Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, May 26, 2019.

  1. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Here's my version of
    Yesterday
    Written By :
    John Lennon & Paul McCartney

    Recorded :

    Live Recording, International Hotel, Las Vegas, August 21-26, 1969 : August 25, 1969

    So we come to what I believe is the most covered song of the twentieth century. Elvis does an excellent job of this. He rephrases the vocal line, just enough to make it his own. The instrumentation has some beautiful subtle changes. Sure this is a Beatles song and some folks will only ever like the original, I understand that, but this is a really solid version, with its own feel, and Elvis has complete mastery of his vocal here, and as I say, his phrasing is very cool, and makes this his version.

     
  2. SgtPepper1983

    SgtPepper1983 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    The only song on this album I don't really care about. I find it kinda boring.
     
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  3. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Proud Mary
    Written By :
    John Fogerty

    Recorded :

    Live Recording, International Hotel, Las Vegas, February 15-19, 1970 : February 16, 1970

    This is a good song, but not even one of my favourite CCR songs. If I remember rightly though, this was one of their bigger hits. Elvis does a very good job, but gets a little pitchy after the key modulation. Not terribly so, just a section of the verse after the change. It feels like he is trying to give it a little too much oomph ... I'm not sure. It certainly isn't terrible, just a very short reminder that this is live.

     
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  4. EPA4368

    EPA4368 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento CA

    Agreed and it's my favorite on this album.
     
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  5. While I prefer the 1970 versions of Polk Salad Annie to the versions he did later, for Proud Mary, the 1970 versions develop into something a lot more interesting to my ears in 1972. As far as Yesterday is concerned, yeah, it's kinda boring but then again so is the original.
     
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  6. DirkM

    DirkM Forum Resident

    Location:
    MA, USA
    Yesterday is one of my favourite songs on the album. Elvis takes all of the things that I don't like about the other versions that I've heard (overly serious attitude, general sappiness, occasionally plodding tempos) and replaces them with a stronger arrangement and a vocal approach that really sells the lyrics. It also makes for a great follow-up to the intensity of Polk Salad Annie.

    I burned out on the CCR version of Proud Mary ages ago, and the Ike & Tina Turner version never did anything for me. Elvis' version is pretty good, but I go back and forth between really liking it and merely liking it. The key change, and Elvis' newly impassioned vocal immediately afterwards, is the best part of the performance, imo.
     
  7. emjel

    emjel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    Yet it has apparently been covered by a couple of thousand artists and was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners and was also voted the No. 1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine the following year. In 1997, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) asserts that it was performed over seven million times in the 20th century. It must have something going for it.
     
  8. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I agree that there’s nothing boring about Yesterday and that I like how Elvis puts his own spin on it. His best Beatles interpretation was still to come, though, in Something.
     
  9. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    Proud Mary is another song right in Elvis’s wheelhouse: he could have covered any of CCR’s big hits and been right at home.
     
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  10. Well who am I to go up against such a bastion of good taste like MTV.
     
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  11. emjel

    emjel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    You seem to be missing the point. I am not discussing or dismissing Jerry’s bass playing skills, but rather the delivery of the song by Elvis and comparing the stellar 1970 versions with the later versions. Any normal person listening to that song would take it as an instrumental break – they would not be analysing as to whether it was a written piece or some ad hoc playing which changes every time it is played. The original by Tony Joe White has an instrumental break in it, so you could say that it was written that way and Elvis more or less excluded it originally and brought it back in later, albeit in a slightly different playing style, and possibly suggested by Jerry Scheff.

    With regard to creativity, the reality is that the choice Elvis made was more to do with the fact that he needed something to take breath in readiness for the short final burst at the end of the song. If Elvis had taken the song at the same pace as he had when he had done it two years earlier, which was close to White’s original, instead of this somewhat galloping version, he would not have had the breath problem and he could have still remained faithful to the original AND included Scheff’s solo.

    Elvis had a habit of getting bored with certain songs but knew he had to do them because fans wanted to hear and see them but quite often, they became throwaway versions. Granted, this wasn’t quite as throwaway as Hound Dog, All shook Up and some of his other hits he often did, but it was getting there. So too was Suspicious Minds.
     
  12. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I suppose to some degree Yesterday has been played to death, by everybody. In reality though it was one of the most popular songs ever recorded.
    Perhaps time and repetition has been unkind to the song. I certainly have no problem with it, but totally understand how some may find it boring, merely dude to over familiarity, or even just not being their thing.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
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  13. PepiJean

    PepiJean Forum Resident

    I'm not going to describe it as "boring" but by no mean it is to me the greatest 20th century recording.
     
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  14. emjel

    emjel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    Well it wasn't just MTV that was praising it, but hey ho. For me, Yesterday is a very pleasant song and McCartney's delivery is spot on with the simplistic way it is delivered - I imagine just an individual sitting in a room reminiscing on losing his girl. Elvis did it his way (my version of....") but I would have loved Elvis to have sat on a stool with guitar and presented it the way McCartney did without the Vegas Lounge delivery. Of course it is a subjective thing, but I know many Elvis fans who would put down a Beatles record regardless of how good it is, just because they are Elvis fans and elevate the merits of Do The Clam or Long Legged Girl just because Elvis sang them.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
  15. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Not for me either. It probably isn't even in my top ten Beatles songs to be honest ... but being honest again I couldn't say whether that is from overexposure, or just a type of song that appeals to me less ... I'm just too familiar with it to judge really
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
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  16. emjel

    emjel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    As much as I like the song, I do not think it fits into the Help album as it almost jars the flow of the music around it. I think I'm Down would have been a better fit maybe preceding John's Dizzy Miss Lizzy.
     
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  17. NumberEight

    NumberEight Came too late and stayed too long

    Which the multi-talented Paul recorded on the same day as Yesterday (and I've Just Seen a Face)!
     
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  18. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I have no problem with its position on the album. I prefer the UK albums, because that's what I grew up with, but that is all a little redundant on this thread
     
  19. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I’m not going to take the contrarian position on Yesterday: it is a classic, and deservedly so. I suppose you can call Elvis’s presentation of this song a “Vegas Lounge” interpretation, based on the piano, strings, and backing vocals of the arrangement, but I’d reserve that categorization for the sort “why that crazy cuckoo dame had to go / I don’t know” sort of performance that Frank Sinatra was prone to at times. One thing that strikes me is how Elvis really sinks his teeth into the ascending melody figure on “why - she - had - to - go” - during this period he seems particularly drawn to those sorts of soaring melody lines over rich harmonic beds, as also on Let It Be Me and the “oh ho ho ho” wordless melody he sings over the guitar solo of The Wonder Of You.
     
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  20. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I think it is an excellent version. I personally don't equate orchestration with being Vegas, because tons of music has orchestration and has no connection to Vegas at all.
     
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  21. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    As I said above, I equate “Vegas” delivery of a song to goofing around on the lyric and/or to some degree on the melody, which Elvis certainly did do increasingly as the 70s wore on, as, for example, the “shove it up your nose” versions of Suspicious Minds, but certainly does not do on the master take of Yesterday or the other songs on On Stage.
     
  22. emjel

    emjel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    Perhaps not and maybe not so much in the first couple of seasons, but the orchestrations grew more prominent with big bash endings that should not have been there on certain songs. Just Elvis and his backing group would have sufficed.

    I have been listening to some Cliff Richard shows recently with all songs given true respect ~even those songs that he was probably fed up with singing from 1958, but when the songs required simple basic backings, that is what they got, with quite a few having Cliff accompanying himself on guitar ~ none of the using the guitar as a prop which Elvis tended to do after the first season and not many with the big bash endings either. I was pleasantly surprised at how good the shows were to listen to and I just wish Elvis had delivered his shows away from ‘autopilot’ which he got into after the first couple of years of return to live performances.

    Regarding Proud Mary, I have always like Elvis’ version on this album and the later slightly revamped version at MSG.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2019
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  23. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    For sure.
    I wasn't rebutting you there
     
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  24. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Yea possibly, but I doubt that was ever going to happen. Elvis wanted to put on a show, and that's he how he thought he needed to do it, or wanted to do it.
    There are pluses and minuses on both sides of those set ups.
     
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  25. emjel

    emjel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    Personally, I think that’s why Elvis was perceived as a Vegas Lounge entertainer especially when he took his shows out on the road. There was no deviation from the Vegas routine and just like the Hollywood rut he found himself in during the 60s, Elvis got into another rut with his shows. Even though the shows were obviously what Elvis wanted to do, Elvis was basically lazy and never really attempted to do anything radically different. The Aloha Show is testament to that ~ fans claim it to be amazing, but the reality is that it is a Vegas show in Hawaii with a few different set pieces ~ it was the event that made it memorable and not the actual show ~ It could have been done anywhere. Personally, I think the MSG shows were probably more dynamic than the Aloha show, although he certainly looked great with his drop in weight. But Elvis always wanted to play it safe which for a couple of years was fine, but after that, the shows become very robotic. Thankfully, we have two great albums from those 69/70 ~ Memphis to Vegas and On Stage which demonstrate Elvis at the top of his game.
     

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