think it is one of Elvis's best tracks ever. Counting Down Elvis/ His Finest 100 Songs author Mark Duffett places it at #19 on his all time greatest song list, just one notch ahead of Are You Lonesome Tonight? and right below Elvis's 68 version of Tiger Man, so I think we are both in good company here.

I was first familiar with Charlie Rich's stellar version of I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water, long before I heard Elvis's uptempo version, and I still find Rich's hard to beat, but to Elvis's great credit, he completely re-vamps it and makes his own "country-blues rock" version as you so well describes it. Nevertheless, I have to believe that Charlie Rich's version was the one that got stuck in Elvis's head over the years as this footnote in Mark Duffetts's great book indicates.

419. Elvis had already shown more than a passing interest in Charlie Rich's music. In his singles collection, according to the 1996 Virtual Graceland CD-ROM set, he had three of Rich's 1960 Philips's numbers: "Lonely Weekends," "On My Knees," and "Gonna Be Waiting," (the flip side of "School Days"). He also seemed to echo their style in his 1961 recording "What A Wonderful Life." Another of Rich's singles, "Mohair Sam," was released by Smash Records in the summer of 1965, backed with "I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water." Elvis certainly knew about the A-side, as he was practicing it on electric bass when the Beatles popped over to visit his home that August.


2:46

 

I like what Elvis does with Make The World Go Away as well, with his soulful vocal ad libs repeating the opening word of the chorus for effect, but it will never replace Eddy Arnold's definitive countrypolitan hit from 1965 to my ears. Ray Price of course introduced the song, but it was too country western sounding for my ears. I love Ray Prices later country-pop records. Go figure.

 

I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water is a good little rave-up. My preferred mix/edit is the one on the 70s box, which gives us an extra minute's worth of music and makes the song even more thrilling. Side note: I know someone who misheard the lyric as "I washed my hands in bloody water," which gives the song a slightly darker context!

Make The World Go Away is far and away my least-favourite track on the album. It starts off painfully and just gets worse from there. The only version of the song that I like (actually, I outright love it) is Mickey Gilley's version:

 

I like some Sinatra as well, but there's just no emotion in his voice. Pretty much every crooner I can think of had more passion, with Tony Bennett, Matt Monro, and Al Martino being my favourites. IMO, every great Sinatra record is great for one reason: Nelson Riddle.

 

Thanks for that reminder, I am going to have to check that version out again. Please tell me they did not remove the horns on it. I hate it when producers so many years later decide to muck with Elvis's musical arrangements. Apparently, he chose to take the horns off of Whole Lot A Shakin' Going On, so he could have done the same thing at anytime later if he felt strongly enough about it.

 

I totally get where you are coming from as I use to be in that same camp many years ago, but after watching him sing live on television and seeing the way he could phrase a song to bring deeper meaning or his almost conversational tone to the music, made me start to appreciate his voice more. I have a weakness for singers that have distinct phrasing and articulation like Willie Nelson, Peggy Lee or Frank. It is a sort of lost skill set that I really appreciate, but I totally get people who just cannot get into Frank's voice, because as I said before, it is kind of an acquired taste. Oh, I totally agree with you about Nelson Riddles's brilliance. Probably my favorite arranger ever.

 

The horns are there, and they sound glorious!

 

Yes indeed. More than one of the people present the night Elvis met the Beatles says that Elvis played that record multiple times during that night. So he certainly was aware of its b-side.

I agree with you that Charlie's version is the definitive one, though Elvis' is also very good. Elvis gives the song kind of the same "locomotive" treatment he gave to his own All Shook Up on the 68 Comeback.

 

I spend more time listening to Elvis than to Sinatra, but it never occurred to me that there was a split between their present day fanbases (I can see how Sinatra’s original fanbase might share his perception of rock and roll as the province of “cretinous goons”).

But, in this post-Beatles and post-Bob Dylan world we live in, if you don’t subscribe to the “only singers who write their own songs matter” worldview that Dylan and the Beatles ushered in, and you do appreciate the art of interpretive singing, I don’t see how you could fail to appreciate both Elvis and Sinatra as two of the greatest singers ever to have the gift of cutting to the heart of a melody and a lyric and making it their own. I like Elvis more, and would have to say that, to me, he is ultimately the “better” and more versatile vocalist, yet Sinatra was a miraculously gifted singer and interpreter in his own right.

 

I feel exactly the same way as you about Elvis and Sinatra. The sheer beauty, range and versatility of Elvis's voice makes him my personal favorite. He definitely gets the most attention as far as my listening habits are concerned. I probably have listened to Charlie Rich even more than Frank over the years, and I think Nat King Cole's voice was even more beautiful than Frank's to my ears. I have a ton of favorites, but Elvis kind of stands alone at the top of the heap. No disrespect to Frank intended there.

 

For me, the big four American vocalists are Elvis, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughan. All four literally could have sung the phone book and made it interesting.

 

Ah, Ella and Sarah are just unbelievable female singers. I think they both pretty much had darn near perfect pitch, did they not? I still get goosebumps whenever I hear Sarah's iconic version of Send In The Clowns. Ella is just an incredible singer all around. I love her two Christmas albums a whole lot. The jazzy one gets all the attention, but I love her later one with Ralph Carmichael, who of course did the stellar orchestral and choral arrangements for Nat King Coles legendary The Christmas Song album. Man, you have impeccable taste in vocalists my friend.

 

It's also a song that could have fit right in with some of the great songs from the Memphis sessions IMO.

 

Well I think Elvis Country is just about on par with FEIM in general. It certainly is Felton's finest hour.