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. RSteven

    RSteven Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookings, Oregon
    All of this shirtless talk got me thinking about a story my father use to tell about Clark Gable and the tremendous effect he had on the undershirt industry when he took his shirt off in a scene and he was not wearing an undershirt. According to my father, that was pretty much the end of the sweatshirt industry for awhile as no man wanted to wear one after that scene was shown, if Mr. Gable chose not to have one under his dress shirt. Clark Gable pretty much singlehandedly killed off the whole undershirt industry.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2019
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  2. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ
    The idea of me wearing an undershirt (T-shirt) gives me the willies. Never have, never will. Such a nerdy, dorky thing in my mind.
     
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  3. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    It was weird to me when I got over here and everyone was wearing t-shirts and singlets under their shirts ... I'm not sure if anyone did that in oz, I know i didn't
     
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  4. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    I think it's an awful song - another one of those where they seem to have forgotten to write a melody. There's clearly an attempt at tapping into the Beatles sound with "my baby's gone - gone - gone - gone" followed by the half-hearted scream.
     
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  5. DirkM

    DirkM Forum Resident

    Location:
    MA, USA
    I've Got To Find My Baby has a pretty terrible intro, and in many ways, it reminds me of Wheels On My Heels (lacklustre sax part, not much in the way of a tune), but the "my baby's gone" part redeems it for me. I wish they'd built the song around that hook instead.

    You'll Be Gone is yet another one of those little gems in the Elvis catalogue. There are so many great things about it; Elvis' operatic vocal, the tension of the arrangement, the dramatic melody (I'm glad they weren't allowed to use Begin The Beguine!), and that ending...it's somewhat less showy than It's Now Or Never, Surrender, etc., but it's no less satisfying. Elvis really did do the "Latin" thing quite well in the 60s!
     
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  6. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    It comes across as another failed attempt to rock (like Startin' Tonight). Rather than being intense or energetic, it just seems strident. Kind of a letdown from Bob Johnston, who usually did better.
     
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  7. RSteven

    RSteven Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookings, Oregon
    I love You'll Be Gone almost as much as I dislike I've Got to Find My Baby. The former song shows off all the great techniques that Dirk mentions in his post. It really is a gem and Elvis was indeed pretty amazing with this "latin" sound. Shane hits it on the head for me with I've Got To Find My Baby. Even an uptempo song needs a melody, and I think Elvis's voice is struggling here to find one.
     
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  8. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ
    I've Got To Find My Baby would be better suited to E.G. Robinson, yeah, see?
     
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  9. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    It's important to remember that (as Shane noted) this story comes from Priscilla herself, and she is not a consistently reliable source. She's someone who has demonstrated an agenda to embellish her own importance, and to create the (arguably false) impression that she was the One True Love in Elvis' life. Or as Marty Lacker once put it "She wants people to think she's his widow, not his ex-wife."

    Priscilla was not a musical expert. My guess is that Elvis was expecting some unconditional praise when he played her the song ("Oh Elvis, it's just great"). Elvis was insecure and liked to be flattered. The fact that she was critical instead of flattering probably did upset him, and he probably had something of a "who is she to criticize my work?" attitude towards her. But I doubt his feelings went much beyond immediate irritation at someone he perceived as unqualified presuming to critique his work. Her conclusion that "he never tried to write a song again" because his confidence had been shattered by her comment seems a big reach to me. I don't think he valued her opinion THAT highly, and I think if he'd wanted to try to write songs he would have. Elvis did not write songs because he had neither the aptitude nor the inclination to try. He wasn't a songwriter, and he was self-aware enough to realize that and be okay with it.
     
  10. When In Rome

    When In Rome It's far from being all over...

    Location:
    UK
    You can sing 'You'll Be Gone' exactly to the tune of its inspiration 'Begin the Beguine'...
     
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  11. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    As to how much (if any) Elvis contributed to "You'll Be Gone"... my recollection is that Guralnick suggested Elvis helped with the lyrics, but I do not recall if he cited any source for this claim. Anyway, this interview with Red West pretty clearly says Elvis' only contribution was the inspiration, the initial suggestion to do a rewrite of "Begin the Beguine." That being the case, it sounds like it was another instance of Elvis being given credit despite not really songwriting:

    "The story behind You'll Be Gone was Elvis recorded It's Now Or Never and he wanted to take another old standard that was a great song and change the lyrics, which they got away with on It's Now Or Never (O Sole Mio). He said 'I like the song Begin The Beguine. I like the melody but I'd like to put new lyrics on it.' So I sat down and wrote new lyrics for it. Then when it came time to record it, Cole Porter said, 'Hell no!' (laughs) He said 'What are you talking about? You want to change the lyrics to my song?'

    So I changed the melody. The song only had two chords, C and F. Charlie Hodge is the one that recommended that I do it with two chords and give it a kind of beat. I gave him credit as a third writer on the song just for that. Elvis is credited on the song; it was just more his suggestion to do it. Elvis never really tried to write songs. He just didn't have the patience. He hated to sit down and do anything like that."
     
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  12. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I went back and looked at Guralnick's discussion of "You'll Be Gone." He claims that Red and Elvis worked on the song "for over a year... writing and rewriting it in informal jams." I then looked at what he cites for sources. The only source he cites is a letter from January 1961 from Diskin to Bienstock, asking the latter to look into the rights situation for "Begin the Beguine." This establishes only that Elvis had an interest in that song for a year, but it does not tell us when writing of "You'll Be Gone" commenced. And it certainly tells us nothing about the writing process. Since no other sources are cited, Guralnick appears to have made the rest up himself. I know he did not directly interview Red West, and his comments about the two of them working on the song "in informal jams" contradict the way Red says it was written as well as what he says Elvis contributed. I think Guralnick was one of those guys who was invested in making Elvis into a frustrated potential songwriter, ginning up the notion that he could have written songs if he'd just tried. It's disappointing to find he stooped to distorting the truth to advance that notion.
     
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  13. Dave112

    Dave112 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Carolina
    I'm learning so much of the "back story" behind a lot of this music by reading this thread! Y'all really know your Elvisology. I know it's probably heresy to say this but I think the King Of Rock & Roll was into crooning and gospel much more than straight up rock. I can believe that he didn't care for Pricilla's preference for the rock tunes. I have heard the tale of John Lennon asking Elvis when he was going to make some more rock and roll records in 1965. Even when Elvis went to be discovered at Sun records, he didn't play a R&B tune. He crooned "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". I have wondered what would have happened in music history if Elvis hadn't started singing "That's All Right Mama" while trying to get a break from Sam Phillips. Luckily he hit on a sound that he was a natural at right at the time when very few were doing it. I'm not putting Elvis down. He was so versatile in music that he could have hit with other styles but the man was a natural born rock singer and helped set THE STANDARD of what a rock singer could be. I just wonder if he felt boxed in by rock and roll and grudgingly only did as much as he felt was good for his career.
     
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  14. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    [​IMG][​IMG]


    Crying In The Chapel *
    I Believe In The Man In The Sky

    (US) RCA 447-0643
    Released: April 6, 1965
    * Recorded: RCA Studio B, Nashville, October 31, 1960

    This single was released as part of the Gold Standard Series, even though it had not been released before.
     
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  15. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    [​IMG][​IMG]



    On April 6, 1965 RCA continued re-issuing EP's, that had previously been released, as part of their "Gold Standard EP Series".

    (US) RCA EPA 5157 Elvis Sails
     
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  16. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

  17. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Easy Question/It Feels So Right

    [​IMG][​IMG]

    Written By :
    Otis Blackwell & Winfield Scott

    Recorded :
    RCA's Studio B, Nashville, March 18-20, 1962 : March 18, 1962. take 5

    Another strange single release. Two great songs, both on albums from 3-5 years ago. Both great songs and I still feel single releases back when the album came out would have helped those albums get the sales that they should have, and the money men wouldn't have given us the permanent soundtrack perpetuation.

    Anyhow I know everyone has told me they never released singles from the standard studio albums, but, and I know hindsight is 20/20, it seems that was a big managerial error to me.
     
  18. SKATTERBRANE

    SKATTERBRANE Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson, AZ
    Crying In The Chapel was another recording Elvis was not satisfied with. I have no idea why. It became his biggest hit since Return To Sender. It was recorded during the His Hand In Mine sessions. It sold over 1,000,000

    Tickle Me soundtrack was exclusively comprised of songs Elvis had already recorded and taken off albums such as Elvis Is Back, Something For Everybody and Pot Luck. But I Feel That I've Know You Forever was re-recorded for the movie. Don't know why. This made Tickle Me the BEST soundtrack from the 60s bar none.

    Such An Easy Question and It Feels So Right are both top notch songs. And the single sold 500,000.
     
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  19. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Great songs, just such a strange, disjointed series of releases ... to me at least.
    I still can't fathom releasing singles from albums years after the album was released.
     
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  20. NumberEight

    NumberEight Came too late and stayed too long

    Surprisingly, Red’s misremembering. The chords aren’t C and F (a fourth apart), but F and E (a semitone apart). Quite different.
     
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  21. shanebrown

    shanebrown Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    This is the problem I have with Guralnick. He writes a compelling, readable narrative, but much of it is unsourced - and much of what IS sourced is from books that are generally unreliable. I have huge issues with stories from a let's-make-some-money-from-my -association-with-Elvis book being assumed to be the "truth" of what happened behind closed doors.
     
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  22. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    and this is another reason I haven't read any of these books. I am too far removed from the times, places and people to have any idea if any of it is in any way true. So I just enjoy the music :)
     
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  23. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    At the time of their release, Guralnick’s Elvis biographies were a great leap forward in Elvis scholarship, and I think Guralnick did conduct as many interviews as he could with living sources, but his Elvis biographies and his Sam Phillips biography do strike me as sometimes taking an omniscient perspective that, as noted above, perhaps involves Guralnick’s intuitions and guesses about events as much as it does provable facts. I also agree with czeskleba that Guralnick has biases, towards roots music over what he perceives as lightweight pop music and towards songwriting over performing or interpreting songs, that distort his narrative.
     

  24. Even in the crazy world of Elvis Presley vinyl releases, this one is a puzzle - who was clamoring for a seven-year-old interview EP to be re-released? Believe it or not, it was issued as late as 1969 with the orange RCA label.
     
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  25. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    As @SKATTERBRANE noted, these two songs were featured in the film Tickle Me, which recycled old songs instead of featuring new ones. So this single was released to tie in with the new film.
     
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