Elvis as a Musical Education
My mother was an Elvis fan. So we all were.
Of course, I had to take it all a lot further and become a fanatic. My first Elvis record was the budget album “Separate Ways” in 1972. The songs on it were sad, sweet and sentimental. But it was years and years before I wanted an album by any other artist.
And then Elvis died. And all manner of revelations came out and controversies broke out, shattering the glittering idol into a million grubby and tawdry pieces. Elvis was phoney, mere 'pop,' an appropriator who never wrote his songs etc etc etc. I heard it all over and again and came to believe it. He was rubbish, derivative, plastic, pop, thief, corrupt, lazy, complacent, commercial (there's a lot more where that came from).
And then, around the same time in the early 1990s on Radio 1, I heard Johnny Walker play “Stand By Me,” Anne Nightingale play “Long Black Limousine,” and Nicky Campbell play “Girl of My Best Friend.”
And I became a fanatic again.
It wasn't difficult.
I'm not uncritical as fanatics go, though. I try to dismantle the iconic status to just leave the voice. The photograph is of me in pensive, frankly emotional, mood at The Elvis Exhibition in Las Vegas. It's a difficult job smashing icons in order to revalue true worth. I have a wide musical appreciation. Frankly, I only function with music. No music, no words, no writing. Strip it all back down to size, and you are left with a voice I consider remarkable, inspiring all the unhealthy obsession and adulation all over again. I'm not interested in claims and counter-claims as to who was the best or the worst. You can choose your own kings, if you have need of kings. I don't see Elvis as 'the king' of anything. He's my favourite singer, as simple as that. I'm not interested in how many zillion records he sold, how many gold records he has to his name, how many number ones and hits he had. My view would be the same if he had sold nothing and the world had never heard of him. I like his voice; it is the voice of strings. I've been taking time out with my Elvis collection (oh, and Sam Cooke, his entire catalogue; Sam was blessed with a voice that lifts the weight of the world). I've been having a close listen, and having a think. And sitting down typing a few thoughts .. Here goes.
What is it about Elvis that does it for me? Obviously, the voice. But there's more to it than this.
“I sing all kinds,” he told Marion Keisker when he walked into Sun Studios in 1953. He did, too. He possessed a genuine multiplicity in music. I see him, at his best, as a democratic soul who affirmed a delicious variety. He had a remarkable stylistic range (not to all tastes, but I am very eclectic). Yes, he was rooted in blues, country, and gospel, but he was listening to, and drawing on, Mario Lanza, Dean Martin, 'pop' and the New York Metropolitan Opera and other such delights at the same time. He took his music from everywhere. Yes, it was 'pop.' He fashioned a new pop form that was without implication and which anyone could have a go at, even four ex-skifflers from Liverpool. He went into Sun singing not blues but ballads and pop, “My Happiness” by the Inkspots, then “Harbour Lights,” “I Love You Because.” I don't much care for his versions of those songs. But I rate his eerie version of “Blue Moon,” with all its other-worldly wailing, most highly.
The approach had its pitfalls – and we all know of the horrid musical misconceptions that followed, under the sway of the almighty dollar (in which he was complicit, of course, or enslaved, or both, it always ends the same). But I like the eclecticism. I approach Elvis as an education into “all kinds” of songs. At a very young age I was listening to, and developing an appreciation of, ballads, gospel, country music, and, of course, blues. How else would I have learned about Arthur Crudup, Arthur Gunther, Lowell Fulson, Rufus Thomas, Little Junior Parker … Mario Lanza …? What? You see what I'm saying – music of “all kinds.” People who know me know I get tetchy, sometimes angry, at purism. I'm a 'pop' kind of person (just drawing the line at the 95% of it that is rubbish). I've never been keen on the fallacy of origins in anything. “It's not where you take things from — it's where you take them to.” (Jean-Luc Godard). (Although I do like the interconnection between origins and ends to be existentially meaningful through practice and use – we won't get clarity, let alone agreement, on means if we lack clarity on ends – one for another day).
Talking of The Beatles … I once heard George Harrison talking to Joe Brown about Elvis. We all know Heartbreak Hotel and the other big hits, he said, but what about the songs that never get played? George wanted to hear this
And I want to hear this, possibly one of the best ten tracks he ever did (from a short list of at least one hundred).
Or Any Place is Paradise, So Glad You're Mine, Reconsider Baby, Little Sister, I Feel So Bad …
How long have you got? I could go on forever picking these great tracks, and talking about Arthur Crudup, Lowell Fulson, Pomus and Shuman, Chuck Willis.
In the interview below, Robert Plant gives Elvis all the praise he deserves, but says he wasn't happy that Elvis did “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
I love Elvis the ballad singer. I say he was a ballad singer of the highest order. And I love “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Try alternate take 2, even more intimate when stripped down to emotional essentials.
I love “Blue Hawaii,” too, (the last of the decent Elvis films or the first of the shockers, setting the template for what followed). I like the soundtrack more than the film, mind, with songs like “No More,” (written by Don Robertson – see below – deriving from “La Paloma.”) It makes me smile listening to Elvis singing “Moonlight Swim” from that film, knowing not only that it goes back to Bing Crosby, but that Anthony Perkins, of Bates Motel fame, scored a hit on the charts with it.
There's zero chance of me going for a Moonlight Swim with Norman Bates. It's when presented with an invitation like that that I'm glad I can't swim.
I love the fact that Elvis went to record at Stax Studios, Memphis in 1973, the home of black Memphis soul, with Booker T's MGs on hand, and proceeded to record … “Spanish Eyes.” Oh yes, Al Martino … It may not make a lot of musical sense. And I'd liked to have heard an injection of soul into the mix. But he did record a very nice version of the song all the same. I loved it. And I love “Loving Arms” and “Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues” from the same sessions.
I heard this first in 1975, at a very young age, and was bowled over. Still am. It wasn't what was taking the pop world by storm. But so what? It sounded good to my young ears. It sounds even better now.
(I love the 1974 rehearsal version of the song, too – it's on the second CD of the Elvis Recorded in Memphis Legacy edition - see what a fanatic I am …)
It's not exactly a song for a ten-year old – but it was a favourite then and remains so. By Danny O'Keefe. I heard him on the radio in California and recognized him – you see, Elvis is an introduction to a wide musical appreciation, and an education.
Stax '73 was a mature update of his original Sun synthesis of blues, country, gospel and pop, then. And I like it. I never had a downer on Elvis for not recording more rock than he did. He was obviously more than rock. In my view. I did have a downer on the throwaway approach to his rock hits, just singing memories, in the seventies shows. I can live without that. It added nothing and detracted a lot. 'If Memories are all I'd sing, I'd rather drive a truck' (Rick Nelson, Garden Party).
I love the fact that he recorded the most hauntingly beautiful version of “The Twelfth of Never,” and the fact that this version is merely a rehearsal from 1974, with no studio or concert recording issuing.
I love a simple song, like the one he recorded the month I was born, August 1965, “Sand Castles,” from the soundtrack of one of his very worst films, which contained some of the worst songs of his career.
It's very far from being the best song in the world. But simple. And I like it. It has a lyric that contains dancing whales, mermaids, dragons and fiddler crabs playing the violin... (Hang on, that sounds bizarre, I'd better check that I'm right. I am).
Bob Dylan's sublime “Tomorrow is a Long Time” is a candidate for being the best song in the world. And Elvis, in 1966, recorded the most sublime version it. And won his first Grammy for his “How Great Thou Art” album that same year.
“I liked Elvis Presley,” said Dylan. “Elvis Presley recording a song of mine. That’s the one recording I treasure the most… it was called “Tomorrow Is A Long Time.” I wrote it but never recorded it.” Elvis himself had heard Odetta's sublime version of the song. So I went and checked who Odetta was.
Incredible.
The music all links up, once we stop worrying (if we ever started) as to who is better than who and who is king of who, what, and wherever. It doesn't matter.
I like his tricky stuff, too, vocally demanding songs like “I'm Leavin'” and “Kentucky Rain” (which, with its vocal twists, sounds a lot like those incredible Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell songs of around the same time).
I like it stripped down and intimate, too.
I like that he sang a wealth of songs in private, regretting that he never recorded them, but loving that he carried on singing for sheer pleasure at home.
Nat Cole, brilliant vocalist, but I discovered his work as a jazz pianist too.
In those songs that Elvis sung at home in private for pleasure, I made more discoveries. I have Elvis singing “I Wonder” in private. I'd never heard of the song. I had to go and find out where it came from. Anyone heard of Eddy Howard?
I learned that Elvis shared a love and facility for Hawaiian ballads with Bing Crosby in the past and Marty Robbins in the present. I investigated Crosby, an impressive vocalist indeed. And through that interest discovered Al Bowlly. Now this is going back a while.
I love it. Guess I'm just an old romantic.
Elvis was a huge fan of Roy Hamilton. Never heard of him? Check Roy Hamilton out, you'll become a big fan too.
Let's get the nonsense as to who is better than who out of the way. In 1969 at American Sound Studios, Memphis, Elvis met his singing hero Roy Hamilton. Elvis handed him the song “Angelica.” It was a vocally demanding song and Elvis told Roy that he could do a far, far better job on it than he could. Unfortunately, Roy Hamilton died shortly after, July 1969. At Hamilton's funeral services, messages of condolence sent by Elvis, gospel legend Mahalia Jackson and blues legend B.B. King were read. Get to know Roy Hamilton if you don't already. Hamilton combined a semi-classical technique with traditional black gospel feeling to inject the Great American Songbook with soul. Elvis would, at the end of his career, return to Roy Hamilton to sing his own soul out as his career and his health failed (“Hurt,” “Unchained Melody,” he had already recorded “You'll Never Walk Alone” in the manner of Hamilton back in 1967). As author Fred L. Worth noted, "Elvis greatly admired Hamilton's singing ability and style and performed a number of his ballads in Hamilton's style.”
The influence is obvious:
How wonderful it would have been to have heard Elvis singing with Roy Hamilton. We can but regret that Elvis never found the freedom to follow his instincts and let the money take second place to the music. We needed to hear much more music like the duet between Elvis and R&B singer Kitty White. He'd have made great music, enjoyed himself, and lived a lot longer, healthier, and happier.
I found out that Grady Martin, who played guitar for Elvis in the sixties, also played for Marty Robbins on “El Paso.”
I do like Marty Robbins.
And here is Grady Martin doing his thing for Elvis, with Elvis in full Latin flourish
Elvis had some incredible musicians with him over the years. Take Hank Garland. His superb riffs and guitar artistry graced many a record from this era: Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee, Mel Tillis, Marty Robbins, The Everly Brothers, Boots Randolph, Roy Orbison, Conway Twitty, and Moon Mullican. He played with country stars like Lefty Frizzell and Don Gibson. He played with jazz artists like George Shearing and Charlie Parker, and his album “Jazz Winds From a New Direction” was cited by John Fordham, The Guardian's jazz critic, as the record that got him into jazz.
A car accident in 1961 left Garland in a coma that lasted for a week. He regained consciousness, but not coordination, and he never played guitar again. "I can't even imagine what he would have become had he not been in that accident," said Brad Paisley. "You're talking about 40 years of lost innovation that could have come only from him." When Chet Atkins was asked who he thought was the best guitar player ever in Nashville, Atkins without hesitation said "Hank Garland."
Garland worked with Elvis from 1957 to 1961, and was playing on the soundtrack for 'Follow That Dream' when his 1959 Chevy Nomad station wagon crashed near Springfield .... Garland's star burned out as a result of the accident, a series of 100 shock treatments administered at a Nashville hospital leaving him a shadow of his former self. The rest of his life was spent in obscurity and ill-health. But there was a time when Garland was the talk of Nashville, his adept playing and riffs taking a recording from the humdrum to the dazzling.
https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/hank-garland.shtml
And here is Hank Garland and Elvis in dazzling form in 1958:
Elvis' voice?
“What the world was hearing in what would become one of the most famous voices of the century was the sound of strings. Until Elvis, the sound underlying, intertwining, and blending with all popular vocalists, especially in the Big Band era, was of course the sound of horns. Bing Crosby's voice reproduced Paul Whiteman's horns; many of the best black horn players backed Billie Holiday; Louis Armstrong back-and-forthed himself on his own horn; and Sinatra's voice was the sound of Tommy Dorsey's trombone...
Elvis' voice backed by Scotty's guitar and Blackie's bass created a sound of strings totally different in rhythm, tempo, phrasing and 'decay' – the technical term for the dying vibrations of strings after they have been struck – from the echolalia of the big bands' massed horns. And the sounds were also produced differently – not through the mouth as in horns but through their fingers. When purists complained of Miles Davis adding guitars to his band to drive on the rhythm, he replied, 'Guitar players don't have to breathe.' The way a guitar is held vibrating against the gut must also be taken into account as giving the musician an entirely different feeling.
What Elvis conveyed to millions was the ecstatic experience of singing itself – whether bouncing joyously along on the notes or hitting one with a power that makes it explode like a shattering of diamonds... This ecstasy he never lost and over the years, as his voice grew richer and more technically accomplished and as he experimented with larger and more innovative orchestral textures, it took on a greater splendor and grandeuer.”
(Elaine Dundy, Elvis and Gladys, p.217)
I don't like that Elvis recorded tripe like “Yoga is as Yoga Does” (or that, as hard as this may be to believe, he recorded even worse than that). I don't like that the money that rolled in bought his silence and complicity and, in the end, his life. He was better than that. And deserved better than to be treated as a dancing chicken on a hot-plate. But he was in on the impossible deal. Get out of Hollywood and Vegas, Elvis! Hellholes! Cemeteries of all that is decent and holy.
Country boy, you got your feet in L.A.
But your mind's on Tennessee
Lookin' back, I can remember the time
When I sang my songs for free
Country boy, you got your feet in L.A.
Take a look at everything you own
But now and then, my heart keeps goin' home
- Glen Campbell, Country Boy
But there are the compromises that are involved from the very first – it's on the job description. That's the road that comes to own you.
Admittedly, I do have a soft spot for songs sung to puppets...
Nanci Griffiths does a very nice version of this German folk song. Muss i' denn, Muss i' denn, zum Städtele hinaus, (there you go, you never knew I could sing, did you?) written in the German Swabian dialect, as spoken in Württemberg. Marlene Dietrich recorded a version of the song, as the B-side of the 1959 of her single "Lili Marlene.”
The things you learn as an Elvis fan! It's an education, I tell you. Through “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” I discovered Al Jolson. Whole worlds within worlds open up.
I'll try to make the point even more clear. Say 'Elvis' to me and I think of a lot of music, a lot of different styles, and a lot of fine songwriters and musicians. Take Don Robertson. He wrote many classic country ballads for Elvis, to which he gave some of his finest vocal performances. Personal and intimate. Check out the Don Robertson songs Elvis recorded. 'There's Always Me,' 'Anything that's Part of You,' 'They Remind Me Too Much of You,' 'I Really Don't Want to Know,' 'I Met Her Today,' 'I'm Yours,' a gently lilting romantic ballad played on organ that went head-to-head with the Brit invasion in 1965. It didn't win. It simply couldn't win in that contest. It was incredibly old-fashioned even at the time, hopelessly out of date. But I like it. And I don't take the date on the top of the paper as my guide.
Just such a beautiful song, with a vocal to match. This was on the first Elvis album I owned. Is it any wonder that I didn't bother with the music of any other artist for years?
Robertson pioneered the 'slip note' piano style, sliding into a note from the one beneath. Elvis' pianist Floyd Cramer built a career out of that style. Check out what Don Robertson said of Elvis:
“To my surprise, he knew all about my having originated Floyd Cramer's piano style and announced to the room that I was the one that had invented Floyd Cramer's 'slip-note' style. It makes me sad to think about it, because I never really told Elvis how good he made me feel. Nor did I ever tell him how much I appreciated his fine renditions of my songs. I guess I assumed he knew how good he was. But I wish now that I had put it into words. It taught me a lesson. Now, whenever an artist does an outstanding rendition of one of my songs I make sure I thank the artist [and, if possible, everyone else who worked on the record]. I don't believe that any of them, no matter how rich or famous, are immune to expressions of appreciation from the writer.”
https://www.elvis.com.au/presley/don-robertson-writing-for-the-king.shtml
Oh, I have no reticence in saying it: Elvis was a very fine vocalist. He recorded fine renditions of a number of Ivory Joe Hunter songs, too, piano blues ballads like “I Will Be True,” “It's Still Here,” and this one:
Choice.
Ivory Joe wrote the immense ballad “My Wish Came True” for Elvis, and Elvis delivered a fine rendition. It works all ways, music, through reciprocity.
Some of these songs should never have worked. On paper, they make no sense whatsoever. For example: three songwriters from New York adapted an eighteenth century French melody for song to be sung in a movie set in Hawaii. As unpromising as that sounds, that's the story of one of Elvis' best-known ballads, “Can't Help Falling in Love.” I like alternate take 26, which has a celeste played by Canadian jazz pianist Dudley Brooks, accented by Alvino Ray's steel guitar.
I like “all kinds” of music and “all kinds” of people, and Elvis sang “all kinds” with “all kinds” of folk for “all kinds” of folk. He did it very well indeed. (Study the song list on the Hawaii '73 show and you'll see what I mean).
That authentic multiplicity in music got diverted and perverted along the way, no doubt – 'maybe one day your name will be in lights …' (Chuck Berry). He got what he wanted and he lost what he had …
I don't think he lost what he had so much as he lost his way. And lost his life.
"I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get/ Hank Williams hasn't answered me yet.” (Leonard Cohen, “Tower of Song.”)
Of course, I discovered Hank Williams
Elvis would recite Hank Williams' “Men with Broken Hearts” (in the desolate, soulless hellhole they call Las Vegas).
I could talk a lot more on all things Elvis. You'd have to meet me in person, and hope and pray for an escape after a few hours/days once I get going.
Dream on.
And this one ..
I saw this performed on a screen a billion feet high at The Elvis Exhibition, Las Vegas (at least it seemed like a billion feet, awesome experience).
Guess this world needs its dreamers, May they never wake up.” (Paddy McAloon, “Cars and Girls.”) Ah, Paddy, and the hugely ambitious album, “Jordan: The Comeback” from 1990, a vast, lavish pop symphony which included a suite of songs about Elvis Presley. I've never quite gone that far, but there's time yet.
Paddy McAloon is an interesting guy, and has interesting things to say. Take this from an interview in 1988:
'Paddy’s soft Geordie brogue almost trips over itself when he discusses his Presley songs. There’s The Jesse James Symphony, a song in the style of American Trilogy in which Elvis the singer gets to reflect on his long journey from his mother’s floor to Las Vegas. Then there’s Moondog in which Elvis finds himself on the moon and Jordan — The Comeback. Jordan has Presley sitting in the desert where he has escaped after faking his death and where he’s holed out in the hope of finally getting some decent songs. His spoken monologue laments the books that have been written about him since his “death” and their lack of love and then finally breaks into a gospel chorus — “At the end of the road I’m travelling, I will see Jordan beckoning.”
Paddy McAloon knows he will never be Elvis Presley and doesn’t find this a matter for regret. Instead he practises his craft by taking the likes of Elvis for his subject matter and probably discovers a little more about himself in the process. Ask him about Paul Simon and he finds himself explaining his own predicament.
“Simon has that problem of distance which he knows he has but he still wishes he was Elvis Presley on occasion — look at songs like Keep the Customer Satisfied. I have that too; I sometimes wish I was like Elvis. But then I think, No, I’m a 1980s writer. We romanticise the songs he did in the ’50s but if you listen to them now, they’re nothing, just bits of fluff without his presence. If you don’t have that kind of presence — which I don’t have and Paul Simon doesn’t have and most writers don’t — you’ve got to take a different tack. If you can’t make pale songs glow about something else.”'
The songs are better than that, but they are much better than they are because of the voice. Way too much has been written about the fact that Elvis didn't write his own songs. He actually re-wrote these songs vocally and made many of them far better than they actually were or are. And when he removed his “presence” from them in live performance in the 1970s, they did indeed sound like nothing, bits of fluff (generalising wildly, of course).
I'd encourage you to read this very well-written article by a man I always greatly admired, the sage and witty and ever entertaining Liverpool jazz-blues artist George Melly. Although my tastes are rather more broad and certainly more tolerant when it comes to the ballads and pop and such like, I think George's assessment is fair and generous. (I just don't accept the view that the early Elvis is good and the later Elvis bad – there is outstanding work in all periods). Despite being clouded by all the fame and adulation and iconic status, Elvis was actually very good and he had quite a cultural impact, a good one and a liberating one, for the most part, I'd say, and a treacherous one in other parts, with him himself in person the most prominent victim. In the end, you do have to stay true.
“Pure speculation this, but at any rate on early national TV programmes, Elvis was never shown from the waist down, but then, like Satan's rendezvous with Jesus, Colonel Parker led him up to the heights and offered him the whole world. The difference is (and who can blame him?) that Elvis accepted the offer and it was, alas, honoured.”
“quite simply one of the loveliest songs Elvis would ever record.” (Colin Escott, Today, Tomorrow and Forever).
It's an odd old tale, a salutary lesson for the age we are living through, with all its temptations and false promises. What does it take for us to see fame and fortune for the pathetic frauds they are?
“Democracy in America has been undermined for decades by a society that is a winner-takes-all race to the top in which the winner gets ridiculously richer while everybody else lives lives that make less sense all the time in terms of their dreams for themselves and their children.
“Then you get a free-for-all in which isolationist, greedy forces with their own agendas treat your country like a plaything.
“To bring it back to the movie, that is what happened in the life of Elvis Presley. You watch a young, beautiful, authentic creature in a brave new world chewed up and destroyed by the power and the money.
“It seduces him and ultimately addicts him and suppresses whatever it was that was great about him and turns him into a monster of its own creation.”
“He gets to a point where he is both a victim and a part of his own undoing – he wanted to tour and go abroad after the ’68 Comeback Special reinvigorated him but under the Colonel’s guidance chose the easy money in Vegas – and that’s happening to all of us.
“So Elvis is a cautionary tale of how that kind of corruption can run away with something and destroy it.”
"I suppose the most important thing in a person's life is happiness. Not worldly things.. You can have cars, you can have money, you can have a fabulous home, you can have everything... if you're not happy, what have you got? So I suppose if I can continue to make other people's lives enjoyable and my own life happy, well, that's all I can expect out of life."
- Elvis.
Happy 84th Birthday, Elvis.
I just hope that somewhere along the way you had at least one ounce of the pleasure making the music as I've had listening to it over the years.
On balance, I know for sure that the good far outweighed the bad.