Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

I agree with you here. Spot on. Funny thing is that I feel exactly the same way about Elvis's other Kris Kristofferson cover, Help Me Make It through The Night. The studio version is rather bland and it makes one yearn for Sammie Smith's sultry hit version, yet Elvis's live version in Las Vegas has a better arrangement and his vocal seems more passionate as well. Something about Kristofferson songs seemed to bring the best out of him when faced with a live audience. I even like his partial run through on For The Good Times when Elvis is in the back of the limousine singing it after a concert during Elvis On Tour.

Wow, someone actually willing to praise Elvis's MOR cover of Perry Como's It's Impossible. That takes a lot of guts around these parts, but I am all in with you on this one as well. You make a great comparison with Elvis's gorgeous vocals on There's Always Me and I Met Her Today. I think his voice is like velvet and the big band arrangement was stellar. Yes indeed, the sound on those February 1972 recordings are just fantastic sounding and Elvis's voice is also quite splendid.

 

Your mention of Perry Como reminded me of the Charlotte Observer interview with Elvis from 1956:
Elvis says he doesn't know how long rock and roll will last.
”When it's gone, I’ll switch to something else.
”I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I'm singing now is what makes the money. Would you change if you was me?"
Scotty Moore - Charlotte Coliseum - Charlotte, NC

 

Sorry that I've been a no show. This is one of my favorite albums so I'm very curious about everyone's take on it. I will go back and read every comment. If I say something that's already been discussed, please forgive it.
1. Unchained Melody: I love this version although it's not a song that I particularly care for. Elvis sells it for me and makes me love it.
2. If You Love Me Let Me Know: I like Elvis' version alright but it's not a great song. I like his introduction to it in EIC "If you love me let me know and if you don't then move it!".
3. Little Darlin': I like the song and what Elvis does with it! I wished he had recorded a version of this many years earlier. He seems to have fun with other artist's songs from the 1950s but not so much his own stuff. I don't completely understand that.
4. He'll Have To Go: Like DirkM, it is interesting sequencing that puts this slow studio track between two uptempo live tracks. It works I think in a couple of ways, first it creates a slow spot right before the high energy ending of side A with Let Me Be There. It also creates a gap between these two ONJ covers to mask the obvious different energy levels of the audience during the performances. Elvis does a fine job with HHTG but the song has never appealed to me lyrically. I love his cover of Welcome To My World but this Jim Reeves tune just never had a ring of truth to it. If you're calling a bar to give your girl an ultimatum while she's dancing with another man, you're probably already out the door as far as she's concerned anyway.

 

Another vote here! It was on my Elvis list in Mark's other thread. The way Elvis lingers on that last "soooul and not...regret it", is high art in my book. Beauty, form, redemption. All there in one perfectly phrased line.

 

I am rather fond of the early 1972 Vegas masters too.

 

That's what I think too! RCA or the Colonel were probably going to handle Elvis very delicately to sweet talk him into recording. I'm sure they put the hard squeeze on Felton Jarvis' head. They didn't have to be so easy on him. The pressure on Jarvis to get usable recordings must have been massive.

 

It's just speculation but at this point (1980s) Elvis would already be bigger than any genre. Had he lived, I can see a clean, sober and independent Elvis (really the only way he would have made it out of the 1970s) doing pretty much what he wanted. I think a song like He Stopped Loving Her Today would attract him like a magnet. I can see him all over God Bless The USA, Lady, Time After Time, and It's A Heartache. I can also see some movies or voice over work.

 

These comments put me in mind of a little restaurant that the wife and I went to years ago. They had all of these nostalgic drawn pictures on the wall. You know the type. Drive-in diners and movies and movie stars like John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Elvis, etc. Anyway there was a couple of pictures that I found very interesting. If I had not left my cellphone in the car charging, I would have taken some pictures of them. It was some strange artwork for sure. It was 1970s Elvis in front of Graceland getting bags of groceries out of the trunk of a 1960s Cadillac in his Aloha jumpsuit. Then one of Elvis grilling at a picnic in his leather '68 comeback attire. It struck me how out of place he seemed in these drawings.

 

It's a valid question to me now but back then, I had never heard the live Memphis album. It was just another cool song with LOTS of energy that seemed to work great on MB.

 

I became an Elvis fan in 1976, when my mom joined a record club and bought 50 Worldwide Gold Award Hits. I listened to that thing (especially side one) constantly. So the first (and sadly, only) Elvis songs I can remember coming out when they were new are Moody Blue and Way Down. I remember being happy that Way Down was more of a rock and roll song, but at the same time noticing his voice was different (and in my 10-year-old opinion) not as good at singing rock and roll as used to be. I didn't have that reaction to Moody Blue, I guess because it was a different type of song. I remember being excited to see it turning into a hit country song, though, and watching it climb the country chart. As Steve noted, Way Down actually hit #1 on the country chart the very day Elvis died, so it was a bona fide country hit even before his death.

This song is still one of my favorite later Elvis recordings. Obviously I have a sentimental attachment to it, and that's a big part of it. It's not a perfect record by any means... what my childhood self perceived as a decreased ability to rock, I now see as a vocal lacking in some energy and due to the condition Elvis was in. Still, it's a good song, given a decent enough performance by Elvis to work pretty well.

 

This is off of the subject but does anyone else remember a television show from 1986 called Last Precinct? It starred Adam West of Batman fame as the Captain of a group of police academy rejects. One of the characters was called "The King" and always wore a uniform that was close to Elvis' stage attire. I think the character was played by Pete Wilcox.

 

lol, oh i have no problem with going out on a limb, we're all entitled to our tastes & opinions ! hell I even like " my boy " and thats considered a big NO NO to the purists lol

its nice to hear im not alone though - those 72 live masters really are fantastic !
"big hunk of love " totally kicks ass & proves what he could do with his earlier material IF he wanted !

but when it comes to "its impossible" surely can one can argue with his vocal - for an in the moment LIVE on stage recording its bloody stunning ! its almost bizarre though he could put something down that good & then 20 seconds later rip into a totally throw away "hound dog" etc that wasnt respectable to the original song or his ability, talent & legacy !!!

ill never actually understand the disdain he had for his early hits & why he didnt broaden his horizons - he had a bigger catalogue than probably any live performer ever & he stuck to a fairly rigid 40 songs or so !
most of which he did out of obligation & not passion so made a mockery of those songs held in such high regard and ultimately himself !

whats sad is he rehearsed some great stuff and was much more adventurous - why didnt he carry those over to the stage ?
"any day now" & " true love travels.." from 72 are absolutely stunning
and sound amazingly close to the 69 masters !


elvis has some questioned choices in his songs no doubt, the problem was things like " softly as i leave you" we're most likely the results of the after show penthouse suite jams etc ,

but i think its actually commendable in a way that he ALWAYS sang what he wanted - in some respects he was like a puppet but if he suddenly thought he would throw in some ONJ covers then he did !
its just a shame it was at the cost of his own catalogue!

my only logical reasoning for this is that once he got the 69 season out of the way, he decided he needed to be contemporary and in the time not living off past glories with nothing new to offer so i think thats why "sweet caroline " & "loving feeling " etc we're thrown in !

who wouldnt have loved a 1969 elvis to rip into "like a baby " & "mess of blues " tho ?

Tho he didnt necessarily RECORD what he wanted due to the publishing B.S - he certainly should have put his foot down with " i will always love you"
(and i know dolly parton has commented a few times its a huge regret she didnt let him have it )
i dont think he really cared what people thought to the actual set list !??

 

This question has likely be asked before. I search, but I often don't find what I'm looking for.
Was there ever an Elvis Presley studio version of "Welcome To My World", released? And if so, where can I hear it?
Thanks.......Dave

 

No, he only performed it live.

 

I listened to the Moody Blue album in its entirety yesterday for the first time in many years. I always liked the album, but like John and Yoko's Double Fantasy, it is inescapably associated with the death of the artist soon after its release.

My parents liked Elvis -- my dad had originals of his first two albums bought when they were new -- and my mother played his music on 8-tracks so I was familiar with a lot of his music. But what they had was mostly Camden stuff, i.e. generally not his best.

Anyway, the night he died we participated in that weird phenomenon of going out and buying a bunch of records by an artist who just died. As I recall they were "Elvis' Golden Records" (the first volume in fake stereo), "His Hand In Mine" (the 1976 reissue of his 1960 Gospel album with the changed cover) and the new album "Moody Blue," which my sister and I thought was very cool with its translucent blue vinyl.

I remember liking the album quite a bit, but hearing it again with the advantage of hindsight as well as having read a lot of the comments in this thread -- a lot of which I really didn't know -- I always liked Elvis but wasn't a superfan the way my friend Vince was -- it does seem very cobbled together and it's sad when you understand the reasons why.

The live stuff really seems like filler, and for years (until I saw the reissue CD where it was combined with another album) I didn't even know "Let Me Be There" was repeated from another album, not even a different version. Still, the ONJ tunes are kind of a guilty pleasure.

I always liked "Way Down" and maybe reading the comments here has colored my perceptions, but now I am wondering if it had been recorded a few years earlier, whether it might have come across more solid like "Burning Love." It's a good song, maybe I'm just listening to it now knowing it's the end of the line.

The title track "Moody Blue" sounds like a fully realized production to me, and kind of sticks out among a lot of the rest, like something happened between that and the next session -- again, all of this could be colored by what I now know of the backstory and the circumstances of assembling this album -- which at the time, was just another product to put out, without knowing it would have the distinction projected onto it as the last album released during his lifetime.

It was a kick hearing it again.

 

I have found that the deep look at these albums has coloured them somewhat, but when I just listen to the albums, I still really enjoy them, and at the end of the day, that is all that matters to me.


I too am just learning all the stuff we get to read from our very informed friends on here, and it is a great honour and pleasure to get this information. for me, it doesn't really change how I feel about the albums, it merely suggests how much better they could be if this was a perfect world with no human frailty ... but then again in a perfect world with no human frailty they may not touch me the way they do.... it is rather ponderous in many ways.

 

Thank you Claus. I thought that was going to be the case.

 

Haha! I never thought about the lyrics that much, but you raise an excellent point. Let's file it alongside Kentucky Rain, Don't Cry Daddy, and My Boy in the "controversial narrators" file.

 

She's not out dancing. The narrator of the song is the one who is at the bar, and he's likely drunk and full of regret and is calling her at home. And she happens to have another man with her there at home. So yes, you are correct that he's not likely to be successful in winning her back... in fact, that is exactly what happens in the answer song (He'll Have to Stay) that was written by the same composers who wrote He'll Have to Go. In that song, she essentially says "you blew it, I've moved on." So this is not at all a love song... it's a song about a guy who screwed up, and now feels guilty and remorseful and is trying to undo his mistake, but is doomed to failure. In other words, a pretty classic country scenario which most definitely has the ring of universal truth to it.

 

It doesn't change your overall point, but actually Dolly has said how incredibly thankful she is that she didn't give in and let Elvis have half the publishing on her song. She missed out on having Elvis record one of her songs, but she would have lost millions if she'd given up half the publishing, since her version of the song hit #1 country a second time in 1982, and then of course Whitney Houston's version hit #1 pop in 1992. As Dolly commented, she earned enough off of Whitney's cover of the song to buy Graceland.

 

It is unclear if the song in question was I Will Always Love You or Coat of Many Colors.

 

Indeed. I think the most likely scenario is that Elvis was interested in both songs, since that is what Dolly said in the earliest account I could find of her story, from 1996. In more recent years she's talked solely about I Will Always Love You being the song Elvis wanted to do and hasn't mentioned Coat, but that's presumably because the latter is much less well-known. Since Marty Lacker confirmed that Elvis was interested in Coat (in the 1996 Memphis Mafia book) we can be reasonably sure Elvis wanted to do that song. And he likely wanted to do I Will Always Love You too.

 

I'm still skeptical about the publishing issue on the Dolly song (whatever it was) being the reason that we don't have an Elvis cover of COMC/IWALY. Did Elvis have a cut of Green, Green Grass Of Home, or My Way, or Yesterday, or Don't Think Twice, or the various Kristofferson songs he recorded? Maybe he did, but it seems unlikely. If Elvis really wanted to cut I Will Always Love You or Coat Of Many Colours, he could have done so.

 

The difference is that unlike those other songs, there were allegedly negotiations (that obviously did not go very far) to get a piece of Dolly's song. Once she rejected the proposal, it is unlikely that Elvis would have gone ahead and recorded it.

 

It seems like he was inconsistent about the whole publishing thing... occasionally he would do songs for which he couldn't get a cut, but sometimes he held out and didn't do a song if he couldn't get the cut-in. I suppose it depended on how much he liked a song. In this case, both Dolly and Marty Lacker say he was prepared to do the song if he could get the publishing cut-in, so there's no good reason to believe that is not true. Obviously you are also correct that he could have chosen to do it without the cut-in but did not. So the publishing is the reason he didn't do the song, but we can also infer that he must not have liked the song enough to make an exception in this particular case.

It's like if you saw a pair of shoes on sale for $25. You think about it overnight and decide the next day you want to go buy those shoes, but when you get to the store you find that the sale is over and they are now back to their regular price of $45. So you don't buy them. It would be accurate to say the price is the reason you didn't buy them, but it also is accurate to say you could have chosen to buy them if you really wanted to. I guess occasionally there were songs Elvis was willing to pay full price for, but others he wouldn't do unless he could get them on sale.