Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt2 The Sixties

the ooo's and yeah yeah's would have got old very quickly lol

 

I can see that point of view, and agree that the Beatles’ early records are underrated, but two wrongs don’t make a right. The Beatles have more to offer than Sgt. Pepper and psychedelia, and Elvis has more to offer than That’s Alright Mama and rockabilly.

 

It is compared to the 1969 and 1970 concerts that preceded it. And considering all the shows Elvis played in 1971, there is a large possibility that some were worse than his Boston show (which didn't wow Gurlanick either).

And yet Marcus praised Elvis's first Vegas live album, and Elvis's first Vegas shows were praised by a wide range of hip critics--everyone from Ellen Willis to Robert Christgau. So the Vegas bias is a red herring. Critics could recognize when Elvis gave a great performance. They could also recognize that when Elvis aligned his return to live performing with Vegas it wasn't necessarily a great idea.

Personally speaking, I agree that the Sun recordings aren't Elvis's greatest achievement. But I can understand why many feel they are. Elvis's sound might have become more sophisticated later on, but it was never more innocent, free-sounding, and fresh. I certainly don't think enchanted recordings like "That's Alright Mama," "Blue Moon," or "Mystery Train" were capable of being bettered.

Agreed, but imagine how fun Elvis's career would have been if he'd sung more rock, or even returned to rockabilly on occasion, instead of getting stuck in anodyne movie soundtracks for part of the 60s and getting stuck in MOR ballads for much of the 70s.

 

This assessment about Las Vegas being a one-off triumph only is something that is repeated constantly by both fans and some critics to this day. It is not a red herring to want bring out the fact that Elvis's residency was more than a brief moment of success, and in fact his residency set the stage for shows like Lady Gaga's and Drake's that will surely make Las Vegas "cool" once again. I have seen Las Vegas residencies go in and out of vogue over many decades, depending on what type of artists were playing there and how relevant they were to the popular music world. The point is that Elvis's early Las Vegas period was highly praised by critics at the time as you point out, but nevertheless, some fans want to diminish the positive impact it had on his career or blame his physical decline on Vegas itself, which is so ridiculous as there are a ton of reasons why Elvis's physical and emotional decline got worse over the 1970's, and blaming Las Vegas is a total cop-out in my opinion.

 

As Elvis would say "plug, plug".

Don't know if any of you use Discord or are aware of what the heck it is, but if you do/are I made a server dedicated to Elvis discussion: Discord - Free voice and text chat for gamers

To keep it short and simple Discord is a sort of free modern chat room/IM service, originally made for gaming but now has been used for loads of other applications. I made it in the image of a very successful Beach Boys Discord server which has been mentioned on Hoffman in the past, so if that interests you feel free to join. Totally fine if it's not your thing though.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming!

Elvis' Vegas period started out great, but had 2 things that greatly diminished it. One was the loss of experimentation with the set list. As a general rule, Elvis heavily experimented with the set list early on each season, but by 1973-1975 he's not only settled on a set list but left it essentially unchanged. Second and more dire was Elvis was overworked; 2 shows a night meant that he grew bored with the material he was given, and this complacency bled through into touring as a whole.

I've always felt that the request box he briefly experimented with in 1975 was one of the best solutions imaginable; such a shame it didn't continue.

 

I agree. Vegas was the symptom (and perhaps an enabler), not the disease.

 

Reminds me of the old Johnny Paycheck song: If I’m Gonna Sink, I Might As Well Go To The Bottom.

 

I agree with you about the innocence, freshness, and joy of the Sun sides, but find even more of those qualities in early RCA recordings such as When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again and Have I Told You Lately That I Love You. I’ll repeat myself, but I do believe that Elvis’s and Scotty’s confidence and musicianship skyrocketed in 1956, without losing the innocence that made the Sun recordings so special.

Again, I’m a broken record on this point, but, for me, all the “what ifs” of Elvis’s career pale beside the staggering body of good work that he did leave behind, a body of work that I haven’t gotten tired of in 40 years, and honestly still haven’t fully explored. It helps that 50s, 60s, and 70s work is so different - when I get tired of one era, I’ll listen to another. I’ve had years where I only listened to the 50s material, and right now am pretty obsessed with the 70s live shows to the exclusion of everything else.

 

"Mystery Train" in particular is a sublime performance. But there's many recordings/performances after that which I like better, and which connect with me emotionally at a greater level. Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, Such a Night, You Don't Know Me, Any Day Now, I'll Hold You in My Heart. There's a charm to the innocence and freshness of the Sun Recordings, but I find the greater depth and less innocence of some of the later stuff more rewarding.

The soundtracks were forced upon him, and he didn't like the material he was getting, so "stuck" is an apt term. But in the 70s, he recorded what he wanted to record. It's true that he wasn't getting much quality original material, but he had a free hand with covers and he was the one who chose to do "Never Fall in Love Again" and "The Impossible Dream" and "You Gave Me a Mountain" and "My Way." There's no "stuck" about that.

 

I don’t think this is quite right. First, as I’ve said before, when you look at the setlists of peers such as George Harrison or Led Zeppelin on their 1974 and 1975 tours, respectively, their setlists are also quite static (and in 1974 Harrison also frequently played two shows a day as well). Those were norms for the period. In his live career, Jimi Hendrix barely drew on Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland, falling back night and night again on the crowd-pleasers from his debut album. 60s and 70s artists weren’t varying setlists to please future bootleg collectors; they were trying to perfect their setlist to please the fans who would probably only see one show so that it was a great show that night. Second, even after 72, Elvis did still drop new songs into the show. Just this week I was listening to a 1973 show that includes Flip, Flop, and Fly, Mystery Train/Tiger Man, Steamroller Blues, What Now My Love, My Boy, and How Great Thou Art - all of which are relatively recent additions to the act or somewhat uncommon songs, and he also brings back Release Me from the 1970 era. In 1974, he does add It’s Midnight, Let Me Be There, If You Talk In Your Sleep, Big Boss Man, Promised Land, I’m Leavin’, If You Love Me Let Me Know, etc. to his repertoire. The new St. Paul to Wichita FTD from late ‘74 features Johnny B. Goode and a revival of The Wonder of You. I totally get the wish that Elvis had been more like the Grateful Dead and really gone crazy with the setlist every night, but that’s not who was and what he was trying to do. When you get to be a superfan and have 20 FTD soundboards, you do sometimes think “Dear God, do we have to hear Polk Salad Annie or You Gave Me A Mountain again?”, but there’s a reason he played those songs every night, they were great, and great for the audience he was trying to please that night. But there was still more setlist variation than I think you’re giving him credit for.

 

Beautifully put, and I agree 100%. Elvis said that he sang all kinds, and he did, which means that there's an Elvis song for virtually any mood. I think it was Dave Marsh who said that genres didn't matter, because it was all Elvis music...and that's really it, isn't it? It's that magnificent, expressive voice that we fell in love with in the first place. "What could have been?" doesn't matter. What we have is brilliant enough, and far beyond the reach of 99.9% of popular music.

 

Spencer, I really appreciate you challenging this common perception that Elvis's setlists were somehow way more static than other popular artists of the day. I had even begin to buy into that consensus opinion to some degree, until some of your great posts that have challenged that viewpoint and pointed out that there was more variety in his setlists than many typical rock acts of the day. Do I wish that Elvis had varied his setlist a little more? Sure, but as you say, that falls into the what if and what could have been, when in fact we have an artist in Elvis that probably included more music styles and genres in his setlists than any popular music act in history.

 

Even to this day, many artists roll out the same songs they did on the last tour. Certainly there have been bands over the years that tour the new album, but they are in the minority.
In all reality the main problem for collectors as far as Elvis live work goes is the complete lack of shows for most of the sixties. In my own looking around at this stuff it is the sixties stuff that didn't really get a lot of stage time, but that's because he wasn't touring in the sixties, and to some degree, by the time he was touring again the sixties were almost like a deep regret due to his feelings about the soundtrack recordings (i think) ... I know he played some of the sixties stuff in his seventies shows, but for the most part he seemed to turn his back on it.

I always find it a little odd when folks get upset about his song choices in the seventies ... Essentially the Sun sides are rockabilly and country or a hybrid thereof, so it is hardly surprising that Elvis moved towards "modern country" when selecting tracks for his seventies albums. Definitely when I was 15-25 that style of song selection wasn't what I wanted to hear, but as I have grown older and more mellow, I find it a refreshing change. It is a different flavour for me to enjoy.
As I have just bought several of the FTD soundboards and got a lot of the seventies FTD sessions sets, I have started to enjot this work even more .... I would even go so far as to say that some of his best work is in this period ..... My only sad and frustrating thing about this period is the weakening of his voice (somewhat) from, what I assume is, the suppression of his respiratory system due to the pills. That makes me sad, but does not make the recorded work poor.

I am very much looking forward to going through the seventies recordings as I have become quite close to That's The Way It Is, Elvis Country, Good Times, Today and From Elvis Presley Blvd ... I have only had them a few months, but find those (at least) to be excellent albums

 

The Tickle Me EP


Due to the songs being somewhat altered this is the Tickle me complete for those wishing to check it out.

 

I'm not sure what the source for this is, but it appears to have more tracks. There is about twenty five seconds of silence before it starts

 

I was looking forward to "Tickle Me". Good soundtrack put together with previously released tunes as a budget cutting measure. When I was a kid my Brother and I loved this movie. Saw it again as an adult and it was one of those "What was I thinking?" moments.

 

It's amazing how time and age can change perception ... There have been many movies that I went back to watch as an adult and thought "hmmm, I don't remember it being this poor" lol
Funny thing is with music, I don't really get that.

 

Speedway was another one we thought was great. Yow! Not so much now.

 

Elvis's 1970's studio output has been the subject of much debate over the years and I would say that a true re-evaluation by both critics and fans alike have put that period in a much more positive light. Some of the mid seventies studio album were not reviewed favorably at the time, due primarily to the fact that most of those popular music critics were rock enthuses to put it mildly and had a song aversion to the country-pop material that Elvis was increasingly drawn too during the latter part of the decade.

The quality of Elvis's voice in his studio and live concert recordings was not really debated at the time as I recall, but years later, after fans and critics realized the extent of his drug dependancy, they sort of made a revisionist history that Elvis's voice was shot or impaired to some degree. Even some of Elvis' harshest pop critics at the time, raved about his later vocals on Hurt, How Great Thou Art, My Way, Danny Boy, and Unchained Melody, from both his live and studio recordings in the last couple years of his life.

I have since argued that Elvis's vocal abilities were not lost or damaged significantly by his prescription drug use, although certainly it had an effect from time to time on his breath control and diction, especially when speaking and not singing oddly enough. Remember the great country singer Mel Tillis, who had a very severe stutter when speaking, but could sing beautifully without any ticks when performing. The brain is a funny thing.

I say this as one of the most anti-drug Elvis fans that you will ever meet. I hate the fact that drugs ultimately killed Elvis and truly affected him as a live performer during those last few years. But I will argue strongly that Elvis's voice was aging quite normally for a natural baritone and the two things that voice doctors say impair a singer's voice the most, smoking and especially marijuana smoking, Elvis rarely, if ever engaged in to the best of everyone's knowledge. The source for my argument is Billboard Magazine, whom interviewed several well known vocal doctors, who actually consult famous singers who were having vocal issues. And as far as I am aware, Elvis never had to cancel a recording session or concert because his voice gave out, despite averaging well over a hundred concert dates during the last seven years of his life. I think this fact kind of speaks for itself.

 

I certainly don't think he sounds bad on those albums. I just think he is affected to a small degree. It isn't a case of I thought he had lost his voice.
I can tell you for a fact that smoking too much weed will effect your vocals. I was smoking too much weed and couldn't figure out where my throat was going. The resin and the shear volume that I smoked really impinged on my top end. Thankfully after giving it away, I got my range back.
I don't know much about baritones to be honest, and Elvis' voice had a journey all of it's own, unlike any singer I have ever listened to, but as a generalisation, 42 is too young to have lost much of it. At fifty I still have 95% of my pub rock range, I just can't scream like I used to lol

 

I think that is overstating it. Yes, there were exceptions and occasions where Elvis recorded what he wanted (and he certainly performed what he wanted), but typically it was an isolated track here and there. In general, in the studio, Elvis was restricted by publishing constraints during the 1970's. Parker and Diskin were not going to have a repeat of what occurred at American Sound. Every post-1969 session essentially started with Elvis being presented with various submissions from his publishing entities, Jarvis' pipeline, and the occasional song from his entourage. Elvis usually chose songs from those submissions, so in that sense, he was narrowly choosing what he was recording, but still, that is not the same as Elvis broadly recording whatever he wanted. He was stuck in a carefully formulated and restrictive environment, overseen by Parker, Diskin and Jarvis. Elvis succumbed to it and accepted it, but it should be no surprise that he lost virtually all passion for the recording process as the decade progressed.

 

I disagree. I do not think his setlist was some sort of blueprint for variation as the years progressed. Elvis, like many other artists, presented a formula and he rarely deviated from it. A few songs would be substituted in here and there, but he pretty much stayed committed to the formula. See See Rider; followed by I Got A Woman and the cringeworthy Amen/Dive-Bomb sequence; Love Me; a few 1950's era hits tossed away in quick, pedestrian arrangements; an overplayed You Gave Me A Mountain; a vocal showpiece such as An American Trilogy, Hurt, or How Great Thou Art; some token covers such as If You Love Me (Let Me Know); the occasional recycled cover such as The Wonder of You, Johnny B. Goode or Release Me; maybe the house lights on For The Good Times; a bland show-closing run-through of Can't Help Falling In Love; etc. It is all there, night after night. Again, there were periods where he interjected something different like Promised Land or Big Boss Man, but the formula was intact, and for the most part, his concerts were very conventional and very much the same. And who can forget about 15+ minutes of extended band intros that he included by the mid-1970's to give himself a rest. And I also disagree with your assessment of Polk Salad Annie -- after 1972, it should have been permanently retired, those mid-1970's versions and bombastic arrangements are terrible.

 

Yes indeed. I was really surprised by how strongly those voice specialists went after marijuana in that article as I am sure they knew how popular it was with many of their best clients, but I guess the damage to their voices was too great not to address in a national forum. I know a lot of singers have commented about how once they even quite smoking cigarettes, they immediately gained some significant vocal range back. I know Conway Twitty mentioned this fact many years ago and so did Adele IIRC.

 

I agree with you here too as you really hit the nail on the head. I cannot really think of any popular make singer who had significantly lost their voice by age 42. In fact, this is about the time I think a lot of male voices peak vocally as far as I am concerned. Sinatra probably recorded his most revered and respected vocals around middle age, so it really is ridiculous when some fans or critics say that Elvis had lost his voice by 42. Now I totally understand that Elvis's voice changed quite a bit over these years as he was almost a tenor when he first recorded at Sun, but sort of slowly morphed into a baritone over the ensuing years, but it is this new found ability in the lower range that songwriting legends like Doc Pomus argued that gave Elvis the ability to tackle a more vocally demanding set of songs. I also understand when fans prefer the sweet baritenor sound of Elvis's early 60's voice as it is gorgeous sounding to say the least, but Elvis remained a pretty potent singer up until the last moments, despite some less than spectacular efforts along the way.

 

I will say that Elvis DID lose some of his vocal ability after around 1971 or so. And he did smoke tobacco. He lost a lot of his tonality, his powerful crescendos notwithstanding. You can hear his having problems in the Stax recordings, especially the July sessions. As much as I like I've Got A Thing About You Baby, his vocals are weak. And his 1976 EP Boulevard recordings sound like an old man. Yes, he can bellow out Hurt. But the undubbed material exposes his weak old man vibrato. He often sound nasally in his concerts. Compare these vocals to his glorious 1969-1970 material both live and studio. That is my opinion and that is why I stopped buying Elvis records back in the day after the huge disappointment that was Elvis Now.