The case for Elvis Presley

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Price.pittsburgh, Dec 14, 2018.

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  1. Psychedelic Good Trip

    Psychedelic Good Trip Beautiful Psychedelic Colors Everywhere

    Location:
    New York
    Elvis Americana 1950's early 1960's simply amazing.


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  2. Roland Stone

    Roland Stone Offending Member

    I believe even Howlin' Wolf complimented Elvis. And Chester Arthur Burnett was not promiscuous with compliments!
     
  3. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    His place in music history is well established, no need to worry there. That being said, a persons historicity does not always mean their works maintain a continuing or contemporaneous relevance. The two aspects are not incompatible. I have about as big a contact circle as anyone else; friends of different age groups, co-workers, neighbors, family & extended family, live in a big city, etc. and literally no one I know of speaks of him as other than the Elvis steeped in his time. No one I know of bubbles about his image, his songs, or buys or collect his works to a fraction of a degree they do other artists starting right about the Beatles. Record dealers I know too say some of his early stuff will sell if in good condition but by and large 95% of his catalog sits and the book or price guides are unrealistic. I know a number of people who have Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, or Nat King Cole downloaded or on CD, but literally no one has Elvis. At a dinner recently the topic of music came up with one of my kids and several of his friends - all music fanatics - and the consensus was that he's iconic, historic, some of his early songs are good, but beyond that he doesn't resonate artistically with their peers or anyone they know as far as his image or body of work. Like anyone whose music personally connects with us, this stuff is hard to fathom when we hear it, but thats the way life works.
     
  4. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Deep Texas
    It would be 'liquid nitrogen cool' to have heard Elvis do an entire LP of stripped-down Dan Penn/Spooner Oldham soul songs in the late 60s/early 70s.
     
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  5. Timmy84

    Timmy84 Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I feel had he changed record companies - AND managers - Elvis would've definitely done some of the stuff y'all mentioned. I could see him doing a Dylan covers album. He was just that diverse!
     
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  6. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    I often think “what if” he had recorded more songs from writers such as Robbie Robertson or Gram Parsons or Bob Dylan in the aftermath of the ‘68 comeback, but his song choices during that era were still pretty good. He tackled big tunes by the likes of Paul Simon and George Harrison, and found lesser-known material such as Loving Arms and Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues that really worked for him. Of course, he could take an arguably second-tier song such as Just Pretend and wring a depth of feeling out of it that perhaps even its authors didn’t know was there.
     
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  7. patient_ot

    patient_ot Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    My father was born in the 40s and was a big Elvis fan for his whole life, even watching a lot of those corny movies in his later years.

    I just don't relate to Elvis as a character or as music I'd want to listen to very often. Across formats, I probably own well over 6,000 albums and I have exactly one Elvis album in my collection at the present time (a reissue of his first RCA LP). I'll probably add some of his Sun Sessions and "Elvis in Memphis" at some point but I'm in no rush. Again, just not something I'll put on very often.

    And FWIW, I don't think this has anything to do with Elvis being a 50s icon and having some hard cuttoff date for music I like. I put on classical music more often than Elvis and that predates Elvis by hundreds of years. In terms of contemporary music from the 50s, jazz interests me much more than Elvis.
     
  8. Timmy84

    Timmy84 Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    Here's one reason I actually began to respect Elvis: when he was 16, Barry White went to jail for stealing car tires in Los Angeles. One day, while laying in his cot, the radio began playing "It's Now or Never". Barry said as soon as he heard it, he took it as a premonition: it's now or never. When he left jail, he left his gang and began his music career and hewent on to be one of the best-selling R&B artists in the '70s. Now if THAT'S not inspiration, I don't know what is. It totally changed my whole opinion about Elvis.

    It may be also why I consider "It's Now or Never" one of my favorite recordings of his.
     
  9. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Florida
    I remember A&E did the most influential people of the entire millennium from 1000 AD through 1999 and Elvis was #57 with The Beatles at #76.
    https://wmich.edu/mus-gened/mus150/biography100.html
     
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  10. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Florida
  11. Gregster

    Gregster Forum Resident

    Location:
    Australia
    Elvis was great !!!

    We should also remember that everyone's time, comes & goes too.

    It's important to remember where we came from, as it helps tell the story of our own lives, & the people that made it into our lives.

    The King is dead, long live the King.

    ( NB. IMO, he has far more importance in our music history than the fab-four,( no fight started or wanted )).
     
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  12. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    Presley wouldn't have had to pay Big Mama a red cent, as she didn't write "Hound Dog", Leiber and Stoller did... They're the ones who would be receiving royalties from Presley's record, just as they would have received royalties from Big Mama's record (which, by the way, is the song they really wrote... Presley's record wasn't exactly a carbon copy of the original lyrics)...
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2018
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  13. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    How can "Hound Dog" be considered "black music", when it was written by two nice Jewish boys? :) Anyway, I see others have covered all of this, that's why I should have read thru the entire thread before replying, so things wouldn't have been repeated..

    I used to have Sirius/XM Radio and listened to "Elvis Radio" quite a bit... One time on the air, George Klein (one of Elvis' best friends from way back before he was a star) said something like "The only time Elvis didn't choose the material was when it came to doing the soundtrack albums..."
     
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  14. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI

    The Beatles don't sound "dated", like they were recorded in the sixties? That's funny...
     
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  15. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

    Location:
    NYC
    In the evolution of popular music Elvis was unique and ground-breaking, but he was not alone.
     
  16. NYSPORTSFAN

    NYSPORTSFAN Forum Resident

    Location:
    Howell, Michigan
    Let's not forget Elvis recorded music after The Beatles as well.

    The Beatles don't sound dated as compared to Elvis and let's be factual the albums from Rubber Soul and on are more closer to modern pop/rock music. Song like "Taxman", "Tomorrow Never Knows' and "Helter Skelter" for example are just closer to modern pop/ rock music than what Elvis was doing.

    There is no doubt Elvis Presley was a huge influence on rock and roll but he was not the only one. If you dig deeper Chuck Berry had a top ten hit before Elvis and was in my opinion a bigger direct influence on The Beach Boys and the Beatles led British Invasion. I also think people like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly who were songwriters as well had a more direct influence on those artists well.

    A lot of people view Elvis a more of entertainer and celebrity type star though not by me. I don't have any issues with Elvis doing Vegas and wearing those ridiculously dated Rhinestone outfits it's just entertainment.

    However, there was a recent study using data that tabulated the most artists who influenced other musicians. Is as follows:

    The most influential artist over two generations using All Music data.

    #1 The Beatles : 30,078
    #2 Bob Dylan 22,065
    #3 The Rolling Stones 18,607
    #4 David Bowie 15,225
    #5 Jimi Hendrix 13,910
    #6 The Velvet Underground: 13,910
    #7 Chuck Berry 13,591
    #8 Sex Pistols 12,366
    #9 The Stooges 11,389
    #10 The Who 11,374
    #11 Led Zeppelin 11,156
    #12 The Kinks 11,091
    #13 Elvis Presley 10,423
    #14 The Byrds 10,133
    #15 James Brown 10,037
    #17 The Beach Boys 9,071
    #24 Little Richard 7,736
     
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  17. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Florida
    I agree as far as influence on a style or approach goes, that lots of other artists are higher than Elvis when it comes to the legends that followed.
    (Even though Buddy Holly wrote a lot of his own stuff his arrangements and vocals at times, were clearly derivative of early Rockabilly Elvis.)
    But, my point is that the impact of Elvis in future artists lives was more significant than the influence of a style.
    That's why Tom Petty said you couldn't be Elvis but he could do the Beatles.
    Elvis made people want to do anything music related.
    But his image and vocals were so unique and identifiable they had to it via a different route.
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2018
  18. Stone Turntable

    Stone Turntable Independent Head

    Location:
    New Mexico USA
    I just finished reading Eric Lott's Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, and it sharply revised my view of where Elvus came from and of the evolution of his reputation since the 50's, though Elvis himself is mentioned only in passing.

    Revised not in some dire bad way — I still revere the transcendent hits comp mastered by Steve Hoffman, and a bunch of his other music as well — but in a complicating way that helps me comprehend why straightforward "innocent" Elvis worship has fallen on somewhat hard times.
     
  19. Jocko

    Jocko Forum Resident

    I have some definite thoughts on the man. As far as influence goes, probably one if not the single most important person to influence Rock and Roll. Love or hate him, it seems most of the biggest Rock stars from the 60’s and 70’s count him as the biggest inspiration in their lives. The fact that Lennon speaks so highly of him is probably enough alone to praise the man.
    That being said, I have a few things that knock him down a few notches in my world. Aside from his timing in music history, he seems a tad overrated? Doesn’t write songs or music and can’t really play an instrument. He had really smart people guiding him and no doubt he was loaded with talent. He’s a heck of an entertainer, but is he really a Rock star? Sure, the Beatles had help too. I’m just tying to balance things out.
    Some things that have always bothered me going back in time...he always hated the British Invasion because he saw them as competition. He always hated marijuana but gulped down handfuls of legal drugs supplied by good ol’ Dr. Nick.
    In a time period that music was getting free-er with less restrictions, Elvis held firm with standard stuff. The Brits ran him over! Lastly on theses trivial matters...I can’t forget when he went to Nixon and asked to be an undercover drug agent because he knew many famous Rock stars that used pot and even worse things. Nixon’s people said forget it and presented him with an official badge anyway. Small things perhaps, but it’s always bugged me.
    In many ways, Elvis was a music-money machine. His handlers telling him exactly what to do. Compared to like Chuck Berry(the real king of Rock and Roll), Chuck wrote his own songs and music, merged into the British Invasion, was embraced by a newer generation of music. So much easier to respect something like that. Maybe a bad comparison, but I’m making a point.
    Yeah, I own quite a bit of Elvis. I study the music because it needs to be understood in the timeframe it was in. Yes, possibly without the man, some of our biggest hero’s might not have been? Can you say Tom Petty? A super important man in music history with limited respect from me.
     
  20. Spencer R

    Spencer R Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oxford, MS
    While he wasn’t a virtuoso instrumentalist, Elvis could and did play guitar, bass, and piano throughout his life.
     
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  21. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

    Location:
    NYC
    More evidence - The King lives on today!
     
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  22. Jocko

    Jocko Forum Resident

    Ok, I’ll grant you that, but barely played any of those in reality. Ringo played piano too, but he was showed a couple chords, but was bad. Elvis could sing but check out his instrumentation over the years. Instruments were mostly a prop.
    There’s other “Rock stars” that couldn’t play music either. Elvis had a million dollar voice...I concede that. I appreciate your comment. I’m not looking to argue. I absolutely knew talking smack about such a huge idol opened me up to possible responses. I have struggled over many decades with my love\hate of such an important artist. The facts learned thru his journey I still find troubling. I collect music and wouldn’t think of not having a healthy dose of Elvis on hand for certain occasions. Frank Sinatra wasn’t a musician or wrote music either. He was another “performer”. These people almost belong to a different generation than mine.
     
  23. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Florida
    I think it's also important to understand that Elvis changing from a Rock n Roll performer to a more "mature" singer is viewed by many as growing as an artist vocally.
    The reason many of those early rockers never maintained long-term careers is because they were very one dimensional singers.
    Rock was still seen as possibly being a fad by the time Elvis was drafted and even upon his honorable discharge.
    It's not like Berry and Richard could have delivered It's Now Or Never and Can't Help Falling In Love and later Suspicious Minds or any of the 69 Memphis or 70 Nashville sessions.
     
  24. Trainspotting

    Trainspotting Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    :D
    I usually agree with you, but not this time. I have everything Elvis released during his lifetime and many posthumous box sets. So now you know one person who speaks of him as a god and owns all of his music. He resonates artistically with me as much as any other artist.

    Now, John Cipollina, that's someone you don't hear about anymore...:D
     
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  25. Price.pittsburgh

    Price.pittsburgh Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Florida

    2018 iPhone FaceTime commercial.
    Sadly milking the jumpsuit impersonators,
    Still, good to see them playing a lesser known Elvis song for the masses to hear and appreciate.
    Often that leads to renewed interest.
     
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