Elvis Presley: Classic Or Dud?

idk, i feel like it's a very statistics-driven piece and i dont disagree but it's kinda ignoring the reality of what elvis has become

I dont think i really started buying elvis albums until my late 20's or early 30's when i realized on my own that it wasnt just nostalgic hits my mum liked that i heard growing up, that there was a whole world of stuff that was pretty cool

frankly i dont think he's been an artist for the "youth" for a long time, decades even

im not mad about it

agreed, and anyway good music endures, esp. in a digital marketplace that obviates the choice of one artist's work over another. It's not like Elvis is gonna go unheard.

my feeling about the article is that the argument it makes is probably pretty much right -- but, yknow, who cares. i don't think elvis's greatness should be judged by how many millennials are listening to him on spotify. his place in american culture is secure and isn't going to vanish just because we aren't experiencing an "elvis moment" the way we arguably had a bowie moment last year.

my sense is that he's falling into obscurity slightly faster than his contemporary musical icons

That article is "true" but also completely wrong. It pertains to Elvis the business not Elvis the artist. He has one of the richest outputs out there so as long as there are music heads around he'll be fine.

well, it pertains to Elvis the Baby Boomer messiah.

Elvis the interpreter vs Elvis the songwriter
Have to go interpreter right? I mean, an American Trilogy.

how many songs did he even co-write? maybe a dozen?

according to a snap YouGov poll of 2,034 British adults, a hefty 29% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had never listened to an Elvis song

lol wow you've proved a specific demo of British 20 somethings don't care about Elvis

The messiah thing is in need of a revival I feel. The poptimist turn took rock as an antagonist too carelessly. Elvis is the moment pop actually becomes good imo. But that depends on how you feel about Broadway and jazz-pop and adult contemporary I guess.

So do interpreters fade away faster than composers?

pop was fantastic before Elvis

ok

So do interpreters fade away faster than composers?

i suppose it depends on just how long-lasting the appeal of a static sheet of music is.

not sure how pop is being defined here but yes there was a lot of great popular music before elvis

how many songs did he even co-write? maybe a dozen?

I'm not sure there's even one. At some point, the Colonel required songwriters to share a co-writing credit with Elvis if they wanted him to sing their song. Not sure how long that lasted because Elvis seemed embarrassed by the arrangement and admitted that he'd never written a song.

The co-writing credit was on a couple of songs on the love me tender ep iirc. Plus there's a handful of "arranged by" in the gospel stuff.

So do interpreters fade away faster than composers?

Sinatra?

What do milennials think of Sinatra

yeah he's someone that's fallen off the radar even with the Gen x-ers. the endless tribute shows and 'An Evening With The RatPack' balls must have had a similar dulling impact as the Chinese Elvis impersonators.

http://www.masseytheatre.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Rat_Pack.jpg

if only there was a way for millennials to effortlessly search for older music that is not being presently marketed to them.

sadly, no such system has been invented.

I always thought Chuck D was talking about Elvis Costello

From the perspective of 2017, Presley is closer to Sinatra and the world of crooners than the Beatles and what came after - an interpreter of straightforward songs with professional backing. He doesn't navigate irony, investigate druggy surrealism or engage with studio production. It's top line melody with sincere introspection and a swinging rhythm section. Even when I got into him in the 1990s, it was when I was choosing to explore older approaches to pop- Hank Williams, Besse Smith, Louis Jordan. His singing-songwriting peers like Berry and Bo Diddly and Jerry Lee Lewis were much more about the riff and the noise and everything that came after. He was a real weirdo like the other early rock 'n' rollers, but his art doesn't work the same way.

From the perspective of 2017

yes the era of Carpool Karaoke. Elvis could fit in perfectly in this post-rockist world.

The article doesn't acknowledge it's the post-rockist world but goes for the bizarre "where's his Sgt. Pepper?" angle. It's true that Presley is closer to the pre Beatles world but that's no longer that big of a deal (and as I said, I'd treat him as a bigger delination mark but that's a nonstarter apparently) and yeah, he doesn't do the rock Diddley/Berry/Lewis stuff but he does the pop part of the rock and roll equation (him/Buddy/Fats) which is as important these days. But he's one of a kind really. He has a much more exposed singing style than any of the earlier "crooners". No one ever sold pomposity in such a vulnerable way. Anyone else who goes for something like Blue Moon, Suspicious Minds, In the Ghetto, American Trilogy etc etc ends up kitschy imo. One of the key distinctions being that Elvis had a recognizable tone and character for each part of his vocal range. Basically not sure I'd rate any vocalist above him. It helps that he was fed hits for a long time so 30#1's plays as well as Immaculate Collection.

someone in the article says that it's a shame elvis didn't live long enough to reinvent his career + image the way johnny cash did w/ his last few albums. but you could argue that elvis had already done that w/ the comeback special and "from elvis in memphis," which is a genuinely great album that i'd recommend to anyone who just associates elvis w/ the early stuff.

it is really intriguing to imagine an alternate scenario where elvis got off drugs, slimmed down, and went on to become a revered music statesman like cash, going back to the style of the sun years, his voice getting richer and deeper with age, being the first to laugh at his own shitty movie soundtracks. unfortunately that scenario probably requires an elvis who was a completely different person, someone w/ better friends and better willpower.

Late Cash is a weird benchmark for anything imo. It presupposes every old country singer is a goth at heart. Works for Cash I guess but would ruin Elvis. Nick Cave is a sort of peek into that alternative timeline.

I would rather have heard Elvis in the style of '80s Johnny Cash (can you imagine a Highwaymen-style group that included an older Elvis?) than Rubin-era Cash.

He doesn't navigate irony, investigate druggy surrealism or engage with studio production. Try The Complete Sun Sessions, also he gets more interesting near the end of 50s, 60s, 70s.

"He doesn't navigate irony"
This is a great line and seems true to me

I prefer this one from Christgau: "The very refusal of sophistication that renders him unlistenable to Sinatraphiles is what his faithful love most about him." Just switch sophistication with irony and Sinatraphiles with whatever.

I don't agree that he lacks sophistication, not even sure what an example of that would look like

He means Sinatra's and Crosby's mannerisms. Elvis is way less inhibited.

I'm with dow re studio production. Whether he twiddled knobs or not is by the by. He knew how he wanted to be heard. Ref the story about the sessions for hound dog

Ah ok. So just a visual thing

Calstars I don't think it's just a visual thing. It's also about what he did with his voice and the effect that had.

And how that was different to how bing or frankie used their voices.

in the Sun sessions, he and Philips are exploring the possibilities, incl. a new approach to crooning, that would fit the mix of material and tempos---certainly there's as much cultivation of atmospherics as Sinatra was exploring, but here it's all small groups of course, and the difference made by overt use of studio techniques, the reverb of a single guitar note's attack and decay, say,the echo of a snare tom, kickdrun, and at one point his balladeering goes into this unearthly falsetto sidetrip, envy-bait for Bryan Ferry and Scott Walker, who I've never heard attempt anything like it.
All those overcast, end-of-the-60s folk-etc ballads, "Kentucky Rain", "In the Ghetto". Dylan's "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" (think he covered "Don't Think Twice"too) for that matter the rueful pulsations of "Suspicious Minds", are atmospheric as hell too. And check the uncut Comeback Special (the Dec. '68 TV special, not at all the conventional seasonal bit the Colonel wanted), and the concert doc Elvis On Tour.for the downhome bellbottom Tony Joe White grooves, with soul, blues, gospel, country, rockabilly etc.

Also, he had a sense of humor about himself----on The Million Dollar Quarter, he keeps trying to tell his hopped-up colleagues about seeing the guy (Jackie Wilson) with Billy Ward and the Dominos, who does a wicked Elvis---wonder if humor wasn't his way of justifying doing some of those dire soundtrack songs later on, the ones for which the Col. just happened to own publishing (in some cases).

Only the finest in pharmaceuticals for Mr P

engage with studio production

What I mean here is pure studio creation, in the late-Beatles, Brian Eno sense. Not that Presley's peers engaged in this way either, and not that the Sun Sessions weren't a break through production-wise. The Sun singles reverb was otherworldly by contemporaneous accounts. What I like to wonder about is what keeps an artist like Presley on the far side of the "modern" line, compared to subsequent rock stars? These things are strengths! It's an approach to music making that's not really possible without affect any more. Like, I don't think Nick Cave's "In The Ghetto" is intended to have any irony, but irony attaches itself to it anyways.

Calstars I don't think it's just a visual thing. It's also about what he did with his voice and the effect that had.

yes it really is this simple. people liked his singing a lot. he had a charming voice and vocal drawl and homespun package.

i think the main difference between him and the Beatles is they come from a more DIY artist-centric era wheras Elvis hailed from the more industrial pre-rock pop era. he had to make those movies while the Beatles had the creative freedom to not. as for him being a manufactured star, again, his voice is indisputable, his style is legendary, and his renditions of many hit songs are still the most famous 60 years later. on top of that his backing musicians were frequently killer musicians, he had a great ear for collaborators, a pop tactic later used to great success by Bowie.

Had never thought about how close to each other The Sun Sessions and the Beatles' Rock 'n' Roll Music were released in the States: Elvis in March of '76, the Beatles inside of three months later. I was very aware of Rock 'n' Roll Music at the time, didn't know anything about The Sun Sessions until I saw it in Paul Gambaccini's greatest-ever book two or three years later. The Beatles LP hit #2 on Billboard, Elvis only made it to #76.

I'm a bigger Beatles fan, but easy nod to Elvis there.

40th anniversary of his death today. I still say the music he made between 1969 and his death is every bit as good as the music he made in the 50s. Often better.

You're not the only one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_pmor3iPbw

Seems to me 1969-1972 was a high point but 1973-1977 not so much, although someone here was saying his '73 sessions in Memphis are really rich; I haven't explored that, I only know the singles.

Obvious, but I'd take The Sun Sessions over everything else.

The 1973 Stax sessions are great.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3EHxFLhmgSGEBmJ7tFXwRz

I can still remember exactly what I was doing 40 years ago when my dad told me the news. Led to 40 years of musical joy.