Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

I've never seen this album cover before. It looks almost as cool as his first album cover.

 

Cotton Candy Land
Written By :
Ruth Batchelor & Bob Roberts

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, August 30 and September 22, 1962: September 22, 1962. take 5

This sounds as if it is a lullaby especially for the movie and is more successful than the previous. This is a very short song and pretty decent. Certainly not something you would associate with the Sun sides, but certainly not one of the throwaway tracks that appear on some of the soundtracks.

 

World Of Our Own
Written By :
Bernie Baum, Bill Giant & Florence Kaye

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, August 30 and September 22, 1962: September 22, 1962. take 1

This track has a sound like a cocktail lounge song and is fairly unremarkable. With a light and easy gait it is a fairly disposable love song, but still has a great arrangement and vocal.

 

^^ This is where to bottom begins to fall out.

In my opinion, not a terrible soundtrack. Personally, Roustabout is the strongest effort during the 1963-1967 era but this one still manages to be okay at best.

“Broken Heart For Sale” is good but nothing to write home about. Awfully short soundtrack but that’s what you expect here. 22 minutes of throwaway fluff and miss. Worst is still to come..

 

I've always liked the Roustabout soundtrack, One of the few Elvis movies I remember seeing. I'm not sure the bottom drops out, so to speak. I do think there is a gradual tapering down.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but to me, all it would have taken was one inspired actual recording session for a real album and the soundtracks wouldn't have seemed so bad.
In a lot of ways the very nature of soundtrack albums isn't really to create world changing musical statements ...
My knowledge of soundtrack history isn't that great, but i sit wondering at the moment if the whole Elvis soundtrack album thing was in some way responsible for the more modern idea of soundtrack albums, moving away from incidental music, to pop hits?

 

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but for me the bottom starts to fall out with Kissin' Cousins... that's where we transition from the pretty good early 60s soundtracks to the pretty bad mid-60s ones.

 

The story behind this picture? In September 1962, Elvis needed to get up to Seattle to film "It Happened at the World's Fair." Rather than flying, he decided to take a road trip, and so he and the Memphis Mafia got into a couple of cars and drove nonstop from LA up to Washington. When they were about 150 miles away from Seattle, they decided to take a break and booked a couple rooms at a motel in the small town of Kalama, WA. This picture shows Elvis outside one of his rooms. The motel still is there, and is something of a tourist attraction. Having lived here for years, I've driven by it dozens of times when going from Seattle to Portland.

 

Hi, everyone. I am a fan of 60's Elvis and found this discussion thread by surfing online and then joined the forum. Are you now at IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR, chronologically? As a child of 10-12 or so, I used to see double-and-triple bills of older (and recent....some were only 6 months old when they found themselves on these bills) Elvis films at the neighborhood movie theater for a quarter or fifty cents, and the ones I did not see there I saw on TV as I was growing up, so when I first discovered old used copies of these soundtracks in the 70's, I could remember the setting of the songs in the movies, and most of the time, the songs that were "weaker" when just heard on an album, DID work in the context of the film....at least I thought so. That's also true of Bing Crosby. When I am listening to Crosby records of the 30s, 40s, or 50s, it's usually clear within 10 seconds whether it's a soundtrack song or a non-soundtrack record....it's usually that way with Elvis too, except for the movies which have a quality song of potential hit material worked into them as a single. I just view the soundtrack recordings as a "side" of Elvis, a performer with many sides. They are what they are. I look forward to future discussions on this topic as you work through the 60's.

 

There's a half-dozen or so songs in Elvis movies in which Elvis sings to or with children, and I'd say this one is easily the best of the lot. It's not cutesy or sappy like say "Big Boots" or "Five Sleepy Heads." It's actually pretty well-done for what it is, and I really like the guitar work. It's apparently by Wrecking Crew regular Billy Strange, who would later go on to cowrite several Elvis tracks with Mac Davis a few years later.

 

The movie version was filmed atop the Space Needle. There's still a few sights from this movie still standing...

 

"It Happened At The World's Fair" is the definition of "short but sweet". Had it been any longer it would have well overstayed its welcome, but as it stands it's a fun album if mostly made up of cotton candy. "Cotton Candy Land" and "How Would You Like To Be" are the album's low points, while Don Robertson's 2 contributions are the high points. The Jordinaires participated in less than half of the songs, instead being replaced by famed bass, voice actor and Disney legend Thurl Ravenscroft and his group The Mello Men, which provides a unique vocal blend in comparison to the Jordinaires. Don Robertson also plays piano on the sessions. Not as bad as what's to come, but despite my general enjoyment of this album I can never escape the feeling that things are starting to truly get, well, bland. This is an album of upmost professionalism, but everyone is clearly bored with the material. Even later albums such as Girl Happy have more energy than this one, while here it feels like everyone is on the verge of fal...

 

MGM tended to me more conservative than Paramount, at least in the early 60s. Paramount bowed out after Easy Come Easy Go. MGM stayed with Elvis longer.

 

Welcome aboard! We could use a few more Elvis fans around here.

 

Welcome, and you raise an excellent point! Within the context of the films the soundtracks hold up a lot better, especially as they were bolstered by the choreography and additional overdubs added for the film. The records essentially showcased the tracks "as-is" which often did them a disservice. These aren't great artistic statements, but they are often a lot of fun. However as fans I think we tend to be more critical of the soundtrack output because we know that Elvis could have also been doing higher quality work with better songs, and the poor managerial decision to focus exclusively on soundtracks for an extended period of time without balancing it out for more serious material was but one of many disastrous decisions made throughout Elvis' career.

 

Welcome to the Forum and the thread.
Thanks for joining us. We are most of the way through the world's fair, but feel free to roam back.

 

Back in the old VHS days, there was a budget-bin video tape put out by GOODTIMES VIDEO which had
all of the trailers to Elvis' movies--from LOVE ME TENDER to ELVIS ON TOUR--back to back. I used to watch that over and over.
You get a good sampling of the movie songs along with highlights from each film, as the job of the trailer was to get you excited enough about
a film to want to pay to see it. I used to joke with people that you could see the highlights of ALL the films without having to watch any particular
one all the way through! I will dig out my copy of the IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR album tonight....

 

How Would You Like To Be
Written By :
Ben Raleigh & Mark Barkan

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, August 30 and September 22, 1962: September 22, 1962. take 6

I guess this track is a bit cutesy, but it is one of those I really like. It's sweet and sentimental and has a somewhat unusual arrangement, and that is always something I generally enjoy.
We start with a music box melody, with a snare drum playing a steady march style beat, and a guitar playing lines underneath that. The arrangement gives the vocal plenty of space to exist, and helps it to stand out. It has a nice twist in the tail with a short burst of rock and roll, that's very effective.
For me this is a great track and, like I say, although this is probably a little cutesy and certainly not rock and roll, i reckon it's great.

 

Happy Ending
Written By :
Ben Weisman & Sid Wayne

Recorded :
Radio Recorders, Hollywood, August 30 and September 22, 1962: August 30, 1962. take 8


This song moves back into uptempo mode. It has a similar kind of sound to Night Rider, but manages to be its own song. A nice little rock and roll song that bounces along at a quick step, it gives the album a little kick in the tail and makes this soundtrack album have somewhat of a concept album feel.
I personally really enjoy this soundtrack album and would be on the cusp of being a recommended album.

 

I give IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR relatively high marks among the soundtrack albums. It has that mellow, relaxed, in-the-groove feel of the early 60's sessions, which I really like and has help up for me over the decades. Having The Mello Men and not the Jordanaires on some tracks....and having Robertson on piano also gives a fresh sound. And being done at Radio Recorders, and not on the soundstage of a studio (as some later soundtracks were), has Elvis in a place he was comfortable. Obviously, COTTON CANDY LAND and HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE are songs that fit into the film's narrative, but they are (to me) playful and pleasant. The little rocking sequence in HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE near the end puts a smile on my face. I can remember first hearing ONE BROKEN HEART FOR SALE decades ago for the first time, and thinking how it was a clone of RETURN TO SENDER, but having artists do a retread of a big hit as a "follow-up" was not uncommon back then. I've heard HAPPY ENDING on a Camden LP, outside of its original context, and it holds up well there too. I like that electric piano sound that was used here and there on the early-to-md 60's sessions. I must concur with the earlier comments that the album is short but sweet and does not overstay its welcome. There's no real clunker on it for me either...and that would not be true for some later soundtracks. I guess the fact that I've played and enjoyed this album for maybe 35+ years is a testimony to how much I enjoy it.

Also, as much as I thrill to the Sun Sessions or find myself moved by his late-period live performances of HURT, for me, the 1960-1964 Elvis period is the one I enjoy most, his voice, the mellow but hip feel, etc. When that collection THE LOST ALBUM came out decades ago, it really focused on the period I enjoy most, the post-Army period.

 

And the next two albums were the death knell for any hope that For The Asking would get its contemporaneous release as originally planned.

 

Yes, exactly. The Colonel had Elvis go down the road that provided the largest short-term cash grab. I'm old enough to remember as a child the "formula" of the soundtrack album appearing in the stores a week or so before the opening of a new film and the promotional "buzz" that would accompany the album/film. The film would be somewhat satisfying to the fans (my older sisters, for instance), and then the formula would be repeated again in four months or whatever.

 

THE LOST ALBUM/FOR THE ASKING's eventual release in 1991 really did a lot in the public mind, I think, to rehabilitate Elvis's image as an artist. Things have been on the upswing since then in terms of Elvis's reputation. I have not seen THE SEARCHER--I hope that presented a serious and thoughtful version of Elvis as a creative person and artist.

 

I hope to watch that either tonight or this weekend
I'll let you know

 

My wife and I went to that theatrical screening of the "extended" 1968 special earlier this year, and that was excellent. Ten years prior, we'd also been to see that theatrical screening of the 1968 performance footage, and we took our then-teenaged daughters who both loved it. I try to support any theatrical showing of Elvis items,
hoping that that will inspire more of them.

 

I have the dvd set at home, but I was going to go to the screening in Little Rock, for the same reason you state, and I was very pleased that it was sold out ... So much for people not liking Elvis anymore