Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Oct 7, 2018.

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  1. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

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    A baby seal walks into a club..........."arff".
     
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  2. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I've never heard anything about either of these claims. As to the Beatles one, it seems extremely unlikely. None of the Beatles have (to my knowledge) talked about such a thing in any interview. And it seems unlikely they would go out of their way to solicit an appearance in someone else's TV show, even Elvis. At most, perhaps it was a situation where someone at NBC said "hey, you should try to get the Beatles on the show" and Binder said "no" and the Beatles themselves were not ever directly involved. I'm curious what your source is for either of these rumors.
     
  3. Dave112

    Dave112 Forum Resident

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    South Carolina
    I will have to see if I can find these stories I have read a long time ago. I figured the first one was bogus just because The Beatles weren't exactly on wonderful terms with each other at this point. I must say that a sextet featuring Elvis, John, Paul, George, Ringo,and Yoko with Charlie Hodge laughing with abandon in the background at the remarks and catty banter of the group, would have created a cultural vortex so dense, that the universe would have folded in on itself with Burbank being the center of the anomaly. Lol. The Colonel Sanders story seems more plausible because he was a music fan (not sure if he was an Elvis fan). I seem to find these stories on the interwebs at 2:30 in the morning and they stick in my mind because the stories are so incredible. So far the only one that has even remotely been put in the probably column is the one about Elvis being considered for a role in "Midnight Cowboy".
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2019
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  4. DirkM

    DirkM Forum Resident

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    Personally, performance means everything to me. I'll take a great performance of a lousy song over a lousy performance of a great song (whatever a "great song" entails) any day. Honestly, I'm not convinced that Elvis fully redeems the overwrought lyrics of In The Ghetto, but I'll still take it over, say, the passionless Dylan/Nyro covers that saturated the 60s pop charts.

    I agree that Kentucky Rain is a good song on paper...but if you listen to Eddie Rabbitt's version, you hear a decent song performed competently, and nothing more. That's what makes music so fascinating; it's a performing art more than anything else, and Elvis was a master of the performing arts.
     
  5. PacificOceanBlue

    PacificOceanBlue Senior Member

    Location:
    The Southwest
    The scoop is that neither The Beatles nor Colonel Sanders were ever associated with the NBC Singer Presents special.
     
  6. Dave112

    Dave112 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Carolina
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  7. RSteven

    RSteven Forum Resident

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    Brookings, Oregon
    I just want to echo again what @Spencer R and @DirkM both implied with their fine comments. Mac Davis and Eddie Rabbit wrote two very fine songs with In The Ghetto and Kentucky Rain, but both their respective versions of their hit songs fail to show the passion, emotion and beauty that Elvis demonstrated in his stellar versions. In other words, as the great songwriter Doc Pomus said previously about Elvis singing his songs, Elvis was able to bring something to the song that the songwriters themselves had not seen in the lyrics or melody, when they first wrote or recorded the songs themselves.
     
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  8. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

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    I agree. I keep coming back to this point, but you are 100% right that Elvis was frequently able to see something in a lyric or melody that even its songwriters didn’t see. There’s the anecdote that Lieber and Stoller wrote Love Me as a parody of sad hillbilly country songs ... but Elvis heard something in it that made him sing it straight, as an utterly sincere ballad. And it worked that way. I know the number one knock on Elvis is that he wasn’t a songwriter, but he sort of was, when he took songs and uncovered depths in them that even their authors didn’t see. Even if you don’t call that songwriting, there remains something uncanny about this shy, inarticulate boy who somehow at the same time had this gift of cutting to the heart of a lyric and a melody like very few singers before or since.
     
  9. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    SINGER PRESENTS ELVIS SINGING FLAMING STAR AND OTHERS (LP)
    [​IMG]

    Singer Presents Elvis Singing Flaming Star and Others is a compilation album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released by RCA Records in October, 1968. It spent five months available only at select retail stores featuring products by the Singer Sewing Machine Company as a promotional tie-in with Presley's upcoming Christmas television special on the NBC network, which Singer had sponsored.[2] It was reissued for normal retail channels as Elvis Sings Flaming Star in March 1969, becoming the first Elvis Presley budget album on the RCA Camden label, catalogue CAS 2304.[3] The 1969 release peaked at number 96 on the Billboard 200 album chart.[4] It was certified Gold on July 15, 1999, and Platinum on January 6, 2004, by the Recording Industry Association of America.[5]

    Due to the chart success of this album upon reissue in 1969, RCA Records elected to release more Presley titles on the Camden label through 1972. These budget LPs were shorter than the standard running time, featuring some unused soundtrack recordings and previously released items.

    All tracks were compiled from sessions for Presley film soundtracks, with the exception of "Tiger Man" from the Singer Christmas Special.[6] The cover of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" was a warm-up at a session for film songs to Stay Away, Joe.[7] Excepting "Flaming Star," the title song from Presley's 1960 movie of the same title which had been released on the Elvis by Request: Flaming Star and 3 Other Great Songs extended play single in February 1961, all tracks were previously unreleased.

    The "Texas" medley and "All I Needed Was the Rain" appeared in Viva Las Vegas (1964) and Stay Away, Joe (1967), respectively, while "Wonderful World" appeared over the opening credits to Live A Little, Love A Little (1968). "Flaming Star" had been one of only two songs performed in that film. The live performance of "Tiger Man" was held off the initial broadcast of the NBC television special, but replaced the segment with "Blue Christmas" for the repeat broadcast of the special in the summer of 1969. This track has the distinction of being the first live recording by Elvis ever commercially released. The remaining songs were not actually used in their respective films.

    Side one
    1. "Flaming Star" (from the film Flaming Star) Sid Wayne and Sherman Edwards October 7, 1960 2:25
    2. "Wonderful World" (from the film Live A Little, Love A Little) Guy Fletcher and Doug Flett March 7, 1968 2:14
    3. "Night Life" (from the film Viva Las Vegas) Bernie Baum, Bill Giant, Florence Kaye July 9, 1963 1:53
    4. "All I Needed Was the Rain" (from the film Stay Away, Joe) Sid Wayne and Ben Weisman October 1, 1967 1:49
    5. "Too Much Monkey Business" Chuck Berry January 15, 1968 2:25
    Side two
    1. "Yellow Rose of Texas" / "Eyes of Texas" (from the film Viva Las Vegas) Traditional / Fred Wise and Randy Starr July 10, 1963 2:58
    2. "She's a Machine" (from the film Easy Come, Easy Go) Fred Wise and Ben Weisman September 29, 1966 1:39
    3. "Do the Vega" (from the film Viva Las Vegas) Bernie Baum, Bill Giant, Florence Kaye July 10, 1963 2:26
    4. "Tiger Man" (from Singer NBC-TV Special) Lewis Burns, Al Lewis, Joe Hill Louis June 27, 1968 2:41
    -----------------------------------------------------------

    Well this appears to be the origin of the Camden range of albums ... If the information above is correct then we also may have the reason that the special did so well in light of the apparent backlash against Elvis' movie career .... but it is all so weird .... released as a promotional tool for sewing machines .... Wives hearing about an upcoming Elvis special, getting their husbands on board to watch it and ....Idk, it all seems rather bizarre to me. The track list is a bizarre amalgamation of songs from throughout the sixties and Tiger Man from the special.
    We have been through some of the songs already, but we'll go through the others over the next few days and then hit the 68 comeback special.

    If you have more information about how all this came about and went down, please clue us in. To me the whole concept is rather unusual.

    Cheers,
    Mark
     
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  10. EPA4368

    EPA4368 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA
    The RCA Camden CAS-2304 album didn't officially come out till late March in '69 and don't recall, see any copies earlier in record stores.

    Back in the day when Singer Sewing Machines had brick and mortar stores, is only where you could get the Singer Presents Elvis Singing Flaming Star and Others album.

    Some Singer Stores didn't sell just the album unless you bought something.


    [​IMG]
     
  11. EPA4368

    EPA4368 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA
    I don't recall hearing about any lines at the Singer Stores, and hearing anything over the airwaves about the Singer Presents Elvis Singing Flaming Star and Others album, until after the Special aired.
     
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  12. DirkM

    DirkM Forum Resident

    Location:
    MA, USA
    I'm a big fan of many Camdens, but Flaming Star has never done much for me. There aren't many songs on it that I truly love, but I think my real issue is with the sequencing. There's just something off about the flow of the album, making everything sound dull and one-note. Even gems like Night Life and Tiger Man aren't as exciting in this context as they are on the reconstructed VLV album and as part of the sit-down shows, respectively. It's certainly my least-played Camden, and possibly my least-played Elvis album overall.
     
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  13. Is anyone else as surprised as I am that the Flaming Star album was certified Platinum in 2004? I can't believe it even achieved Gold status in 1999 as it only got to #96 in the charts (according to the article above). And how the heck did it sell 500,000 copies between 1999 to 2004 to move from Gold to Platinum? IIRC, I don't think it was even in print those 5 years.
     
  14. EPA4368

    EPA4368 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA
    "Tiger Man" is what brought interest and sales to both, the Singer Presents Elvis Singing Flaming Star and Others album, and RCA's CAS-2304 album.

    Not to get too far ahead, but it wasn't until months after the Special aired, many of us understood why some DJs and their guests were so critical with how RCA packaged both the TV Special, and Elvis Singing Flaming Star and Others albums.
     
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  16. EPA4368

    EPA4368 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA
    Agreed. Might be a good idea for the next topic/thread; Elvis' RIAA Gold/Platinum Awards and Worldwide Sales.
     
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  17. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
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    The charts don't tell the whole story. Back then the charts were based on dollar amount sales. And a budget album had a harder time on the charts because even if they sold a lot of units, the dollar amount would be less than a regularly priced album.

    It may have reached gold status in 1999 with 999,999 sales and it only needed to sell one more to reach platinum in 2004. An album that sells 500K copies and 999,999 copies are both simply Gold. There are no intermediate increments. An album has to cross a threshold to achieve the next award. Elvis (and others) has many albums that sold more than 400K but less than 500K and therefore are not Gold. He has also sold plenty at 900K that are not platinum.
     
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  18. Thanks, those are very good points. But the album wasn't even in print between 1999-2004, so how did it sell anything during those years?

    On a different point, I just noticed that the album is only 20:30 in length. I know it was a budget release so that explains it in part, but still.
     
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  19. EPA4368

    EPA4368 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA
    Based on dollars for the Gold/Platinum Awards, then how do we know how many copies were pressed for the Singer Stores and later the RCA's CAS-2304 album, for Record Stores when originally released in '69?

    I doubt for Singer it was a million. I know many Singer Stores thought after the Special aired, having the album was more of a nuisance.
     
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  20. While this doesn't give an answer, the Singer LP was only pressed at one of RCA's pressing plants (Rockaway, NJ), while the RCA version was pressed at all three (Rockaway, Indianapolis and Hollywood).
     
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  21. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ
    The Flaming Star 33RPM LPC-128 extended play was never featured in any of the inner sleeve catalogs of his LPs (Where I got all my information back in the day to accomplish a complete Elvis record collection). I think the only place it was featured was the back cover of the 1st version of Something For Everybody. (I had the RE cover first and did not get the 1st pressing of that LP until after the Flaming Star LP came out). It was not even listed in the Girls Girls Girls insert that included his catalog nor the photo album that came with Golden Records Vol 3. It was the first Elvis record to go out of print, and it was seemingly almost immediately. The Flaming Star EP (33 Double) was issued in 1961 and the 1962 Girls Girls Girls photo insert with catalog and calendar made no mention.

    My point being, I could never figure out why the song Flaming Star was never featured on a record. (It was, I just did not know it) When I saw the TV Guide promo that mentioned the Flaming Star LP available at Singer stores, I talked my mom into driving from Deer Park WI to Maplewood MN (the nearest Singer store approx. 40 miles) just to buy the album, and I also got the bonus photo. (Side note: that bonus photo and the bonus photo for Gold Records Vol 4 are NOT included in the 60 CD box!!). I had heard the song when watching the movie on TV. I knew I liked the song, plus I would have wanted the LP anyway to continue my quest to own all of Elvis' songs and certainly all of his LPs regardless.

    So, I heard Tiger Man before I saw the special and it was not even featured on the special the first time around. It was substituted for Blue Christmas when it was rerun the following summer. Anyway, I really liked the Flaming Star LP. My favorites were All I Needed Was The Rain and Too Much Monkey Business. Live A Little Love A Little had not been on TV yet so I heard Wonderful World for the first time. And I did recognize the Texas Medley from Viva Las Vegas but had no idea Night Life and Do The Vega were outtakes (who did?). Neither was I aware that She's A Machine was an outtake from Easy Come Easy Go.
     
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  22. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ
    Presently, an American RIAA-certified Gold record is a single or album that has sold 500,000 units (records, tapes or compact discs). The award was launched in 1958;[3] originally, the requirement for a Gold single was one million units sold and a Gold album represented $1 million in sales (at wholesale value, around a third of the list price).[4] In 1975, the additional requirement of 500,000 units sold was added for Gold albums.[4] Reflecting growth in record sales, the Platinum award was added in 1976 for albums selling one million units, and singles selling two million units.[4][5] The Multi-Platinum award was introduced in 1984, signifying multiple Platinum levels of albums and singles.[6] In 1989, the sales thresholds for singles were reduced to 500,000 for Gold and 1,000,000 for Platinum, reflecting a decrease in sales of singles.[7] In 1992, RIAA began counting each disc in a multi-disc set as one unit toward certification. Reflecting additional growth in music sales, the Diamond award was instituted in 1999 for albums or singles selling ten million units.[3] Because of these changes in criteria, the sales level associated with a particular award depends on when the award was made.
     
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  23. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ
    The sales for the Flaming Star LP and its subsequent awards groups the Singer LP the Camden LP and finally the CD (which came out in 2006) together. To get the award a record company has to submit for it. Accounting is done and then RIAA verifies the sales and gives the award. I do not know, but MAYBE it was this process that revealed it in fact did sell at least 1MIL, but it took a reevaluation sometime between 1999 and 2004 to verify this.

    I would guess the Singer version was sold out in fairly short order. And there was no repressing of that version.
     
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  24. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    That’s a very interesting story that you were that dedicated to seek out this album. But the decision to slap together a budget album of subpar outtakes to capitalize on the publicity of the TV special remains baffling.
     
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  25. Or, what I like to refer to as 'Hollywood accounting' took place ;)
     
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