Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

Totally agree, as stated

 

I do seem to have a soft spot for these tearjerkers, although as @czeskleba has suggested, sometimes they do go overboard even for my tastes. Now I hate to be insensitive in anyway, but I personally find Red Sovine's huge novelty hit Teddy Bear to be completely over the top and hysterical. I actually had trouble keeping from breaking out an hysterical laughter every time I heard it on the radio. It was just too pathetic and unrealistic for me to take it seriously as a song. On the other hand, I think George Jones He Stopped Loving Her Today is brilliant and extremely well written.

 

I did state "good filler". ....not up to (IMO), a few other tracks including "Without love" and "Stranger In My Own Home Town", "You'll Think Of Me"...with that great Reggie Young electric sitar.

 

I totally agree with that. It lacks the cloying, maudlin sentimentality that most tear-jerking death songs employ. I think one of the key factors is that it's in third person (unlike most death songs which are first person) creating a detachment that makes it more dignified. When you write about loss in first person, there's more of a tendency to be melodramatic.

 

Exactly. And Chips used the Glen Spreen and or Mike Leech arrangements as the guide. Glen Spreen is on record about arranging the song(s) beforehand. Chips nor any other Elvis producer was an arranger. Unless one counts head arrangements by all involved on the recording floor with the producer or Elvis leading the way. An unsung heroe of the American band was bassist Tommy Cogbill. An American Sound producer in his own right, and leader of the band.

 

Wasn't Billy Strange an arranger when he produced a few Elvis sessions?

 

Agree. Good observation.

 

I'm not crazy about Elvis's version of "From a Jack to a King" and prefer almost every other rendering of the song, to be honest. As Shawn noted earlier, Elvis's vocals are almost self-parodic. In other words, too much mannerism. Jorgensen aptly hears a note of "mockery" to Elvis's version. It was very rare for Elvis to condescend to a song, but here he partially succumbs to that temptation.

 

Yes he was for MGM's "Live A Little, Love A Little" soundtrack sessions. And he was set to be arranger (not producer), for an aborted RCA session I cannot recall year.

 

The Billy Strange session was set for August 22, 1967, and mysteriously cancelled at the last minute. The studio and musicians were booked, and songs were submitted and ready to go. It was going to be Billy's session; he wasn't being brought in simply to arrange. Had the session taken place and delivered successful results, Felton Jarvis may never have been assigned the subsequent sessions he oversaw from September 1967 - January 1968.

 

Not according to Strange himself in an interview TMM, IIRC.. He mentioned Felton. It was for arranging only. A few on the list IIRC, were subsequently recorded in Memphis.

Edit later. Just found this.

http://www.keithflynn.com/recording-sessions/670822.html

Songs to be recorded.

We Call On Him
If This Love Is Wrong
Here Comes Tomorrow
Ramblin' Rose
From A Jack To A King
After Loving You
Guitar Man
And I Tell The Sea
Brown Eyed Handsome Man
I'll Never Find Another You
Tonight I Won't Be There
Baby, What You Want Me To Do

 

I would like to see the transcript of that interview. I don’t doubt that Jarvis would have been present, but I am skeptical that Jarvis would have taken the lead role of producer at that session — rather I suspect it may have been a similar arrangement that was seen later at American, with Strange not taking as much of a commanding and dominating role as Moman did.

 

IIRC, it was Strange who assembled the musicians and material (Elvis submitting some ideas to Strange). He clearly was taking a lead role for the aborted August 1967 session. He wasn’t being brought in simply to arrange.

 

The reason for the cancellation isn't really mysterious, is it? As Keith Flynn says, it was because Richard Davis accidentally killed someone while driving one of Elvis' cars, and the Colonel didn't want Elvis to get dragged into any bad publicity around that so he ordered him to leave town immediately and go back to Memphis. Or is there reason to believe there was some other reason they cancelled it?

 

As I’ve mentioned before in this thread, Tommy Cogbill was a genius musician who elevated these sessions with Elvis, and elevated every track he played on.

 

Yes, that was allegedly an official explanation, but the accident actually occurred in 1963, so it is unclear what happened in 1967.

 

From A Jack To A King is great. At some point in my Elvis journey, I became obsessed with the compilation CD Elvis: Great Country Songs, which I played to death, and my two favorite songs on that record are From A Jack To A King and the alternate take of Green Green Grass of Home. The band get into a great groove on this one, and there is a hint of a Latin feel at points - one more example of Elvis’s smashing of genre lines.

 

Wow, I did not know this. It is quite a mystery then. I've just gone down the rabbit hole doing a quick investigation of this (with the help of an old FECC thread). So it appears that:

1. On March 13 1963, Richard Davis accidentally struck and killed a man named Harvey Henslin while driving one of Elvis' cars (Elvis was not in the car). Henslin was employed as a gardener and was "walking from the driveway" of an employer's home in Bel Air when he was struck by the car. Elvis was sued and wound up paying a settlement. Here is a contemporary news report of the lawsuit, from May 1963. Henslin was born in Minnesota and identified himself as white, per the 1940 census.
2. Engineer Jim Malloy reports (in his book) the following about the cancelled August 1967 session:
We all flew out to Hollywood because Elvis wanted to record. He didn't have enough time to come to Nashville so we went to Hollywood. As soon as we arrived, we found out the sessions had been canceled. One of Elvis' men had accidentally run over a Japanese gardener who was working on the shrubs in Elvis' driveway. The gardener stepped out from between two shrubs into the path of the car. He died instantly. It was one of Elvis' cars, and the Colonel thought they might subpoena Elvis. The Colonel put Elvis on a private jet, and sent him to Las Vegas. This all happened in less than forty-eight hours. The Musician's Union does not allow you to cancel a session in less than forty-eight hours. RCA had to pay the musicians, but there were no sessions and, of course there were no tapes.

What are we to make of this? Either they for some reason used the 1963 incident as a pretext to cancel the session (which seems really bizarre), or there were two separate instances in which gardeners were killed by Elvis' cars (which seems extremely implausible). Yet the details of the 1963 incident and Malloy's story do not match. Besides the ethnicity of the victim changing, the 1963 victim was not working on Elvis' property when he was killed. The most likely scenario does seem to be that the session was cancelled for some other reason, but why Malloy and the others involved were fed such a story is hard to figure. I sure wish Marty Lacker was still around. I'm surprised no one ever asked him about this.

 

Elvis was already with RCA's Felton Jarvis. RCA wasn't going to get an outsider. Anyway, the paperwork is clear, to me. Strange was an arranger/songwriter more than anything else, and himself stated that he was not set to produce those sessions etc..words to that effect.

 

Remember in the 1980's when a rock band was sued for recording a song with suicidal themes in the lyrics because it was claimed that a fan had committed suicide after hearing it? Not to make light of the serious issue of depression but I remember thinking that if they win that lawsuit, country music will cease to exist. Hank Snow would be penniless after that album.

 

Oh if only Strange usurped Failtone Jarvis!! Jarvis is a hack.

 

Jarvis was a breath of fresh air back in 1966 but that's it.
1967 and the following years should have brought some new and competent producer(s).

 

Yea political agendas tend to win over common sense .... sad state of affairs

 

It is somewhat remarkable to me that someone thought having one producer, forever would be a good thing

 

The Fair's Moving On
Written By :
Doug Flett & Guy Fletcher

Recorded :
American Studios, Memphis, February 17-22, 1969 : February 21, 1969. take 1

I can almost, already read the criticisms of this track lol ... I guess there is a a style that doesn't rub well with some folks, and that's fair.
To me this is another great song. We start with a very smooth somewhat country honk piano. Elvis comes in with a gentle verse and this swells into a big chorus that captures all the emotion one would want to.
I really enjoy Elvis' singing on here, it's one of those songs that has me stretching and reaching..... it gets a physical reaction, and that's about as good as it gets. I know some folks are not going to like the overdubs, but they work well for me. I personally like the sketch and the painting. Could it have been done better? Probably, but I enjoy what I have, so I don't get perturbed about what could be.