Elvis Presley - The Albums and Singles Thread pt3 The Seventies

The main issue here is that even by grabbing the single I'M LEAVIN' and adding the best tracks from "Now" and "Elvis" (fool album), you still don't get a decent Pop / Folk album. Only "He touched me" should have been released in early 1972 and the rest of the 1971 studio recordings could have been kept in the RCA vaults until Elvis would have been ready for a new, proper and inspired studio session. My two cents.

 

Amazingly, if you include the two Camdens (with new tracks, so I think they count), it takes another 7 albums to get to 1973's Elvis/Fool LP:

Now
He Touched Me
Madison Square Garden
Burning Love
Separate Ways
Aloha
Elvis/Fool

 

I've hyped up the I Sing All Kinds FTD here before, but it deserves another shout-out while we're talking about the shortcomings of Elvis Now. I generally don't care for Elvis' takes on Until It's Time For You To Go or Help Me Make It Through The Night (I don't like the former as a song, and the Kristofferson version of the latter is the definitive performance for me), but they're actually quite effective on I Sing All Kinds. There's a section near the beginning that almost acts as a mini alternate Now/Fool hybrid, sequenced so well that I actually get something out of hearing those two songs. Plus, they mixed out the harmonica on Early Morning Rain, which takes it from a so-so master to a superlative outtake, imo. The relevant sequence goes:

For Lovin' Me (take 10)
Early Morning Rain (take 11)
Fools Rush In (take 14)
Help Me Make It Through The Night (takes 6 & 7)
It's Still Here (takes 1, 2, & 3)
I Will Be True (take 1)
Until It's Time For You To Go (takes 5 & 6)
It's Only Love (take 7)
I'm Leavin' (take 3)

As a moody, downbeat album about the darker side of love, that's a pretty damn fine hypothetical release.

 

Well, those are certainly most of the redeeming song titles, but what that list shows is that the Nashville ‘71 session simply did not yield a viable commercial, secular album. It was the result of ineffective A&R representation and an ineffective producer. For an Elvis fan, that is a relatively enjoyable sequencing of tracks, but as an album, it doesn’t deliver.

 

It is missing the piano intro to Silent Night. Apart from that it's a great compilation.

Other options:
Elvis* - White Christmas The two Christmas albums in complete form + If Everyday Was Like Christmas and Mama Liked The Roses.

Elvis Presley - Christmas All christmas songs + Blue Christmas from the '68 Special.

 

Elvis Now (1972) I found somewhat disappointing, but I've kept the vinyl for 30 years, mostly for Early Mornin' Rain. That track has meant a lot to me.

 

I think "If Every Day Was Like Christmas" is by far the best CD to get for Elvis' Christmas music. You're only missing the live '68 version of "Blue Christmas", which you probably have elsewhere, and the intro to "Silent Night" gets replaced by "Christmas Message from Elvis", which IMO, is an improvement. But more importantly, you get the fantastic remake of "I'll Be Home On Christmas Day" and a couple of alternate takes as well. The sound is fantastic as well.

 

Fascinating. So no comp that presents the albums in original order with "If Every Day" sandwiched in between. I do have the "White Christmas" set already, though...really wish it didn't have "Mama Liked The Roses" on there Good to know!

 

I picked this album up fairly recently cos after years of owning "elvis country," I wanted the full version of "i was born about 10,000 years ago." great song.

 

Help Me Make It Thought The Night
Written By :
Kris Kristofferson

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, May 15-21, 1971: May 17, 1971. take 11 and end of take 16

Although probably a very unpopular opinion Kristofferson is one of my favourite country albums. I find the writing and execution of the songs to be quite brilliant. Having said that, I am actually a big fan of this version of the song. It is certainly Elvisified, but in this instance I think Elvis has done a great job of the song. It has the right amount of heart, and we have a very solid version that manages to stay its hand in terms of being overblown.
Elvis got the balance right and really nailed the heart of the song. So even in this later time, Elvis was able through the haze see what needed to be done here and did it well.

 

Miracle Of The Rosary
Written By :
Lee Denson

Recorded :
RCA's Studio B, Nashville, May 15-21, 1971: May 15, 1971. take 4

I guess this song is ok, and it is musically pretty decent, but for all it's biblical implications, there is nothing very biblical about it.
I think Elvis does a great vocal, and the arrangement is pretty good, but the song is a little weak to me.



apologies, somehow I forget to actually post this lol

 

The 50's tracks have added digital reverb, but it's a very good track list.

 

Same here. I'll go so far as to say that I think it's one of the best written and performed albums out there by anyone in any genre. Virtually every song is brilliant, and Kristofferson's vocals are full of understated emotion. No one comes close to his reading of Help Me Make It Through The Night, imo, least of all Elvis. Elvis' version is surprisingly dull, given that it seems like the sort of song he could have immediately connected with. Putting it as the album opener was a particularly bad idea, starting the album off on a rather uninspired note.

The backing vocals ruin the album version of Miracle Of The Rosary for me. Conversely, I love the earlier take included on Platinum, and I rank it amongst my favourite Elvis gospel songs. The song gets a lot of flak from Elvis fans, but as someone who was raised Catholic, I've always found that it hits all the right emotional notes. Honestly, I'd have held it over for He Touched Me (perhaps along with Put Your Hand In The Hand), replacing some of the weaker songs and making a great album even better.

 

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Kristofferson's debut self-titled LP - it's brilliant on so many levels. And that's why Elvis' version of the warhorse Help Me Make It Through The Night is such a let-down - to my ears, it just seems bland and emotionless. This is one I'm kinda suprised wasn't left 'in the can', like My Way. The backing vocals are nice though.

 

Miracle of the Rosary is an odd track, a prayer set to (IMO bland) music. And Millie Kirkham doing her - again IMO - over-used vocal stylings. Elvis just seems to be going through the motions on this one. As such, I usually skip this track.

Sorry to sound like a Debbie Downer on this album, but side 1 in particular is pretty uninspiring. Oh geez, look what track is next...

 

Elvis's version of Kris Kristofferson's brilliant Help Me Make It Through The Night is one of his most frustrating and disappointing stabs at a remake in his entire cannon. I can cite a dozen times or more when Elvis exceeds the original version of an iconic song to my ears, including his stupendous remakes of Any Day Now, The Wonder Of You, Bridge Over Troubled Water, She Thinks I Still Care and Unchained Melody, just to name a few stellar and surprising examples. Elvis's dull version of Help Me Make It Through The Night is a failure to my ears on so many counts. His voice is flat and lifeless to my ears, despite the fact that he attempted a lot of takes on the standard and would include some live versions of it in Las Vegas over the years, which to my ears are superior in most ways to this anemic effort.

Kris Kristofferson is one of the greatest songwriters in the history of country music and I really like Elvis's live versions of two of Kristofferson's other country standards, For The Good Times and Why Me Lord, so this is heartbreaking to me that I can find so little joy in Elvis's version of HMMITTN. I do like his vocalization on "...but tonight I need a friend," and his sorrowful follow-up on "yesterday is dead and gone." Those are the only vocal highlights of the entire performance for me, and I find the whole rhythm arrangement by the band to be just as lackluster as Elvis's vocal on the song.

My go to version will always be Sammy Smith's Grammy winning vocal performance from 1971, so my standards for this song were already set very high by the time Elvis took a stab at it.

 

Was "Miracle Of The Rosary" deemed not good enough for "He Touched Me"? (For that matter, ditto for "Put Your Hand In The Hand"?)

 

I don't know. Interesting question though.
If we took it that they were, then really management and the record company willfully release an album of substandard material (not even on the Camden label) ... which is not surprising, but reprehensible.

 

I find it interesting that everyone is so disappointed with Help Me Make It Through The Night.
I actually do like it. I don't necessarily think Elvis was disinterested, to me it just sounds like he is going for that desperate and lost feel to suit the idea of this lyric of emptiness. Perhaps his feeling on this song, just didn't match the expectations? ... or perhaps a couple of substandard albums in a row, just raise a little resentment?
It isn't easy being an Elvis fan in the modern world. We get assaulted with sarcastic impersonations and constant maligning.... perhaps we sometimes just resent that and take i out on the non-stupendous material?

I don't know guys, just throwing it out there ... I work with a lot of, younger than me, mechanics and construction guys, and they'll have a dig at Elvis at just about every given opportunity lol

 

Those are some fine points you make and probably true enough in some cases, but Elvis's version of the upcoming song on side one, Until It's Time For You To Go, is one of the most elegant and intimately gorgeous vocals that Elvis ever put to tape, so to my ears it is just a case of hit and miss on this album and about half the songs are misses. I actually really love three or four songs on this album, and I love a lot of the middle 70's albums that come later that are not so revered by many fans, so I still think Elvis was capable of making great music, but this album was not put together in a cohesive fashion and a few of the cuts should have been completely left off of it.

 

Interesting point; I never thought of it that way before. I guess my real issue is that I don't get any emotional hit off of Elvis' performance, and so, to my ears, he simply sounds uninterested, end of story. There's nothing in his phrasing that makes me feel the lyrics, nothing about his tone that makes me sense any sort of pain. Compare Kristofferson's delivery on the opening line to Elvis'. Elvis just sort of sings it like he's reading the lyrics for the first time off of a guide sheet, like he doesn't know where it's going, whereas Kristofferson's vocal immediately lets you know that "Take the ribbon from your hair" is more desperate and hollow than it is sexy or seductive.

Even the "I don't care what's right or wrong" part, which seems perfectly suited to 70s Elvis, doesn't soar the way it should.

Well, I enjoy albums as maligned as Frankie & Johnny and Love Letters, so there's no resentment over here. I couldn't care less if other people dislike or mock Elvis, and it certainly doesn't impact my enjoyment of his music. Honestly, my entire record collection is sufficiently "uncool" that I'd have to sell off at least half of it if I cared what other people thought!

 

It's odd that they were overlooked to the point of putting a non-gospel song on He Touched Me instead (A Thing Called Love).

 

Oh, no disagreement from me. This is a poor album in many many respects. I was just wondering if, because as an album it is so unusually poor, that some tracks get dragged down by that overall hrrumph of the album. Whereby on an album like Country, some songs are raised up by the overall appeal of the album.
Just speculating

 

Great point. I'm thinking the brain trust at RCA in charge of Elvis releases back in this era saw that there's a single lyric reference to God in 'A Thing Called Love' so they interpreted it as a gospel song.

 

At least for me, this is the first Elvis studio album that's a let-down. It just seems ill-conceived, with several left-over tracks in a market that was already far over-saturated with Elvis product.