Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

If I were to use one word to describe the mood of side one, it would be forlorn.

 

Sorry to back up a bit. I still have the Spinout/Double Trouble CD in the car and I listened to Spinout (the song) twice on the way home tonight.
I'd take an aggressive Spinout in the '68 voice, sure. But I will say that I still like the song quite well as is. I listened to it closer than before and I understand the lyric better. It's the same idea as Stop, Look and Listen. The man is motoring on in his single life and the woman is trying to use her curves to cause to him spinout and marry her. "really score" Anyway, it's fun and I like it!

Back to your regularly scheduled gospel programming.

 

For godsakes man, NEVER LET HER STEER!

 

If anyone ever told me that I was going to enjoy the Spinout album a lot other than for the bonus songs before we started this thread, I would have laughed in their face. Well, I am not laughing now as I found both the Spinout and Harum Scarum soundtrack albums to have a surprising number of songs and performances that I really liked a lot. In fact, almost all of the soundtrack albums have been some what of a revelation to me as I had not listened to any of the lesser known ones in any in depth fashion until this thread started.

 

There is zero doubt that Elvis’s mid-60s soundtracks are a low point in his career between the twin peaks of 1954-1962 and 1968-1970. However, I do think that over the decades, there has been a herd mentality and piling on of the notion that Elvis’s entire 60s career was a vast wasteland redeemed only by the ‘68 Comeback. That’s a point of view peddled even by those otherwise in Elvis’s corner, such as John Lennon (“Elvis died when he joined the Army”), Peter Guralnick (who devoted one volume of his biography to the “rise” of Elvis in the 50s, and the second to the “unmaking” of Elvis from 1960 onwards), and even the recent HBO The Searcher documentary, which deals with the 60s primarily by showing a brief montage of Elvis mannequins to represent his bondage in Hollywood before the ‘68 Comeback.

As you well know, soundtracks such as Blue Hawaii and G.I. Blues aren’t bad at all, Fun In Acapulco and Viva Las Vegas have their high points, and even routinely trashed soundtracks such as Harum Scarum feature better songs than is generally acknowledged by critics who’ve mostly never even listened to them in full. This thread made me give Spinout a viewing and a listen for the first time in years, and I found some things to like about it.

The “Elvis sucked in the 60s” narrative is too firmly entrenched to ever be overturned in the bigger world of rock fandom, largely populated by those who, even if they acknowledge Elvis’s 50s work, believe rock music began in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. But it’s not completely true.

 

Catching up a bit here...

Earlier in this thread I said that Return To Sender/Where Do You Come From? might be my favourite Elvis single. I completely forgot about Indescribably Blue/Fools Fall In Love, which I'm absolutely in awe of, and far outclasses that earlier single in my very humble estimation. The A-side just guts me on every listen, from the innocent guitar picking to the apocalyptic climax, with Elvis absolutely selling the melodramatic lyrics. I imagine the song as a companion piece to the equally devastating Something Blue (actually, it's not hard to imagine it being a direct sequel of sorts). If I were to compile a playlist to demonstrate just how convincing and emotive a vocalist Elvis was, there'd be no question of including Indescribably Blue.

In this context, Fools Fall In Love is a cathartic release of an impossibly painful tension. "I used to laugh, but now I'm the same. Take a look at a brand new fool!" The music is jarringly peppy, especially after the sombre A-side. It's almost like the singer's trying to convince himself that this foolish sort of love is something to be celebrated (and maybe it is...who knows?). It makes for a great start to side B of the I Got Lucky Camden, and it makes for the perfect, redemptive B-side to Indescribably Blue. Perhaps this single sounded "dated" at the time, but I first heard it decades after the fact, and it knocked me out then, and I love it just as much now.

How Great Thou Art is my least-favourite of Elvis' four major gospel releases (counting the Peace In The Valley EP here), but that's sort of like saying that That's All Right is my least-favourite of the Sun singles; it's not that I don't love it, just that I love the others even more (a larger part of this is the subpar sound of the HGTA album). I'm nowhere near as spiritual or righteous as I'd like to be, but the best of Elvis' gospel music makes me believe that, someday, I might be able to be better than I am right now. It's some of the most important and meaningful music I've ever heard.

As far as the individual songs go, the studio version of How Great Thou Art is a fine performance, but the live 70s performances invariably bring me to tears. I love them all, from the relatively controlled 1972/1974 performances to the EIC version, where he dodges some of the notes but still nails the emotion (the "how great I think you are" part really gets to me, for various personal reasons). In The Garden is one of those rare Elvis songs that I feel I'm still actively discovering; I respect and enjoy it, and I think that, in time, I may grow to love it. It's a gorgeous song and an equally gorgeous performance. I just need some more time to fully absorb it.

 

You make so many fine points here that I really cannot add anything to it, other than to say it has been a delight to read so many of your very objective and brave posts that often challenge the conventional critical views on Elvis's career. You have been an amazing asset to our greater understanding of Elvis's musical journey, particularly during this much maligned phase of his career. Thanks for adding so much to this fine thread that @mark winstanley generously started for all of us Elvis fanatics. Wow, and we are now getting ready to enter one of the premier periods of Elvis's storied career.

 

Yes indeed... Easy Come, Easy Go, Double Trouble and Clambake. Truly a time of unbridled creativity and passion.



(just yankin' your chain, there).

 

The movies take a drastic turn for the better starting with Live A Little, Love A Little, and the Guitar Man session is just around the corner.

 

Just around the corner, yes. But we haven't even come to the corner yet. We can see it up ahead, but we've still got to step over some garbage and dogsh!t on the sidewalk before we get there.

 

We can step over it while listening to Down In The Alley, Where Could I Go But To The Lord and Fools Fall In Love. I rediscovered the latter one recently and boy do i love this stuff!

 

Somebody Bigger Than You And I
Written By :
Hy Heath, John Lange & Sonny Burke

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, May 25-29, 1966: May 27, 1966. take 16 + endwork on part 6

We have another moderate tempo. reflective song here. We have the piano and the churchy organ with solid backing vocals and Elvis riding on top.
Unlike, it seems, most folks here, I was not churched in anyway, and only came to God when I was about forty ... and that is a story in and of itself that I guess I can't talk about here. So with thirty plus years of rockin' hard behind me, I found it hard to understand the church'es need for all the morose sounding music in church. A feeling of actually knowing the truth, made me want to rejoice, and not cry, and that's what I brought to the table.
I understand these types of songs now, but still lean towards the more uplifting boisterous music.

 

Farther Along
Written By :
Rev W A Fletcher & J R Baxter, arranged by Elvis Presley

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, May 25-29, 1966: May 27, 1966. take 3 + one line from take 2

I can appreciate this song quite a bit. The churchy organ is not whirling away in here, which gives the song a much more enjoyable sound here.
This to me is a particularly beautiful vocal and Elvis digs into his gentle persuasive voice here and carries it off nicely.

 

I have heard a story about my grandmother who was not an Elvis fan at all. She would fuss about her kids ( including my mom) that bought and played Elvis records well into the 1960's. Seems there was a controversy back in the 1950s when Elvis released his first Christmas album. One side had rocking secular Christmas music and the other side had more traditional Christmas music and gospel. Forget that other artists had done it before but it was another gripe on Elvis by mostly older folks including my grandmother. She had a nice country and bluegrass gospel record collection that she enjoyed. I give you this long winded backdrop to talk about HGTA. I think it was my uncle that bought a copy of HGTA when it was released. He brought it to my grandmother's house and said "listen to this". When he had played HHIM a few years earlier, she reacted as if it was a recording of street noise. She didn't like it at all. So he puts the HGTA LP on the console stereo and my grandmother tenses up as if she is going to hear a train horn. To everyone's surprise including my grandmother, she loved this album. She didn't like anything else he ever did but she had my Uncle make her an 8 track tape as soon as he got an 8 track recorder and she would play that tape until it wore out. By that time, she had a cassette player and I bought her a cassette of the album. She played it often.

 

That's beautiful

 

Checkout this website for photos from Elvis' Photo Shoot Sessions...

https://elvicities.com/~epss/



https://elvicities.com/~epss/gallery/double-trouble-1966/

 

Thank you for that photo shoot site - I hadn't come across that before. Bookmarked!

And I appreciate the personal stories you guys are sharing. While it's certainly fun to go over songs and analyze/discuss them in and of themselves, the personal stories help put this in a human context. It's great to read how this music has come in to - and in some ways become part of - our lives.

 

This is somewhat unfair to Gurlanick, whose Careless Love discusses Elvis's 60s recordings in detail. I first learned about the Don Robertson ballads from reading Guralnick's admiring account of them. The book is a pretty reliable guide to the highlights of that period, as I learned when listening to the 60s box set afterward. Despite his book's title, Guralnick consistently gives the music its due.

Maybe, but "Aren't bad at all" is a euphemistic way of saying "mediocre." And an album like Harum Scarum, which has at best two semi-memorable songs, is still worse than mediocre--and a downright embarrassing album to release in the mid-60s, one of the most thoroughly brilliant periods in 2oth century pop music. Elvis's work from the mid-60s is certainly not unmitigated crap, and approaching it with low expectations helps one wade through the mess and find jewels in the dung, but even the better tracks are spaced too far apart and often not great enough to make up for what surrounds them. And if we listen to what Elvis's competitors were doing at that time, his withdrawal from artistic and commercial relevancy becomes even more embarrassing. We see an artist releasing his worst work while his contemporaries are releasing their best, despite that artist being in his prime. Elvis's release of substandard work in the 70s remains far more understandable than the avoidable rut he spent too much of the 60s pacing around in.

 

Jason, my friend, you are such a killjoy! The 68 Comeback Special is less than two years away. And after that we get From Elvis In Memphis. I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I just hope it is not a freight train headed in my direction. Hey in today's music terms, when a major pop artist makes about one decent album every three of four years, this wait was merely a blink of an eye between great albums.

 

I think Mr Tom can take part of the blame for the 60s, there is some good stuff in there, but could have been so much better, at least we got Tomorrow is a Long Time !!

 

In the case of Lutheranism (at least the branch in which I was raised) the intent isn't to be morose, but to be reverent. Too much bombast or too much boisterousness is perceived as disrespectful and undignified. There's also a very conservative component, a resistance to any change or modernity. The organ is a church instrument. So is a piano. Guitars and drums do not belong in church, is the attitude.

As I said upthread, this experience is probably a big part of why I find bombastic church music a poor fit between message and music. There's something that feels undignified about it to me. Paradoxically though, I do enjoy gospel music that is fast, energetic, and rocks. My favorite Elvis gospel is probably side two of this album and the MDQ recordings. Energy and joy feel appropriate, but bombast and melodrama do not.

Today's songs: I'm not a fan of "Somebody Bigger than You and I." It's a fairly dull song and the performance is serviceable but not exceptional. By contrast, "Farther Along" is probably the highlight of the slow side. Delicately sung and moving.

 

Oh I totally understand the mentality that invaded the church, via there own fear.
I explained to them that David wrote and played the instrument of Gath, Goliath's people's instrument, so any talk of wrong type of instrument was of man, not God .... I also explained that piano's and organs are much newer instruments than the guitars instruments. I also explained that we are told to make a joyful noise, not a sad whisper ..... They came around, I studied my topic, and they had no biblical reason to moan

Having said that though, I had to, too often, remind folks in the music team that we were leading the church in singing, not performing and looking for kudos lol

 

Stand By Me
Written By :
Charles Albert Tindley, Traditional, arranged by Elvis Presley

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, May 25-29, 1966: May 26, 1966. take 11

This is a beautiful song. I could see me playing this song. I generally pick the songs because of the lyrics, and this is the kind of encouragement/exhortation we all need.
It actually seems shorter than two and a half minutes, which speaks to how deeply I can enter this song.

 

Without Him
Written By :
Mylon LeFevre

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, May 25-29, 1966: May 27, 1966. take 12

Another nice song, and although when I listened to this as a straight album, I very much enjoyed it, I agree with @czeskleba that this would have been better with a rearranged track order. It's nice to have a big finish, but that is normally achieved with one or two songs, not a whole side.

 

This is my favorite track from SIDE A: intimate and delicate, beautiful singing.
Although I haven't listened to the master take of STAND BY ME since I discovered that even more amazing alternate take on the FTD "So High!"