Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

We talked about this before, but Elvis obviously had a tremendous musical mind that he was best able to express through singing and arranging/conducting, but he was better than people think at guitar, bass, and piano.

 

The point here, though, is that if you were a truck driver, remarkably poor, and then got a recording contract and became an overnight success with your first release...you would remember all the more what your first record was!

 

Yeah lead or rhythm guitar can be played on acoustic or electric. It is not the instrument but the function/style of the playing.

 

Sure mate, I wasn't knocking what you said, just kind of correcting it slightly.
The thing is he was front and centre, and the best thing that could have happened was swapping out those guitars, because it made Elvis the focus, totally.

Those little riffs aren't lead, but they do show a little more than a rudimentary ability to play, and that is the mind blower for everyone that had him labelled as a guitar hanger.

 

It depends mate, different people react to different scenarios differently ... I for one am not going to make that call... like I say, the first record, isn't so much a lie to me (my happiness for clarification), I think, as I stated previously, it is a romanticised version of events.
Who knows, perhaps management told him it would be a better story, and then after years of telling that story, it altered his perception .. that is something that happens quite often with people. I have done it, and been embarrassed when finding out I misremembered something ... or perhaps the other person did, and they told me in a convincing enough manner to change my mind.
There are a lot of moving parts, and generally if you ask twenty people a memory they all shared, their recall would be different to each other.
Another thing is, perhaps he was embarrassed that he set out to get noticed ... and remarkably did!

My main point is that this is about the man's music, and I don't really see any value whatsoever in pondering whether he told lies on stage deliberately or for effect, or even knowingly. I am not God and I have no idea, and at the end of the day it doesn't effect the way I listen to his music, so to me it is irrelevant

 

But it wasn't years of telling the story, for he told the right story thirteen months earlier at Burbank. That first record was probably the most important moment in his life - you don't forget whether it was a soppy ballad or an important moment in rock n roll. Even if it was a romanticised version of events (which it probably was), the mis-telling of the tale would be deliberate, and that is the key thing when we approach the Tiger Man story. It means we can't believe a word he says; he is completely unreliable, and that renders the Tiger Man story he tells completely worthless.

 

That's fair, but what You dont seem to understand is - I don't care... i don't see the relevance to what I'm doing here.

If you want to start a thread "Elvis - the world's biggest liar" go for it.

 

I generally agree with your point here, but I think you are going a bit too far to suggest he is completely unreliable. My take is that we should view his onstage pronouncements skeptically, particularly if they contradict available evidence. But I wouldn't go so far as to say we can't believe a word he says. I think when he altered the truth about his history onstage it was probably always for the same specific purpose: to simplify a story so it wouldn't become bogged down in minute details that would make it boring and/or more difficult for the audience to follow.

The interesting thing about the whole Tiger Man issue is that it's not even clear if he's talking about Tiger Man at all when he makes those references to his "second record." It could well be Mystery Train.

 

The point was relating to the discussion of Tiger Man that started yesterday, where it was very relevant.

 

You guys crack me up. Next thing you’ll tell me is that Elvis was ‘mistaken in his mind’ when on stage at Madison Square Garden he said he performed Hound Dog on the Ed Sullivan show in 1912. Good ahead, this outta be good.

 

And it isn’t exclusive to Elvis. Pete Townshend has gotten details and dates wrong over the years from the stage, and this is a guy with a very high IQ. I don’t put too much stock in the unreliability of stage banter with respect to an artist’s motives.

As far as the “Tiger Man” debate is concerned, I would not be surprised if at the very least, a demo acetate existed at one time. I also don’t think Elvis’ remarks can be dismissed outright as being unreliable. The waters with this subject are murky.

Regardless, I love the Burbank ‘68 rendition.

 

Fine, i get that.
I figure everybody knows Tiger Man wasn't Elvis second recording..... at Sun or RCA... do we need to get bogged down in that?
I realise you have a fair amount of knowledge about Elvis' recordings, and I am looking forward to you sharing it. This Tiger Man initial recording attempt date seems pretty redundant to me.
I personally would like to let it go and move on to what counts to me, and that is the songs and albums

 

I hope my earlier quote from conductor Billy Goldenberg was not misconstrued by anybody. When you take a quote from a book out of context from the rest of the story, you can get the wrong impression. Billy was extremely fond of Elvis and I do not think in anyway he was trying to say that Elvis was actually a mean or bad person. I think he just saw a man that was more complicated and interesting than the Hollywood movies showed his personality to be. In another post, I previously spoke how Billy discovered Elvis alone at the piano playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and how he felt that Elvis was reluctant to show that side of himself to his friends and associates. In other words, Billy thought that Elvis had multiple sides to his personality and one of them was a tougher side that liked football and karate, and he also felt Elvis was a very sexually driven performer. Somehow, Elvis's more interesting sides of his personality got buried in Hollywood, and he was reduced to playing the same boring character over and over again. Billy's goal was to bring out some of the grittier and sexual sides of Elvis's music that had been covered up in the later movies to a great degree. I think he succeeded with his rather unique and edgy arrangements that he brought to the Trouble/Guitar Man medley and also If I Can Dream, just to name two of his stellar orchestral arrangements for Elvis's 68 Special.

 

Since we're coming to the end of what is essentially Scotty Moore's involvement with Elvis, might I suggest some side reading and offer up a link to Scotty's 3rd-person-styled autobiography.....it's a solid read from Elvis and beyond....

https://www.amazon.com/Thats-Alright-Elvis-Guitarist-Manager/dp/0028645995

 

Great idea!

I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but check out Scotty Moore The Official Website...

Scotty Moore

 

Heartbreak Hotel/Hound Dog/All Shook Up
This was in some ways an important part of the show, it introduced everyone to the fact that Elvis going to rearrange his original hits, and somewhat prepared them for the coming live shows.
It has been well documented that Elvis was nervous about this whole scenario and kind of suggest he wanted to pull the pin on it. Thankfully he didn't, but I say that to say this .... he kind of over sings these. It isn't that they are bad, but it seems to me his nerves about performing again and the rearrangements made him feel the need to over sing.....
Now having said all that, he does over sing them magnificently.

 

Can't Help Falling In Love
Here again we see a nervous Elvis concerned about hitting his cue to the music. He does a good job of the song, and once he has found the start he cruises on through easily, but I know that stress of hitting it in front of the crowd. The way the show was set up with several different short shows put together as one big show must have been really hard to control the anxiety.
With any show, there are a certain amount of nerves, but once you have started and move into your rhythm, it is a cruise. With this show, he had to do that several times and to some degree it shows, mostly in this somewhat unnatural stand up show.

 

Jailhouse Rock
Here we see Elvis has started to relax and feels his way into the song much more easily. This arrangement is a little more like the original too, which will always make things a little easier.

 

To me, it’s a shame that Elvis felt the need to sing Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog, All Shook Up, etc. from this point forward in his career. His heart was clearly in the new material he was performing, from If I Can Dream in the special, to the upcoming Memphis sessions, to the contemporary songs such as Polk Salad Annie and Bridge Over Troubled Water that he added to his live show. The 50s hits very quickly became a chore that he tossed off as quickly as possible in order to get back to the new material he was emotionally invested in. I get why he felt he had to perform his early signature hits, but I wish he had cut the cord and focused exclusively on new material.

 

Oh, man. The way he raises his arm on the last line, that caught my attention the first time I saw it many years ago. Literally had the audience in the palm of his hand

 

Right after that (awesome) performance, there is about a minute or so of long applauses and you can clearly see that the man is floored (he is like speechless for a moment) just like if he did not expect the people to still love him after so many crapy hollywood stuff. For some reason, that round of applauses and cheers always get me. "My boy, my boy!..."

 

The Comeback version of Can't Help Falling In Love is my favorite version of the song. Elvis delivers a commanding vocal as part of tasteful, yet somewhat grandiose arrangement. After 1968, the song would be tossed-off in pedestrian fashion as a obligatory concert send-off.

 

Agreed.

Magical, Mystifying and Memorable!

 

I have to agree. I love a lot of those soundboards, but Love Me and Can't Help Falling In Love needed to be dropped. The only time he sounds interested in them is when he is making fun of them.

 

I can see why Elvis considered not doing this segment - how awkward it must have been to sing alone while standing up / dancing / posing on that little stage, right in front of a small audience (who are literally sitting down at the edge of the stage), and the band somewhere off in the distance. Not that I can sing a single note, but even if I could I'd feel like I'm under a microscope in that setting.