I so agree with you here. Davis was a huge admirer of both Elvis and Buddy Holly and got into the business because of their influence more or less. As I recall, Davis also wrote the great Something's Burning with Elvis in mind, but of course that one got to be a huge hit for Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. I got to know Kenny Rogers a little bit after a chance meeting in Las Vegas with the guy that ran Kenny's self owned label in the late 1990's. I have a lot of his signed photos of other great singers like Frank Sinatra that he took many years ago.
I never relalized Elvis played guitar and piano on this (awesome) track. I’m curious which instrument he was playing when he laid down his vocal.
Davis wrote or cowrote 4 of the 6 singles Elvis released in 1969 (Memories, In The Ghetto, Clean Up Your Own Backyard, and Don't Cry Daddy). I believe that is the record for most Elvis singles written by the same person in a single year.
Elvis is by far my favourite artist of all time, but at the same time, I feel like this thread is moving far too fast for me to keep up with it. A few quick comments on his career thus far (that is, up to ~1956): - It's impossible to overrate his Sun material. Even the supposedly-bland ballads have an emotional depth that other artists would kill to achieve. - His early RCA material is - imvho - the most exciting, dynamic work of his career. You have the raw instruments of the Sun sides, coupled with a new-found confidence, and none of the saccharine backing vocals that occasionally compromised his later work. - Steve Shoals dropped the ball on his first album. With that fantastic cover shot, it should have been an album for the ages. It's great for what it is - I truly enjoy every single track - but it could have been even better with a few substitutions.
Ok. If I have been going along too fast I will take it down to one track a day. Although when we do the singles I will be including the b-sides on the same day as the a-sides ....
Ready Teddy "Ready Teddy" is a song written by John Marascalco and Robert Blackwell, and first made popular by Little Richard in 1956.[1] Little Richard sang and played piano on the recording, backed by a band consisting of Lee Allen (tenor saxophone), Alvin "Red" Tyler (baritone sax), Edgar Blanchard (guitar), Frank Fields (bass), and Earl Palmer (drums).[2] It has since been covered by Buddy Holly, The Tornados, Elvis Presley, Tony Sheridan and others,[2] making it something of a rock and roll standard. The composition, an uptempo rock and roll song, received its largest ever recognition on the evening of September 9, 1956, as Elvis Presley sang it in front of some 60 million television viewers during his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show at CBS, a broadcast which received a Trendex percentage share of 82.6, the largest ever obtained in the history of US television. It was later used in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), in a version by Italian rocker Adriano Celentano. ----------------------- This is a great version of pretty much a rock and roll standard. The drums are pounding, the piano is banging and Scotty Moore slashes away on the lead break. These are some of the things that pretty much define rock and roll and its offspring, rock. The vocal is very good and the song is probably one of the better rockers on the album and counterbalances some of the more relaxed songs on the album. It is probably not surprising that the song comes ripping in after Old Shep.
Just for the record .... If I have flown out like a bull at a gate, apologies, but you will have plenty of time to catch up. I will be away from 9/15 until 9/23.
Ready Teddy - studio info Elvis walks to the corner of the studio, picking up his guitar and tuning it, returning to the microphone. At this moment his hands move across the strings, his expression changes. Singing or playing, his body is in tension. Elvis is completely wrapped up in his delivery. It is like an aura about him, and it isn't something that he turns on for his audiences.Elvis the perfectionist is dissatisfied with one arrangement after another, he stops frequently, replaying a phrase, saying to the group at large, 'Here listen to this' adding a new variation. As Elvis practices matching his singing to the guitar, the rhythm is so infectious that the Jordanaires clap hands in the background, accentuating the beat, no one has suggested they do this. Takes 1-12, take 12 is the Master. Elvis Performed the number on September the 9th on the Ed Sullivan Show, just under a week from the studio recording, and unsurprisingly is very close to the studio cut. It's worth noting that Gordon Stoker can be seen playing the piano on this performance, therefore the conclusion would be that Mr.Stoker also played the piano on the studio version. No piano player had been booked, and the duties were shared between Gordon Stoker and Elvis. Elvis was the sole producer of his recordings, and he made the decisions. The producers names that are on those recordings..they just sat there in the control room.
This was one of the most under-reported facts about the career and legacy of Elvis Presley for so many years. Yes, Chet Atkins and Steve Sholes had a role in the recording process, but essentially after Sam Phillips and with a brief interruption for Chips Moman's great production in 1969, Elvis was the one in charge of the arrangements to a large extent and he decided how many takes and the direction that the musicians would take. Elvis should have been listed as producer or at least co-producer on almost all of his recording sessions with the exception of the two previously mentioned above. Thanks, Mark, for pointing out this essential fact on Elvis recording career so early in this thread, as it took music historians a long time to recognize and emphasize this fact for many years.
Elvis' covers of Little Richard (and Chuck Berry, for that matter) are generally pretty weak compared to the originals, imo. Ready Teddy is the exception. I've not heard a bad version of it; the studio version cooks, and the live/television performances that we have are just as good. I still have no idea what the lyrics are for most of the verses, but it doesn't matter. Elvis sounds possessed (in the best way possible), just storming through the song with the confidence that nothing can stop him. Hound Dog gets most of the accolades, but Ready Teddy is probably my favourite rock & roll performance by Elvis.
Totally agree with you on the Little Richard covers. I wouldn't say they are weak, but those songs were written for Little Richard's howling hard rock vocal (normally by Richard himself) and suit him better than Elvis' style of delivery. Ready Teddy is an exception and it works well.
I mostly agree with this statement, but I so have to say I think some of Elvis's live versions of Johnny B Goode were pretty decent and in my opinion his later version of Promised Land blows Chuck Berry's original out of the water.
Yes, Little Richard was a master rock and roller, and it was difficult for anyone to cover his work, but Elvis' cover of "Rip It Up" is underrated. Also, with regard to Elvis' tremendous cover of "Promised Land," I think it surpasses Berry's original.
I really enjoyed Elvis' Promised Land a lot, but I have only listened to it once as yet. I'm cramming albums from the sixties and seventies so I am more familiar with them when we get there.
As I said before, I would say that Elvis's cuts of 'Rip It Up' and 'Ready Teddy' both work very well - in fact, they may be my favorite covers of Little Richard by anybody, perhaps not replacing Richard's original, but offering a nice alternate angle on the song. 'Tutti Frutti' doesn't work for me, and 'Long Tall Sally' falls somewhere in between. @mark winstanley - if you like 'Don't Cry Daddy', see if you can track down the undubbed master take that was on one of the FTDs several years ago. It's stripped off all the strings and background vocals, but still contains Elvis's harmony vocal overdub. It gives me chills (and I'm not even that much of a fan of the single version).
One of my favorite performances. I bought this: https://www.amazon.com/Elvis-Presley-Ed-Sullivan-Shows/dp/B000I2J7FO It looks and sounds fantastic. I am glad I got it back when it first came out. It goes for quite a bit of coin now.
Simply priceless. What did Bruce Springsteen say, something like, "There have been many pretenders and many contenders, but only one King?" I am paraphrasing here, but it is close to what he said about Elvis.
and so true ... he doesn't count as a front man in modern band terms .... but he was essentially the front man prototype
