Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

If it has to be June and it has to be 19X8. I would have to say 1958.

 

I just go with what it says it is lol

 

Thanks ClausH! Is there anything remarkable about these compared to other CDs?

 

No, the current remasters are better, imo but the Pair discs I have heard have a nice natural sound. In terms of content, the material is available elsewhere.

 

I'm not sure if it is '68. In June '68, Elvis was doing the comeback special. In this pic, he has no long sideburns. I'm not too worried about that but I hope Elvis pointed out to management that the door assist cylinder is leaking oil. I'd hate to get that on my nice threads.

 

Except for (as noted) the Speedway/Clambake disc which has some alternate mixes of Speedway material.

Prior to the 2007 Anesini remasters, the Pair CDs were the best-sounding versions of (most of) the material they contained, and were valued for that reason.

 

I think it looks like the spring of 1960 (it reminds me the GI Blues sessions but I could be wrong), more or less, but by no mean 1968.

 

My misunderstanding on this one I reckon .... this is where it came from.



No, not that King...I'm referring to Wayne King. In this June 1968 photo, Wayne is shown playing at the Carnation Plaza Gardens.

 

He's Your Uncle Not Your Dad
Written By :
Ben Weisman & Sid Wayne

Recorded :
MGM Studios, Hollywood, June 20-21, 1967: June 21, 1967. take 7

I just don't really get this song. It is melodically fine, and as a show tune it works well.... Perhaps because I am from overseas the lyrics seem pretty stupid... I haven't seen the movie, but find it hard to fathom how this weird song would have much to do with a movie that's presumably about car racing .... anyway ....

 

Let Yourself Go
Written By :
Joy Byers

Recorded :
MGM Studios, Hollywood, June 20-21, 1967: June 21, 1967. splice takes 5 and 6

I have always liked this track and it also works well in the bordello scene in the 68 special. We have a nice groove and a very late sixties sound. The instrumentation seems more well balanced on this one, than the first couple of tracks. Elvis seems to be into it and we have a winner.

 

The silly title and bizarre topic notwithstanding, I've always enjoyed He's Your Uncle, Not Your Dad. Honestly, I was expecting something a lot worse based off of the title. It's a production number that works better than it has any right to.

 

The lyrics tie in with Uncle Sam, and the tax man. Which ties in to a plot point in the movie. In that context it works, but IMO it's a pretty bad song. And more Ray Walker sand-paper vocals... ughhh.

 

When I first started getting interested in Elvis I dug through the records we had at home, which were either purchased by my parents or my (much) older siblings. We had two Elvis 45's. One was "A Little Less Conversation" and the other was "Let Yourself Go".

Needless to say, I really liked what I heard from both of these singles, and I still consider both songs among my favorites by Elvis. I especially like the Comeback version of "Let Yourself Go" where Elvis sings it with such awesome power like he's a man possessed!

 

I bought both those singles too, and loved them, both sides of each.

 

I commented on this track earlier, but I like it so much I thought I'd put a plug in for it again And I still wish that 'bending' guitar note was louder in the mix.

 

It's such a shame so many of Elvis' recordings aren't on modern multitracks. I would love some remixes that were attuned to post 73 sounding mixes

 

You bring up an interesting question - how many tracks are these later 1960's songs recorded on? Yes, Speedway was done on the MGM sound stage, but were the primary instruments (guitar, bass, drums, etc.) given their own tracks? Surely Elvis' vocal was. Was the session done on a 4-track, maybe with some bounce-downs, was it recorded on 8-track?

 

4-track. Roughly as follows:

Track 1: Elvis (panned center)
Track 2: Jordinaires (panned center right on original stereo mix, right on remix)
Track 3: Drum and Tambourine (panned right)
Track 4: Guitars, Bass, etc (panned left)

Can't tell if piano is on tracks 2 or 3.

 

Thank you! Just to play devil's advocate, you could do the same with an 8-track - not sure if MGM was set up with one in 1967? Most likely 4-track but mentioning it just in case.

 

And yet his best sounding recordings were on two track and 3 track.

 

It is a completely different mindset of recording, mainly.
2 and 3 track is all about getting a good live mix and then recording.
In the early days of stereo it seems like they weren't sure what to do and tried all the oddball unbalanced mixes. They wanted separation, but it is like they weren't sure what to do with it. So you end up with multitracks as described by Davros, with elements in unlikely spaces, panned for the sake of panning it seems.

 

Clearly Elvis or one of the guys in the band remembered the (at the time unreleased) VLV outtake Night Life, because this track closely copies the arrangement they gave that song, even down to the distinctive drum pattern. This is the standout from the film, a fine track that points toward greater enthusiasm from Elvis. It's also (IIRC) our farewell to Bob "Joy Byers" Johnston. Don't know why he stopped pitching songs at this point (maybe he got too busy, as this was around the time he became Johnny Cash's producer in addition to Dylan). But he was probably the standout songwriter of the very worst period in Elvis' career, FWIW.

 

Yep... For those unaware, the film is about Elvis owing a bunch of back taxes (because his business manager screwed him over...hmm, gotta love the subtext there). Nancy plays the sexy government employee tasked with collecting what he owes. It is odd they didn't use Bill Bixby's vocal overdubs for the record as well as the film.

 

It's one of those songs that has little or no life outside of the film, but which works pretty well within it - and quite unusual given that it's a production number in an Elvis film, and there aren't that many of them. I wrote a blog post about the song and how it fits into the Elvis film world, which might be of interest:

Mel Torme used to tell the old joke “What do you call a banjo at the bottom of the sea? A good start”. There is also the semi-joke “When is a musical not a musical? When it’s an Elvis musical.” Arguably, there is much truth in both jokes. Banjos aside, Presley musicals were for the most part not musicals at all in the traditional sense, and were rarely marketed as such. Often, Elvis was the only singer in the cast. There were in most films no duets, no chorus numbers, no ensembles, no dance routines. The only musical element was Elvis himself, singing a number of songs that were somehow shoehorned into a light romantic comedy. Very few Elvis films had production numbers. There are some exceptions, most notably “Jailhouse Rock”, “Didja Ever” in G I Blues, “What’d I Say” and C’mon Everybody” in Viva Las Vegas, and the title number in Frankie and Johnny. Presley’s strangest production number came at the tail end of his film career and was “He’s Your Uncle, Not Your Dad” in Speedway.

Other than Frankie and Johnny, this is the only other fully-fledged production number in the traditional Hollywood MGM musical style in a mid-60s Elvis movie (and arguably even before that – Jailhouse Rock is hardly a traditional Freed-unit style of number, for example). There are nods to the past in the clip below where these businessmen suddenly turn into chorus girls and do a dance routine, complete with high kicks and the like. It is a nod/homage/parody of the MGM musicals of the past and, while half-hearted, is at least a more imaginative staging than Elvis walking along a beach singing to a girl. On record, the song sucks, on film it kind of works. In fact the worst thing about the routine in the film is not the song (which works in context, but should never have been released on record), but Elvis himself who looks thoroughly disgruntled and less enthusiastic than the rest of the cast.

In the 1950s, Elvis was portraying James Dean-like characters in his films (particularly in Jailhouse Rock and King Creole) – generally characters with a tough exterior and exuding sex appeal. G I Blues was something of a change to that, in that Elvis wasn’t giving the girl the run around, she was giving him the run around instead. But the film was clearly playing a kind of joke based on Elvis’s previous film roles and his obvious appeal to the opposite sex (in other words, this would never happen in real life).

However, as the 1960s wore on, Elvis was portrayed as being controlled by the women of the films. They didn’t fall for him, he fell for them. If G I Blues, was playing a joke on Elvis’s real life appeal to women, in later films the joke was basically on Elvis himself. The tough, masculine image was being eroded away. This wasn’t just portrayed within the films by his relationship with women. If we take a film such as Fun In Acapulco, Elvis plays a character with a past – a fear of heights following a circus accident. This doesn’t show him as the tough guy (despite the tough talk in places) any more than the fact that he allows himself to be managed by a small boy – something which scarily mirrors the way Elvis was a puppet during this period for Parker. This is also (I think) the last film in which Presley appears shirtless – another sign that his sex appeal is not only being played down but consciously eroded in the films (he is even well-covered in the bedroom scene in Live A Little, Love A Little, and not even once is allowed to attract the girls in the pool in Tickle Me). In Harum Scarum, Elvis is a Valentino-type figure – and Valentino had been accused in the press in the year before his death of being responsible for the American masculinity crisis and had been likened to a “pink powder puff”. For me, “He’s Your Uncle” is the climax of the erosion of Presley’s masculine image that had taken place throughout the 1960s; Elvis literally becomes a chorus girl.

While “He’s Your Uncle” sees a group of businessmen turn into a group of chorus girls, a remarkably similar scenario can be found in a scene in the Woody Allen film Everyone Says I Love You in which a group of male jewellers start singing and dancing “My Baby Just Cares For Me”.



Could Allen have been inspired by a song in an obscure Elvis musical? Who knows!

 

Apologies for momentarily derailing the proceedings, but I too bought the aforementioned set due to my still unfulfilled desire to hear all those 66-67 non-soundtrack songs on vinyl under one roof. Essentially I want the 90's "Tomorrow is a Long Time" CD comp on vinyl. This German set has some of them, but not all, and not all clustered together.... which bugs me.

I considered the FTD "Sings Guitar Man" vinyl set but that was a lot of outtakes and I'm generally after the masters. I hemmed and hawed too long and now it's gone and I'd have to pay a pretty penny for it.

Then I remembered the old "60's Essential Masters" set had been released on vinyl somewhere. That would have all the songs I want, collected nicely in one place.... but it's mighty pricey. And the sound probably isn't anything special right?

RIGHT??!?!?