Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

Find Out What's Happening
Written By :
Jerry Crutchfield

Recorded :
Stax Studios, Memphis, July 20-25, 1973: July 22, 1973. take 9

This has a nice little groove, the lead break is a nice little bit of Burton, but the song is hardly a masterpiece. Elvis vocal is fine, but it isn't exactly enraptured with enthusiasm. The song sounds and feels that it is just there. Again it isn't terrible or anything, it is there, it is acceptable, but it is not prime Elvis.

 

I Miss You
Written By :
Donnie Sumner

Recorded :
Elvis' Home In Palm Springs, September 22-23, 1973 : September 23, 1973. take 15

This is a nice enough ballad, and Elvis puts in a good performance. He has a suitably lamenting delivery, and the song has a good enough feel and sound to be an enjoyable presence.

 

Find Out What's Happening is pretty lightweight, but I enjoy it within the context of the album. The rough mix has more punch to it, imo.

I Miss You isn't a great song, but it does have one of Elvis' best, most emotional vocals from these sessions. Along with Are You Sincere? and Sweet Angeline, it makes me wish that he'd cut all of his vocals at Palm Springs! There's an intimacy to those three songs that's simply magnetic.

And back to ROR...I actually like the rewrite better. Without it, we wouldn't have that great pause before "rockin' on," which mixes things up and makes the song more exciting.

 

I think Burton's little guitar break solo is the best part of that whole very mediocre song. Jerry Crutchfield earned his reputation as a fine country-pop producer in the 1970's and 80's and might best be known for producing Lee Greenwood's iconic patriotic hit, God Bless The USA as well as Dave Loggins' Please Come To Boston.

Yes indeed, Elvis's voice did sound really nice on those three recordings.

 

I do not mind Find Out What's Happening except for Elvis' weak vocals. I Miss You is just schlock.

 

I forgot how ridiculous that Raised On Rock album cover is. Elvis looks like he's cutting a fart.

 

with a follow through .....

 

Sadly some Stax reels, including the alleged reel with We Had It All, are missing.

 

The arrangement contains a relatively laidback groove, but Elvis is asleep at the wheel with an uninspired, unhealthy vocal.

 

A mediocre piece of material, but the type of melancholy ballad Elvis was attracted to. Recorded in Palm Springs, the vocal performance was less sleepy and disengaged than many of the July recordings from Stax.

 

Poor Elvis. Was bammed up for the Aloha cover photo, then had "low flow" showers in his room that ruined his hair. When the laxative finally kicked in, he had to sneak into a hut surrounded by young ladies lounging around within earshot while he did his business. His nerves were so torn up afterwards that he chopped his microphone cord in the door on his way out (fyi Elvis had to carry his microphone to the bathroom with him because everyone was trying to steal it. Someone finally got it when he momentarily turned his attention elsewhere during the STAX sessions). That's when they caught him and asked for a group photo. Worst day of the trip and they decided that it was a great photo to feature in the album artwork. Elvis was shaking his flattened head.

 

Find Out What's Happening might be my favorite track on the record, though that is faint praise. It's a really good song with a nice funky arrangement. Elvis' vocal is laid-back and unexceptional, but the laid-back feel works in the context of this track. Elvis' version sticks pretty close to the original arrangement by the Spidells from 1964, but my favorite is the Bobby Bare version from 1967:


I Miss You stands out because the vocal is so much better than anything he did at Stax in July, but I agree with those who've said it's a mediocre song. The goal of the September sessions was ostensibly to record vocals for the four backing tracks done at Stax after Elvis ditched the sessions (Sweet Angeline, Color My Rainbow, The Wonders You Perform, and Good, Bad, But Beautiful). In his characteristic contrarian fashion, Elvis only did a vocal for one of the four, and instead did the Andy Williams cover and I Miss You which was pitched directly by Donnie Summer of Voice at the session.

 

I really like Find Out What's Happening. The outtakes add to my enjoyment, with the mix on those occasionally favoring the clavinet. And some of them at a slower tempo which helps, the released version is a bit too fast IMO. I forget where it is but there's a vocal-only snippet where Elvis and the backing singers sing a couple lines and really bend the notes, love that bit.

I can completely pass on I Miss You.

Also noticed this LP generally follows the song order of rocker/ballad/rocker/ballad/etc., exception being side two If You Don't Come Back/Just A Little Bit. I never liked this when they did it on his earlier LPs and don't like it here. Seems a really lazy way to sequence an album.

 

I never consciously realized that until reading your post, but I have to say, even though it's lazy, I think it's actually pretty effective here. Since songs like Find Out What's Happening and If You Don't Come Back don't have much vitality to them, sequencing them after much slower songs makes them seem to come alive a bit more.

 

I agree about IF YOU DON'T COME BACK which is actually - and somehow - fun to listen, specially thanks to the backup vocals.
FIND OUT is plain boring to me.

 

Because of Elvis' poor attitude, the July 1973 Stax sessions produced an undue amount of "lost" songs, ie songs that had a backing track recorded but no vocal attempted by Elvis. I thought it would be interesting to look at those. The first is Good, Bad, But Beautiful. After Elvis walked out of the July 24/25 session, work proceeded on doing a backing track for this song, with the obvious hope that Elvis would do his vocal later. That never happened. This was a song written by Clive Westlake (one of Bienstock's staff writers) and it was later done by Shirley Bassey:

 

The following day when Elvis failed to show for the session, they did tracks for Sweet Angeline, Color My Rainbow, and The Wonders You Perform. Elvis eventually did a vocal for the former, a couple months later. The other two remained tracks only. To my knowledge, no one has ever recorded Color My Rainbow (a Mark James song). The Wonders You Perform was a Jerry Chesnut song that had originally been recorded by Tammy Wynette three years earlier:

 

Man, that is a really powerful song and quite the arrangement on it too. I would have loved to have heard Elvis take a crack at this baby.

 

I believe Clive Westlake played piano on Shirley Bassey's recording.

"Color My Rainbow" - I've never heard anything except for the Stax instrumental track for this one. No songwriter demo or other recording. I've never even seen sheet music or lyrics.

 

I wonder why no subsequent efforts were made to get Elvis to record vocals for these three tracks, particularly at the December 1973 Stax Sessions? We know RCA hated to waste anything, and they'd already paid to have the tracks recorded. Did Elvis decide that he didn't like the songs and didn't want to complete them? It seems unlikely they could have just been forgotten after a couple months.

 

Same could be asked about a few songs left unfinished during the Moman sessions.

 

In general, Elvis was disinterested and disengaged with the recording process by 1973, but like you said, why not revisit these tracks during the December session, when Elvis was clearly in a better state of mind? It is really quite odd. It isn't as if all of the December material was noticeably superior and therefore there was an obvious reason not to revisit those tracks -- the December session had its share of clunkers as well.

 

Jason, you just got me hooked on that song by Shirley Bassey. I just ordered a BGO CD twofer with that song on the collection. I really do not know if Elvis could have matched her version, but I sure would have liked to have heard him try. Thanks for sharing that song with us. I love the lyrics and that string and horn chart just blows me away, especially on the brass section.

 

In the case of the Moman tracks, is it possible they were forgotten? Was Jarvis even present when they were recorded? Would he have been aware of them? Or perhaps Elvis didn't want to finish them because he'd developed a negative attitude toward Moman and American. Or perhaps he simply didn't want to sing vocals to old tracks and preferred to record fresh tracks live, and was more excited about some of the new material he had. Quality material and enthusiasm from Elvis were not in short supply at the Nashville marathon session, so there was no need to look backward.

By contrast, getting him to record in 1973 was like pulling teeth, and you'd think they would have jumped at anything that might have made the process quicker and easier. And there's no way the Stax outtakes could have been forgotten since Jarvis had been trying to get vocals done just a couple months earlier. I've got to think maybe Elvis decided he didn't like those three tracks for some reason.

 

I've often wondered if was possible to get Elvis to record vocals to canned backing tracks while he was on tour. Sometimes he was in great spirits after a show and wanted to sing the wee hours away. With several tracks ready to go, I wonder if it was even possible to say "hey Elvis, you're knocking every song out of the park tonight! Can you give this a shot?". A makeshift recording setup could have been possible, especially when he was doing his Vegas stints.