Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

Wow, I forgot how annoying Datin' is with the girl's vocals in the movie version. I think I found my absolute worst version of an Elvis song. Watch at your own risk.



There's also a scene in the movie where there's a 'lounge' version of Datin' playing in the background. Heavy on the marimba.

 

Along both of those lines, if you do not find this scene from Peter Sellers role as Inspector Clouseau very funny, and I find it hysterical, I submit that you do not have Elvis's superior and wicked sense of humor.

Does your dog bite? - YouTube


▶ 1:18

 

Datin' and A Dog's Life are the two at the very bottom of this soundtrack. Yes and that little girl is one of the most obnoxious kids in any Elvis movie.

 

You say pretty much everything I would want to say regarding both of these songs in your fine post here. If I could have had the sonic quality of this album on Harum Scarum, I would have been a very happy guy. Where was Bill Porter when I needed him the most?

 

At Columbia, then Monument, then running his own studio (purchased from Bill Putnam).

 

Bill Vandevort was no slouch as an engineer. As evidenced in the outtakes, the issue with Harum Scarum was the final LP mix. There's nothing on the session logs that shows who was responsible for the mix.

 

Yes indeed, I know many Roy Orbison fans, including myself, feel that one of the biggest reasons for Roy's fall off from the top 40 chart in the middle 60's was the fact that Bill Porter was no longer able to be his engineer when he went and signed with MGM. Roy lost not only the great sonics that Porter helped to provide on those highly dynamic recordings while at Monument, but Fred Foster's great touch as a producer as well. Roy wrote some fantastic songs while at MGM in my opinion and many others, but his overall sound had changed quite a bit, without the stellar combination of Foster and Porter.

 

I've been an Elvis fan since 1976, but I started getting more heavily into the catalog in the late 80s. Around that time I purchased the following box set:


This was an Australian import, part of a series which compiled all his recordings chronologically by session. The main reason I bought this box was that I really wanted all the 1966 and 1967 non-soundtrack secular recordings, and back then several of them were really hard to find, particularly on LP. But this set had them all, even "Come What May" (which I believe at the time had never appeared on a US LP).

It also had a pile of soundtracks, many of which were not so hot. But one of the pleasant surprises I found on it were the outtake versions of "Datin" and "A Dog's Life" which had first appeared on the Elvis Aron Presley silver box set. I found these recordings absolutely hilarious, and listened to them constantly. I still love them, and as a result I like these two songs more than they deserve. And to my ears, the outtakes are the "real" versions, and the masters are the alternates. These songs are silly, and they should be funny, and the outtake versions most definitely are.

 

That box set looks interesting, I'm not familiar with that series. Do you recall if the soundtrack material was mono or stereo?

 

I'm 99% sure it was stereo, but I'll check over the weekend when I get a chance. The series was a great concept, but they had to use what sources were available and they didn't always have the best. I also own volume 1 (1954-61) and unfortunately it has a fair amount of awful RCA fake stereo. But these two sets were my intro to listening to Elvis by session rather than album, which (as I've said repeatedly) is still my preference.

 

I wonder if the Follow That Dream soundtrack is in stereo on this box (I doubt it).

 

I do not own Volume 2, but everything on these boxes is previously released. They wouldn't have rare, unreleased mixes on there. Angel might be stereo (when did that mix first come out?) but the rest has to be mono.

 

1978. Elvis Sings For Children and Grownups Too!

 

An album title like that is guaranteed to sell a million overnight

 

Well it went gold selling 525,000 copies.

 

Yeah, that's the problem with EP: on one hand you've got albums like "king creole", "elvis is back!" or "from elvis in memphis" and, on the other hand, "elvis sings for children and grownups too"... His legacy is, as a result, an absolute mess.

 

At that time, any Elvis release sold, and it had an alternate "Big Boots". Typical RCA packaging, rebuy a lot of the same material to get one or two " new" tracks

 

I remember seeing those around when I was a kid

 

House Of Sand
Written By :
Bernie Baum, Bill Giant & Florence Kaye

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, July 26-27 and August 2-4, 1965 : August 3, 1965. take 1

This track isn't that bad either. So far I certainly prefer this album to Frankie and Johnny. It sounds better, the songs are a little more lively .... Perhaps the songs aren't going to win any awards for best writing ever, but they are pretty decent, and for the most part less cringe worthy than a few prior.

 

Stop Where You Are
Written By :
Bernie Baum, Bill Giant & Florence Kaye

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, July 26-27 and August 2-4, 1965 : August 3, 1965. splaice take 3 and end insert 6 & 9.

Again this song is very listenable. I like the little staccato sections and I think on the whole the song works pretty well.
Stop where you are Elvis - YouTube

 

I still have no idea what's going on with the lyrics to House Of Sand (are they trying to be profound? Is there a joke that I'm missing? It seems to be rather dark for a soundtrack song...), but either way, the music is bouncy and charming. Stop Where You Are is surprisingly sweet, for being the standard "Elvis tries to seduce the reluctant girl" song (at least that's what I assume it's about; I haven't been able to force myself to watch the movie past the first few minutes).

Elvis sings both songs very nicely. This is definitely one of my favourite soundtrack albums.

 

There's hardly any redeeming quality to songs like "Queenie Wahine's Papaya", " Datin'" or "A Dog's Life". That a 30 year old man who 10 years earlier was taking the music world by storm was reduced to such garbage is really embarrassing

 

It's disappointing, but certainly not the end of the world. Even at this stage Elvis had been recording for more than ten years, and there are few artists that stick around ten years and don't have some junk roll through. So I think embarrassing may be an overstatement of the facts. Yea the stuff isn't great, but they are movie soundtracks and need to be judged as such.
When we look at Elvis Is Back, Something For Everybody, Pot Luck, How Great Thou Art, From Elvis In Memphis, Back To Memphis (the actual real Elvis albums, not soundtracks) there is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.
If the album that became the Elvis Sings Memphis Tennessee album had come out in 64 or 65 the catalog would look a lot different from an historical perspective.
Sure Elvis made the mistake of thinking he would get a fair go in the movie world, but why wouldn't he try .... The fact that they just used him as a pretty face to sell the movies they did, isn't exactly his fault and he was locked in a contract and threatened with all sorts of nonsense in order to keep him there.
Elvis' easy going nature and lack of self confidence really did him no favours in terms of business dealings, and Tom Parker had certainly run passed his use by date, but I think one needs to be a little more thoughtful about the whole picture than focusing on three or four unfortunately necessary albums to cut through to where he actually needed to be.

 

I like both A House Of Sand and Stop Where You Are. There are really only 3 or 4 songs on this album I do not like.