Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

I Really Don't Want To Know
Written By :
Howard Barnes & Don Robertson

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, June 4-9, 1970: June 7, 1970. take 4

I don't know why, but this sounds like it could be part of the American sessions. There a loose jam type feel. Elvis is really relaxed and we have this sort of country swing going on. We have a great vocal, and the music swells and subsides along with the vocal beautifully.

 

Well these two songs are the cream of the crop.

 

I agree. Easily my two favorites.

 

"Funny How Time Slips Away" and "I Don't Really Want to Know" exemplify Elvis's sensitivity and brilliance as an interpretive singer. He handles these country standards with the same degree of thought and mastery that Sinatra handled Cole Porter.

Unfortunately many of Elvis's live versions of "Funny How Time Slips Away" were little better than throwaways, and he almost unforgivably bowdlerized the song, turning "in time you're gonna pay" into "it'll be okay."

"I Don't Really Want to Know" sadly marks the last time Elvis sang a song by Don Robertson. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Don, detailing the genesis of the song and his reaction to Elvis's version.

***

Q: We talked earlier about 'I Really Don't Want To Know'. How did that come about?

A: Again it came about through Julian Aberbach. They had this song in their Hill & Range catalogue with a similar lyric but entirely different music, and they had gotten it recorded and released by several different artists, but none of the records was successful. Julian was convinced that the lyric, the idea, was a potential hit. He asked me if I would be interested in writing a new melody if they could get a release from the original melody writer. I liked the title and said yes I would as long as the original composer was willing. I also asked them not to play me the original melody so I could approach it fresh. They got their release. So they persuaded the original melody writer to give them a release...
So the lyric writer, Howard Barnes, sent me the lyric in the mail. I really liked it. I let it roll around my head for a few days and then went to the piano and started working on it. When it was finished, I wrote an arrangement for a small band and Lou [Dinning, Robertson's first wife] and I went into the studio with some top-of-the-line musicians to make a demo. She did a great job singing it and the demo turned out very well. Howard loved it. The Aberbachs loved it too and went right to work getting a record...

GM: And that was a hit for Eddy Arnold in '54...

DR: Yes, and then Les Paul and Mary Ford covered it for the pop field and it went up the pop charts. It was common practice at that time for record companies to take country hits and record pop versions. Good for the pop artist, bad for the country artist who might have gotten on the pop charts himself and made a lot more money, if he hadn't been scooped. Now the worm has turned. Now it's the country artists who are making the money. Unpredictable business.

GM: And eventually in 1970 Elvis recorded it. Had you had any notice that he was going to do it?

DR: Yes, the Aberbachs told me he was going to do it.

GM: There had been a six-seven year gap aim almost, between recording the last of your songs and then this one ...

DR: Yeah, it just came out of the blue, I had no idea.

GM: What was your feeling about his recording of it?

DR: Oh, I liked it a lot. Almost a rock waltz....and a lot of feeling. Eddy's version had been lilting and straightforward—an ideal first recording. That set the stage for other artists to do other interpretations.

 

What a fantastic comparison. I wish I would have thought to make that comparison myself. I was going to say that I would put these two ballads, along with Elvis's bravura take on Tomorrow Never Comes, against anything he ever cut at Sun Records or during his prime years at RCA in the late 50's or 60's. Elvis is given fantastic material here, first by Willie Nelson, with a song so deceptively full of contempt and bitterness that you can almost miss it as the song comes to a close with a final brilliant hook; After seemingly inconsequential conversation with a former lover that obviously jilted him, the protagonist starts to ratchet up the tone of the conversation in the second verse, before he lets all his hurt and bitterness comes out in the last lines of the song:

How's your new love
I hope he's doing fine
I heard you told him that you'd love him till the end of time
Now that's the same thing that you told me, seems like just the other day
Gee, Ain't it funny how time slips away

I gotta go now
I guess I'll see you hanging around
Don't know when though, never know
When I'll be back in town
But remember what I told you
In time, your gonna pay
Ain't it surprising how time slips away

Elvis completely remakes Don Robertson's splendid country-pop ballad, I Really Don't Want To Know, into something that you might have thought Ray Charles would have done with the song had he taken a crack at it. Elvis producer/historian Ernst Jorgensen described the chemistry of Elvis and the great Muscle Shoals rhythm section coming together to make a little lightening in a bottle this way in A Life In Music:

All at once Elvis seemed inspired, singing with a passion and soulfulness that recalled Memphis. The band fell in with equal feeling, their confidence and expressiveness growing along with his. Both singer and band were performing out of genre, improvising their own rhythms and phrasing on the spot, challenging each other.

 

Famed Nashville drummer Jerry Carrigan reportedly died last week on June 22, according to The Tennessean. He was the primary studio drummer for both Elvis That's The Way It Is and Elvis Country. He was quite the legend and definitely one of Elvis's favorite drummers and really brought some power and dynamics to the Nashville recording scene.


The Tennessean-5 hours ago

 

RIP Mr. Carrigan.

 

There Goes My Everything
Written By :
Dallas Frazier

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, June 4-9, 1970: June 8, 1970. take 3

This feels like pretty traditional country. I really like it, as it feels like an old tshirt, it is familiar and comfortable and fits just right.
We have the horns and strings, but there is still something about this track which feels okder and more stripped back, and I can't really explain what.

 

It's Your Baby You Rock It
Written By :
Nora Fowler & Shirl Milete

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, June 4-9, 1970: June 5, 1970. take 5

When I see the title of this song, I always feel like, "hmm this is one I don't really like. When the song starts playing, I find that I like the melody and the arrangement.... I even like the delivery. I just find the chorus lyric a little .... corny is the word coming to mind, but probably not the best description.
It is a good song, but the chorus lyric spoils it a little for me.

 

I never minded the title, it's just an old phrase that applies to any poor decision one was warned not to make.
I love Elvis' vocal on this and it feels far more like his Memphis sessions to me than some others that have been compared.
This is probably the one track on Elvis Country that still seems fresh since I first stumbled on to the album in 1989.

 

Perhaps it is an American saying that I was just never exposed to until this song. I do like the song, I just have to get past that lyric somewhat

 

I really wish Elvis would have included a version of Bridge on the Aloha special. It no doubt would have been more associated with him than it became. His boring Aloha version of My Way could have been scratched for it.
Fortunately Elvis redeemed My Way in 1977.

 

It's coupled with the rewording of the other old saying You made your bed now sleep in it, which is in the song becomes You made the bed you're sleeping in.
Interestingly the song starts with a far more common old saying Penny for your thoughts.
These old sayings were clearly the concept for the song.

 

There's a pretty wide range in quality for these four songs, imo. On the low end is There Goes My Everything, which drags and doesn't really go anywhere. Funny How Time Slips Away doesn't do anything for me either. I can respect it, but it's not my cup of tea.

It's Your Baby, You Rock It is corny and cliched on paper, but on record, it's a minor marvel: the arrangement is so enjoyable, the melody so catchy, and Elvis so lost in it all that it improbably becomes a highlight of the album. Coming after a string of moody, downtempo tracks, it sounds even livelier than it does in isolation.

I Really Don't Want To Know, though, is an outright masterpiece. It's a great song, of course, but as with songs like You Don't Know Me and My Way, it sounds stilted and devoid of meaning when anyone but Elvis sings it. Part of this is due to the arrangement, which has a subtle force and rhythm that's lacking in every other version that I've heard, but most of the credit goes to Elvis. His performance is utterly devastating, with too many great moments to mention (ok, the way he brings it all home at the end with "No wonder...yeah, no wonder! I wonder...mmm..." is the best of them all, and may well be his greatest ten seconds in the studio). I'm sure I've heard this record a hundred times by now, and it still sounds as emotional and fresh as it did when I first sat down and listened to it and let it break my heart.

The album mix is, again, spoiled by the linking song at the end (why?!?! It's the end of the side! What were they linking it to?). Thankfully, the 70s box gives us a gorgeous-sounding version of the master that ends as it should, with the music trailing off into a haunting nothingness.

 

I'm trying not to mention the link song anymore ... I think my feelings were pretty clear lol. I could seriously moan about it in every song post

 

I made the same pledge to myself after we discussed Tomorrow Never Comes, but the usage of it after I Really Don't Want To Know was so egregious that I had to mention it. Those are the two cases where it really does bother me; otherwise, I can live with it.

 

I like Elvis's version of There Goes My Everything a whole lot, but than again, I have always loved the song itself. From Jack Greene to Englebert Humperdinck, there is hardly a version of it that I don't like a little in some way.

According to Gurlanick's great recording session opus A Life In Music, Elvis started the nightly recording session off by "agreeing that Dallas Frazier's 'There Goes My Everything' doesn't have to be straight country." So Elvis was once again aiming for that fine line between a traditional pop approach with some country undertones in the arrangement. Another fine orchestrator based out of Nashville, Gene "Cam" Mullins, helped to layer the string and horn arrangement carefully to enhance that country-pop feel of Elvis's original rhythm section, without overwhelming them or Elvis's more than supple voice. Arranger Cam Mullins had gotten his early start in the music business as a trombone player in jazz drummer Gene Krupa's big band, and he knew his way around a Nashville recording studio from playing brass instruments on records by Roy Orbison and many other recording acts. He also did the stellar string arrangements on Lynn Anderson's iconic version of Rose Garden as well as Ray Price's Grammy winning For The Good Times.

 

I always start out about the same way as @mark winstanley and Dirk do about this song. I look at the title and compare it to some to the other great songs on Elvis Country and think maybe I will skip it this time, but every time I actually play it, I seem to enjoy its perky little melody and Elvis's very fine vocal effort on the song. It always seems to surprise me in some way that I have actually have grown rather fond of it over the years.

 

Nobody can beat Ray Charles on that one. Elvis should have never tried (even the frenetic Vegas versions don't do it) and I'm skeptical about Roy's take too.

"Orange Blossom Special" has got to be one of those, right?

Elvis always used a lot of vibrato, it seems; I wonder where that came from.

'nuff said. Elvis' version may be very good but you just can't beat Les and Mary.

 

It's Your Baby, You Rock It is an idiom from the Southern vernacular. It is much like "You made your bed, now lie in it."

 

The original single master has a single drum beat that ends the song. The ONLY CD I have ever heard it on is the Japan box set "The Complete Singles".

 

"It's Your Baby" is easily the best of the four songs Shirl Milete wrote for Elvis. It has more swing than "When I'm Over You" and its lyrics, which make clever use of cliches, are much less wordy than those of "My Little Friend" and "Life." The highest compliment I can give "It's Your Baby," is that it sounds like an old, semi-classic country song that had been around for a while, rather than a new composition.

The song's genesis is hard to pin down. Spencer Leigh claims that "songwriter Shirl Milete picked up the telephone one morning and it was Elvis, who thought he was talking to Lamar Fike. He said, 'you fat son of a b***h' and was complaining about something, concluding 'It's your baby, you rock it!' When Shirl put the phone down, he realized he had a song title, and as it wasn't really his title, he listed Lamar's wife, Nora Fowler, as the co-writer."

The more reliable Gillian Gaar tells a less dramatic but more plausible story: the song's title "was inspired by an expression of Elvis's; Lamar Fike had passed it on to Milete, calling him one day to exclaim, 'I've got the best title in the world!' Milete duly came up with a song to match."

 

The original album mix of There Goes My Everything without the "10,000 years" snippet is available on the Love, Elvis compilation from 2005. Elvis Presley - Love, Elvis
The mono mix is available on several older RCA cds.

 

Elvis Presley January 16th - 1971 - The Jaycees - Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation