Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

I felt totally the same about this track

 

I have not heard the Richard Harris version in years. I will have to say his vocal performance is far superior to Elvis' version. I very, very seldom ever say that. Good Time Charlie is in my top 3 songs from this album.

 

I really dig that alternate out-take that you posted, and I am one that almost always prefers the finished master, but I think this take is superior in virtually every way. How about that terrific Promised Land like opening with the guitar and keyboard instruments? Just fantastic and Elvis's voice has more punch to my ears. Thanks for posting it, Jean.

 

While some fans enjoy the arrangement and musical execution, Elvis’ somewhat frantic vocal delivery doesn’t add much.

 

Spencer just nails my feelings about this song as he so often does for me. This was a song that I probably always liked as a youngster, but never truly loved. During my later years as an adult, Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues has grown on me exponentially. Yep, we know the line about "I've got the pills to ease the pain...," hit a little too close to home for Elvis. What a subtle and melancholy vocal performance. Elvis sales the sad components of the song by the delicate use of his restrained vocals.

Charlie Rich did a pretty nice cover of this song a few years later on his very underrated album, Once A Drifter, and lo and behold, James Burton played lead guitar on this version as well.



https://www.youtube.com › watch

 

You're welcome, my friend.

 

You bring tears to my eyes with this comment.

You bring back joy to me with this fine post.

 

Lol. I'm one of those fans that likes My Boy even with the all of the cheese. Your take had me laughing. I think My Boy needed an answer song. The boy singing "Get A Grip Dad, Mom Just Left To Do Some Shopping!" would be a good one.

 

Completely agree with your sentiments. I too feel this album is a notable step up from Raised On Rock, Fool and Now, but unfortunately think this album tends to get lumped in with them.

I can imagine the lyrics to Talk About The Good Times resonating with Elvis (I've heard of several stories of him chatting with his neighbors, etc.) so I think he perhaps identified a bit. No way of knowing of course, just a hunch. And Good Time Charlie is a really strong track, another one where I almost feel Elvis is singing the song from his personal perspective. But like DirkM observed, it's really not a good closing track for the album and both the LP and song suffer a touch because of it.

 

@Revelator's posts are quite hysterical and always a blast to read. I find his humor quite funny, but his analysis is also quite good, even when I disagree with it as I obviously do in the case of My Boy. While he can be quite critical on stuff he does not like, I also admire the way that he uses his great skill as a writer to praise the performances he loves as well. Revelator is not a Debbie Downer by any means.

 

Unedited and undubbed.

 

Singer/songwriter Danny O'Keefe wrote one of the greatest lines in pop music history with the following verse from Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues:

Ya know my heart keeps tellin' me
"You're not a kid at thirty-three"
"Ya play around, ya lose your wife"
"Ya play too long, you lose your life"

 

Those lines obviously hit home for Elvis, as paradoxically is shown by that fact that he joked about them onstage (at the August 19, 1974 show, Nevada Nights FTD):
"Play around you'll lose your wife (already did that),
Play too long you'll lose your life (almost did that)."

 

That Nevada Nights album is one of the essential releases in Elvis’s vast catalog. Interesting to hear him tackle Good Time Charlie live, even if only did so once.

 

I always get the impression of raucous country hoedown after everyone's consumed several mugs of grandma's special cider. Though "Talk About the Good Times" isn't bluegrass, its dueling keyboards have the genre's manic instrumental energy. Elvis pitches the lyrics with a headlong rambunctiousness that harks back to "Hard Headed Woman" and forward to "Promised Land." As with "I Got A Feeling in My Body," we can hear Elvis rediscovering his mojo with past-paced rhythm, a quality often dormant during the past couple of years. In the size and tone of Elvis's voice you can also hear the generosity and warmth that distinguish the best recordings he made in or near middle-age.

This is a song that has not dated at all, either in its production, message, lyrics, or delivery. It sounds just as modern as the day it was recorded--no apologies have to made for it. Once again, I wish Elvis had sung more songs of this caliber, style, and genuine maturity. The difference between sadness and depression is subtle but major, and Elvis's recording of "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" has real sadness. No self-pity or histrionics: Elvis just stares directly at the everyday tragedies of adulthood.

I used to think Elvis was a coward for not singing “I take the pills to ease the pain/Can’t find the thing to ease my brain,” especially since those lines were so witheringly true. I'm inclined to be less judgmental with age (I hope), and also wonder if his handlers might have suggested deleting the line, to keep his family-friendly reputation intact. How I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when the song was recorded...

 

It's an uneven album, but it's definitely a significant upswing from the previous several records... easily his best album since He Touched Me. This and the next two studio albums maintain a consistent level of middling quality, before things go downhill again.

 

I have often wondered the exact same thing. I cannot think of of many times where Elvis backed off of a lyric because he was worried about the consequences. Obviously, we all remember that One Night Of Sin eventually became One Night Of Love, but Elvis got his revenge on that censor of the original song title by singing the less provocative version with even more sexual abandon than the original. I do wonder if someone with the label was thinking about possible country airplay or something, but I think it was simply too soon to release Elvis's cover version of Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues to radio, so I am a little perplexed. I just cannot see Elvis taking out that line himself, it would almost be like highlighting the issue he had with drugs, rather than just ignoring the issue and singing the song as written. Like you said so well Revelator, "How I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when the song was recorded." I guess we will never really know the answer now, unless someone like James Burton would pop in here and tell us if he knew how it all went down at the time.

 

Its kind of interesting, because for me personally, I always found the Good Times album to be a bit uneven too, with a couple of standout performances, but now I think most of the tracks are stronger that what I remember them being as a teenager. Maybe that is the nature of the material being something I identify with more, now that I am an older, middle aged man. I also actually love the trajectory of Elvis's next studio albums as each one almost gets stronger than the next. Well, I actually think Promised Land and Today are almost dead even, but hold your horses now, I actually think From Elvis Presley Boulevard is an unheralded masterpiece. It is the album that made Elvis became my very favorite singer. Go figure. Now Moody Blue is a sentimental favorite of mine and actually has his best original singles on it since his Burning Love single came out in 1972. Yes indeed, I dig the title track and Way Down. I also love the two remakes on the flip sides of those stellar singles. My problem with the Moody Blue album is obvious, since they could not get Elvis back into that last Nashville scheduled recording session in 1977, Jarvis was stuck with having to use one too many live cuts to round out the album, one of which was his splendid cover of Olivia Newton-John's Let Me Be There, which though quite good in itself, it had already been released on the very fine Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis concert album in 1974. I still like much of the Moody Blue album, with one of the highlights being his live version of Unchained Melody, but the overall presentation of Elvis's last two studio albums is actually best presented on Sony Legacy's wonderful Way Down In The Jungle Room collection.

 

Very nicely stated on both accounts. I think I’m going to have to give the former track a spin later to reassess based on your interesting perspective of it.

 

It's interesting that you mention feeling they were uneven as a teen, but better now.

For me, I would probably not have liked these albums at all as a teen.... Yet I do like them now. I would probably have liked a few songs here and there, but as a teen these albums just don't have the adrenaline I required as a teen .. and that isn't just pace, or speed, it is a force of sorts that used to appeal to me.
These days I have settled and my chronic hyperactivity has become much less of an obstacle, so these days, I can very much enjoy these for what they are.
As I said earlier I was kind of dreading dipping my toes into the Elvis seventies waters, but I have been enjoying these albums. I certainly agree with the general consensus that the last three albums are the slightest, but I certainly don't dislike them.
I think this album picks up nicely, and it all has to do with Elvis' interest level I think. Here he sounds engaged, and into it. I certainly agree with @SKATTERBRANE that Elvis sounds uncommonly old for his age in some instances, but that doesn't really bother me too much, and I don't think for the most part it is too apparent on Good Times.

Anyway I think I started waffling again lol

 

I really admire and respect the fact that when someone as well versed in Elvis's record catalogue as yourself, and pretty much knows it inside out, and yet he is still willing to reassess a previous held viewpoint on an Elvis song based on some fine analysis by another member of this forum, like @Revelator. I too have re-evaluated some of my opinions on Elvis catalogue over the years, based on both critical and praiseworthy thoughts from members such as yourself. In my case alone, it proves you can teach an old dog new tricks or at least new listening habits.

 

This is the kind of question where I wish Marty Lacker was still alive because he likely would know or at least be able to make an educated guess. I'm skeptical anyone from RCA asked him to change the lyric, since RCA was so minimally involved in the sessions by this point. It certainly wasn't like it was in 1956 when Steve Sholes was looking over his shoulder and forced a lyric change on Shake, Rattle and Roll after the first few takes. It's possible Jarvis was thinking of airplay but it would be out of character for him to make a suggestion like that, and by 1974 things had loosened up on country radio to the point where a reference to pills wasn't gonna keep a song off the air. It seems to me the most likely scenario is that Elvis made the change himself, though you have a point that doing so draws attention to his drug problem. But it's not like his problem was a secret. Everybody knew, they just didn't ever talk about it. I bet that's what happened here... Elvis removed the line, and everybody knew why he did it but no one asked him or said anything about it.

 

Agreed. I doubt it was a directive from RCA. Now, it is possible that management (through Diskin) became aware of the lyric in question and suggested to Elvis that it was too risqué/offensive/inappropriate without actually confronting the real issue — and everyone knows Elvis would have likely complied with that sort of demand and/or strong suggestion from management (in addition to realizing the lyric was hitting too close to home), after all, this is a guy that changed vacation plans because management convinced him that he might upset a group of fans by being a tourist prior to performing in certain territories.

 

What gets me is that even Charlie Rich kept that line in his version of Good Time Charlie's Got The Blues, and we all know he had his own raging battle with both alcohol and pills over the years, although I believe in Rich's case, I think booze was the bigger demon. Rich even had an alter ego that he named Sanchez. Whenever his drinking got out of hand, he blamed any bad behavior on him.

 

The difference is that Elvis was very much in denial about his substance abuse and never would have publicly or privately admitted that he was addicted (although there is evidence he may have sought out therapy circa 1976, only to quickly abandon it).