Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

Nice info cheers. To be honest I rarely look at the writers of Elvis songs in much detail. More of a passing "oh ok" king of thing

 

Eddy Arnold was credited with writing only a couple of those songs, but no doubt it was primarily his versions of those songs that inspired Elvis to record them. I think another great cover of Eddy's that was first written and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in 1966 that got Elvis's attention was It's Over in 1968. Elvis's Aloha From Hawaii version follows Mr. Arnold's arrangement very closely with the beautiful string and horn layerings.

 

That is a really interesting fact as well. It is also one of my favorite parts of the whole recording. I mean that took some guts and creative thinking to leave that false start in and not edit it out in some way. Elvis seemed way a head of his time on this whole album I would say, when just a few years before, he seemed so far behind what was happening in music production.

 

I went and looked at Guralnick's end notes, and not surprisingly he cites no source for his claims about Moman's mindset regarding that song. Since Moman did not agree to be interviewed for the book, we know it's either based on secondhand hearsay or (more likely) he simply made it up. Given Marty Lacker's assertion that Guralnick held grudges against people who wouldn't give him interviews and subtly tried to make them look bad at times, the whole thing is unseemly. I really wish Guralnick had been able to refrain from his need to mindread and pass his speculation off as fact.

 

I have some issues with Guralnick as well, but I also find his work to be well researched and scholarly for the most part. And getting back to his thoughts on Chips Moman, Guralnick really does gives him credit for the success of the American Sound recordings I would have to say. Here is a quote from the book at the start of the session, whereby he seems to acknowledge Moman's steady hand in the studio.

They Began with "Long Black Limousine," working hard at first just to get the sound right, with Chips interacting easily with the musicians and making plain want he wanted to hear. In his communication with Elvis, he seems matter-of-fact, patient, almost subdued given his reputation---but there is no question from the outset as to who is in charge.

 

Okay fellas, this is a great matchup for second best song overall on From Elvis In Memphis after Any Day Now. On one side we have one of the most heartfelt and spontaneous recordings that Elvis would ever make in a recording studio in I'll Hold You In My Heart, with Elvis himself on the piano. A truly great vocal where Elvis uses so many of his greatest vocal skills to completely reinterpret this gorgeous Eddy Arnold original.
On the other hand, you have in Long Black Limousine one of the most beautifully produced songs that ever came out of an Elvis studio session and on top of it, Elvis sings it like his life is in the balance. The former song has Elvis in his most naked and vulnerable state, but the latter song is one of the most exquisitely produced records of his entire recording career. I would put it right up there with Suspicious Minds, Kentucky Rain or Bridge Over Troubled Water for atmospheric production values alone. It really is too close to call, but if you made me pick one over the other, based on Elvis's performance and the production vales brought to bear by Chips Moman, Long Black Limousine might win out by a gnat's eyelash. If you ask me the same question tomorrow, I might pick I'll Hold You In My Heart as the second best song on the album, so how is that for waffling on my answer?

 

Indeed, Guralnick also conveniently overlooks the fact that it was Chips who sequenced the From Elvis In Memphis LP, which included this very song. The only substitution was Power of My Love over Mama Liked The Roses because of publishing considerations. Chips was on record as having said he wanted the best of the sessions represented on the LP, so clearly he thought more highly of the track than Guralnick acknowledged.

 

I think I must have learned somewhere at some point that Moman sequenced the album, but I'd totally forgotten it (thanks, 52-year-old brain). So that explains why it is actually sequenced coherently and flows well, unlike almost every other Elvis record ever. It's easily the best-compiled and best-sequenced Elvis album, though as noted there's very little competition for that title.

Not to belabor the point, but Guralnick's speculative comments about Moman's attitude toward I'll Hold You In My Heart are just plain weird, the more I think about it. "Amateurish" is an odd thing to accuse the song of being... it's spontaneous and raw, but to me "amateurish" connotes a degree of incompetence and there certainly is none of that on display in anyone's performance. And if the reason Moman didn't do overdubs was because "he had no interest in contributing to such an amateurish endeavor" does that mean Felton also disliked the recording, since he chose not to overdub it either? This just illustrates the danger a fan can get into when they think they are such an expert that they can know what a person was thinking, absent evidence, based solely on their expertise. Ego and hubris.

 

To throw a further monkey wrench into the debate, I'll add that my third favorite song on the record is After Loving You. Long Black Limousine I think I'd rank fourth. Which is not to say I don't consider it a great track.

 

Hard for me to pick a favourite ... on any given day, it could be any given song.
I wouldn't even begin to try and line them out, personally.

 

There's one song on the record I'm not so fond of (which I'll reveal when we get to it) but other than that it's consistent from top to bottom. Picking a favorite it just differentiating small degrees of difference.

 

Oh gosh, I think After Loving You encapsulates everything great about Elvis's skill as a vocalist and the genre busting nature of this record. I consider After Loving You to be the modern equivalent of its time to One Night (With You) or Trying to Get To You. One of the greatest things Elvis ever put to tape. And yeah, I have to save something to say for when we actually get to it for review. Gee whiz, I am just crazy about this album.

 

Oh, i understand that, i wasn't criticizing... I'm not very good at the whole, this is my favourite thing with virtually anybody, and favourite is a constant state of flux for me

 

FEIM is very hard to rank the songs. It is one of the few Elvis albums that I judge as a whole. It is truly an album rather than a slipshod collection of songs.

 

1969 top 5

5- You'll think of me
4- I'll hold you in my arms
3- Suspicious minds
2- Long black limousine
1- Stranger in my own home town

 

1969 top 5 and 3 FEIM Album Side 2...

5- Any Day Now
4- Power Of My Love
3- Gentle On My Mind
2- Stranger In My Own Home Town
1- Suspicious Minds

 

Long Black Limousine
Written By :
Bobby George & Vern Stovall

Recorded :
American Studios, Memphis, January 13-16 and 20-23, 1969: January 13, 1969. take 9

From one magnificent song to another ... One of the reasons this album is so fine.
Here Elvis takes a country song and turns it into a Soul/R&B classic. Again the arrangement is sublime and again Elvis digs deep into himself to put his entire being into the vocal. It manifests in a slightly different way, due to the style of song, but he is still hanging it out on the line. On this album, it is almost as though Elvis believes that if he doesn't empty himself out on this album, it will all be over and he will be back driving a truck.
This is one of those story songs that speaks of someone leaving their hometown with the aim of showing everyone that they will make it, and in sitting with those types of songs, the person returns in the fancy car, but it is a hearse.
We start off with a slow keyboard backed piece, and Elvis sings the opening like he is giving the eulogy at the funeral. We then move into a beat and the song builds and builds as the story unfolds. When we get towards the end we get a series of modulations up in key that really drive home the emotive impact of the song, and it is so effective, you can almost feel it inside.
This song is certainly a classic and another reason I find it impossible to pick a favourite on this amazing album. This song is certainly a contender though.

 

There aren't many songs out there that hit three separate climaxes, each more powerful and intense than the last, but Long Black Limousine pulls it off. "The party...the party, and the fatal crash that night"..."Through tear-filled eyes I watch as you pass by"..."Well, I'll never...I'll never love another." Wow. By all rights this could easily have come across as hokey, what with the melodramatic and somewhat awkward lyrics, but as usual, Elvis makes it sound utterly sincere and believable.

If I were to resequence the two Memphis albums, I'd end one of them with Kentucky Rain and end the other with Long Black Limousine. It could have made for an amazing closer; instead, it gets a bit lost in the shuffle as track 4, imo.

 

Awesome idea to use LBL as the closer of the album!

That song was a magnificent way to start those legendary sessions. Again, there is a strong Gospel hint in the intro (with the use of bells) before turning into a Rhythm & Blues number. Forget the C&W original, this is Soulful Elvis at his best singing as if he was to lose it all the very next day.

Just amazing.

 

Agreed. This morning I put on Merle Haggard’s version of Long Black Limousine, and, while I think Merle is a genius and one of the all-time greats, Elvis leaves the country version of the song behind by doing what he did at Sun: taking a country song and mixing it with R&B and gospel to create a final result that can only be classified as “Elvis music.” We’ve already discussed how Elvis could sing the phone book and make that interesting, but here he’s given a lyric and a melody/musical arrangement worthy of his talents, and when he puts his all into a good song like this, the result is transcendent.

Once again, despite everything else interesting going on in this almost Phil Spector-esque arrangement, I often find myself tuning everything else out and just listening to Tommy Cogbill’s amazing bass line.

 

For me, it's that little drum roll @ 55 seconds and then getting in to that awesome groove. What a great track all around.

 

One of my favourites. I never get tired of listening to it.

The arrangement was probably partly inspired by O.C. Smith's version, but Elvis' is superior, imo.

 

Those are the three lines that Elvis sings with a passion and ferocity that set his version apart from all the other very fine versions of the song.

I just could not say it any better than you say it here.

I find myself doing the same thing periodically on this song as well as a few others on this iconic album. Tommy Cogbill was probably the most amazing and virtuoso bass player that I have ever heard on an Elvis album, and that is absolutely huge praise, given the amount of stupendous bass players that have played on an Elvis record over the years.

 

Elvis's performance of Long Black Limousine pretty much gives me chills every time I listen to it. The opening church bell played in time with the cymbal drum is just haunting and then the whole arrangement builds slowly with the fantastic rhythm section lead by Bobby Wood's terrific piano playing and Reggie Young's fantastic lead electric guitar. The song keeps growing as producer Chips Moman keeps building on the arrangement with some subtle strings and that fantastic trumpet solo that he had so carefully made room for during the original session. Elvis's voice seems to build with power and range, seemingly in order to match the strength of the instrumentation or is it the other way around, but what the listener ultimately gets is a masterpiece and physical and emotional release by the end of the song.

Legendary Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn chose Long Black Limousine as one of Elvis's top 20 greatest records ever IIRC, shortly after Elvis died in an article for the newspaper. It would easily make my top ten for my list on most days as well. It is a riveting piece of music, and if it does not move you in some way, you must have sawdust running in your veins instead of blood.

 

Elvis' version of Long Black Limousine is magnificent. The vocal work is superb and the song's arrangement/production is pure perfection. This is one of those tracks that highlights the heights Elvis could reach with a great producer and quality material.