Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

Beginner's Luck
Written By :
Roy C. Bennett & Sid Tepper

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, May 12-15, 1965 : May 13, 1965. take 2

We have a cocktail jazz song that floats along on a cloud of vodka vapours. I like this track as it is just a mellow evening tune and seems a somewhat more genuine song. It is a good and relaxed vocal and I enjoy it.

 

Down By The Riverside/When The Saints Go Marching In
Written By :

Bernie Baum, Bill Giant & Florence Kaye

Recorded :

Radio Recorders, Hollywood, May 12-15, 1965 : May 13, 1965. take 4

This little medley is ok, but doesn't really do much for me. I feel like Elvis is about to ask me if I want to try this amazing tonic/elixir that he and his grandfather have been selling for years ...

 

Beginner's Luck bores me to no end. It goes along at a funereal pace, and there's absolutely no hook. Not a fan.

I know in my heart that Elvis' vocal on Down By The Riverside/When The Saints Go Marching In is uncharacteristically lacklustre, but I really like the track anyway. The peppy arrangement is what carries it for me, particularly the change-up with "strike up the band!" As usual, the Double Features remix sounds far better.

 

For some reason all the Frankie & Johnny youtubes show as not available for me. But Beginner's Luck is another acceptable song. I have never liked Down By The Riverside/When The Saints no matter who sings them, not even Elvis.

 

I have the same problem sporadically, but not lately.

I am pretty in line with you here as well. I think Elvis's vocal is really quite pretty on Beginner's Luck and once again I like the piano playing on it. My only real beef is the overall sound quality on the whole thing. What gets me about Down By The Riverside/When The Saints is that it should have been a tandem that Elvis could do a decent job of even in his sleep, which almost sounds like is the case here. It says something, and not in a good way, that Wayne Newton delivers a for more committed vocal on When The Saints when he covered it in 1964 on a live album. Also, just compare Elvis's much more lively version with The Million Dollar Quartet in 1956 on Down By The Riverside.

Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins... "Down by the ...


▶ 2:13
Mar 20, 2013 - Uploaded by Va HOSS
Mix - Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins... "Down by the Riverside" - 1956YouTube. NBC ...

 

The Million Dollar TRIO (as Johnny Cash came by later only for a photo op per Sam Phillips request) is a GREAT performance. It is Elvis being himself, natural and without commercial considerations. Pure Elvis, Jerry Lee and Carl Perkins. Reminds me of my family on my Dad's side from Western Kentucky. They had such gatherings. One of my uncles and my grandmother were cracker jack guitarists too. My dad was more like Elvis in his level of guitar playing. My aunt was a semi-professional singer and my other uncle is like me, can't carry a tune in a bucket. But he had a encyclopedic memory for lyrics. Ah but they are all gone now.

 

I would have liked to be in attendance for either gathering. Those informal family gatherings and jam sessions are priceless. We use to have a lot of them around a campfire on our family ranch. I of course only contributed vocals as I could not play an instrument to save my life.

 

The MDQ version of "Down By the Riverside" is 100 times better than the Frankie and Johnny version. Part of it is certainly that Giant/Baum/Kaye's rewritten lyrics turn a strong antiwar spritual into a bland song about celebrating, but the main reason is that there seems to be zero enthusiasm or energy on the 1965 recording. Elvis is going through the motions, sleepwalking through the performance. The cheesy Broadwayish Dixieland arrangement doesn't help either. A disappointment, because the raw material here was a good song, and they ruined it.

"Beginner's Luck" is all right. It's a competent ballad, given a competent but uninspired performance by Elvis. It's sad that mere competence is enough to make a song stand out on this record.

 

Minor correction... Cash was there towards the beginning of the day, not the end, as is evident from the fact that what we have on tape is clearly the final part of the jam session (since we can hear Perkins and his band leave and Elvis say goodbye to them and note "I'm always the last to leave these things").

The chronology appears to be that Elvis showed up, interrupting a Perkins session on which Jerry Lee was acting as session man. Johnny Cash was either already there (to listen to his friend's session) or showed up shortly afterwards. Sam Phillips called Bob Johnson of the Memphis Press-Scimitar to document the event, and Johnson witnessed the guys jamming (including a performance of "Blueberry Hill" which is not on the tape but is mentioned in his article). The famous pictures were taken, and then Cash left (reportedly to take his wife Vivian Christmas shopping). After Cash left they continued jamming, and then Phillips got the idea to roll tape and the final part of the jam session (without Cash) was recorded.

 

Just a heads up.
Tomorrow and Sunday I may not be able to get on here, so please carry on chatting without me. If I am able to post I will, but it Seems unlikely.

 

I agree with every single thought in your very fine post here. You say everything I wanted to say, but you say it a lot better than I did.

 

Some songs to be going on with

Shout It Out
Written By :
Bernie Baum, Bill Giant & Florence Kaye

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, May 12-15, 1965 : May 13, 1965. take 7
Although this song may be a little generic, I enjoy it and find it to be somewhat of a high point on the album.

 

The soundtrack albums version of Down By The Riverside/When The Saints Go Marching In always reminds me of the VLV tracks The Yellow Rose of Texas/The Eyes of Texas - songs that Elvis could have sunk his teeth into but that just become passable performances.

 

Hard Luck
Written By :
Ben Weisman & Sid Wayne

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, May 12-15, 1965 : May 19, 1965. take 3

We start off sounding like a traditional blues and move into a song that tries really hard to be authentic, but lyrically fall short of the mark for me. I am a big fan of the blues, so I enjoy the music and arrangement, but the lyrics sound a little forced for a blues track. Nice vocal though.

 

Please Don't Stop Loving Me
Written By :
Joy Byers

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, May 12-15, 1965 : May 13, 1965. take 19

I like this track as well. I think Elvis sounds engaged and trying to squeeze as much emotion out of this as he can, and I think he succeeds.

 

Everybody Come Aboard
Written By :
Bernie Baum, Bill Giant & Florence Kaye

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, May 12-15, 1965 : May 14, 1965. take 4

This is a decent little show tune and helps this album end better than the middle section that, for me, really drags. I wouldn't exactly say the album manages to close with a bang, but I think the last few songs pick it up a little.

 

Aside from the title track, this is the only memorable piece of music in Frankie and Johnny. I would go so far as to say it's something of a hidden jewel obscured in a pile of dung. Alas, this minor classic suffers from the crummy sound and engineering endemic to the album. Nevertheless, whenever I compile an album of Elvis ballads, I always try to include "Please Don't Stop Loving Me." It has the gentle but impassioned vocals and 3AM feel that I always treasure in an Elvis ballad.

 

Hard Luck is the dark horse here. Very good song, and a very good vocal. Please Don't Stop Loving Me is a great song. It could easily fit into Something For Everybody or Pot Luck (except for the sound). It is head and shoulders above the rest of the songs here, giving this soundtrack lacking in Harum Scarum, a great standout song.

 

As for Shout It Out and Everybody Come Aboard----

 

I agree with @SKATTERBRANE that Hard Luck is a dark horse here and a pretty decent song with a pretty fair vocal by Elvis. I also really like Please Don't Stop Loving Me and agree with him that it would have gone splendidly on Something For Everybody or Pot Luck. Everyone Come Aboard is one of the less offensive ditties on the whole soundtrack. The album starts well, quickly goes south and then recovers slightly near the end.

 

I think the consensus has always been that "Please Don't Stop Loving Me" is the best song on the record, and in this case I think the consensus is right. It is a good song that when remixed really sounds pretty nice. I agree that it's good enough to be acceptable even on a better album.

I don't share some of you guys' enthusiasm for "Hard Luck." While it is kind of gratifying to hear Elvis singing a bluesy song after all the show tunes, this strikes me as a really contrived blues pastiche, about as authentic as a $3 bill. If you fed all the most common lyrical and musical blues cliches into a computer and had it randomly generate a blues song, you'd get something like this. Elvis does seem to actually be trying, but there's not much of a song here.

On the flipside, I actually kind of like "Shout it Out." It's the closest thing to rock-n-roll on this record (which is pretty sad in and of itself). It's got kind of a gospelish feel also, and it's not bad. Not great, but not bad. Maybe I'm just punch drunk from listening to this record too many times.

Everybody Come Aboard is another attempt at a show tune that's not so hot.

Okay, now we're 2/3 of the way through the rock bottom trilogy, and on Monday we get to take a break at a brief oasis of quality, as the first small steps toward comeback emerge...

 

I just want to give a big thanks to @SKATTERBRANE, @czeskleba, and @DirkM for suggesting the alternate version of Harum Scarum on the Double Features soundtrack recordings. It is the difference between night and day as far as the remixing on Elvis's voice and the band. I have listened to this album three times in a row and I am really digging the album, one that I previously avoided like the plague. Can anyone believe I am even starting to like Kismet? I sure did not see that coming. A question though for all of you guys; I hear a huge difference between the sound on Harum Scarum on the Double Features and the original mix, but I am not sure I notice a huge improvement on Girl Happy between the two versions. Do you guys feel the same way or maybe I just have not given the second album enough of a listen yet?

 

For some reason, they did not remix Girl Happy on that CD, just Harum Scarum. Girl Happy could likely have been improved by remixing, but the original mix was not incompentently unlistenable like Harum Scarum, so perhaps that's why.

Here's the list of soundtracks that were remixed for Double Features:
Wild In The Country
Kid Galahad
Girls Girls Girls
World's Fair
Fun in Acapulco
Viva Las Vegas
Roustabout
Harum Scarum
Frankie & Johnny
Double Trouble
Stay Away Joe
Clambake (a couple of tracks)

 

Thanks, I kept going back in forth between the RCA Album box set version of Girl Happy and the Double Features and actually decided that I like the RCA Album box set version a tad better. It's nice to know that my ears are not failing me yet.

 

For the second batch of Double Features releases, Ernst and Roger was originally told that BMG wouldn't pay for any remixes. But when they heard the Frankie And Johnny album master, they convinced BMG that it had to be remixed because the original mixes were so bad.