Elvis Presley: Classic Or Dud?

Weird, it worked a few minutes ago--now it's "Can't Help Falling In Love With You." Also good.

From the doc I just learned that Elvis decided to cover “Tomorrow is a Long Time” after hearing the Odetta version.

Internet says it was played for Elvis by Charlie McCoy during How Great Thou Art sessions, which is when Elvis’s version was recorded, only to be released later in the context you mentioned.

Famous quote from the '69 Rolling Stone interview: "I liked Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That's the one recording I treasure the most...it was called 'Tomorrow Is a Long Time.'"

Yes. I believe I first read that quote in my long ago crumbled to dust copy of The Book of Rock and Roll Lists

I was listening the other day to Suspicious Minds and thinking to myself how it's actually pretty much a piece of shit as far as a song, and it's only Elvis's performance that makes it great, yet great it is

I started part 1 tonight. Loving it.

i love that it’s all edited footage without the usual cuts to talking heads.

I just finished reading the Guralnick book last week. I'd be interested in seeing this.

I haven't seen the whole thing yet but it is without question excellent, probably the best Elvis doc. It's structured like Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love.

They do a phenomenal job talking about the impact of Sun Records and Sam Phillips. That's the crux of Part 1.

Yes. I believe I first read that quote in my long ago crumbled to dust copy of The Book of Rock and Roll Lists

Best toilet book of all time.

It's well worth watching. It does a good job of showing the attachment Elvis actually had to the music and what a fan he was.

xpost kornrules, yeah pt 1 definitelyfelt like an “aerial view” of Last Train to Memphis book in a lot of ways.

And I enjoy the inclusion of an occasional Tom Petty chuckle here and there <3

But Guralnick’s not involved I don’t think? Watched pt 1 last night and didn’t notice him. Seems like an odd omission.

I thought Petty was great

Petty was great, I had no idea he was such a student of Elvis but given his age it makes sense.

He’s very perceptive about a lot of things but it made me especially happy for some reason to hear him talk about kinescopes.

Yeah, Petty and Springsteen are both excellent and add a lot. Robbie Robertson does too.

I hope they talk to Joe Esposito, he was a key guy. And Careless Love readers will also agree that you can't have a doc called Elvis Presley: The Searcher and not have plenty of interview time with Larry Geller.

Yeah Petty was huge Elvis nerd - he actually met him when he was a little kid, so he was fully geeked for life after that, understandably so

Yep, think I heard him tell the story on Fresh Air, also here:
http://www.gainesville.com/news/20070816/young-tom-pettys-life-changed-when-he-met-elvis

He also loved horses, and America too.

His big mistake, moving to Reseda.

lol u guys

Just finished pt 2. Beautiful imo.
I saw elsewhere online some slight murmurings about it being incomplete or too austere towards the end. I understand the remove, esp given the involvement of Priscilla & her being a big part of the project. But also the doc worked hard to show his passion & craft, and came from a place of such musical enthusiasm; there’s so much pain & sadness in those last years that I really don’t begrudge the choice, for me personally at least.

That being said, I could happily watch a 10 parter of this calibre.

the documentary is a legacy-saving enterprise but I dont begrudge it that. As far the end of this documentary goes, you really get the sense that Elvis was being increasingly torn away from his music through the sheer exhaustion of his touring schedule and those Elvis-ploitation movies. its v sad

There is an element of legacy rehab or reframing with this documentary--it pushes his artistry very hard. It shows a near intellectual approach to his perspective and clarifies the puppet masters in a way that is far less cynical than before. It humanizes Elvis without relying on heavy handed pity, which comes off as a fresh take on his music and life. The story told is so much more tragic as a result.

I went to Graceland last year. I expected it to be kitschy and it is because it's stuck in 1977. It's decorated like a poor boy from Mississippi would if you dropped a bag of money in his lap in the 70s. TVs in every room, fabric on the ceiling, extra kitchenettes, and then there's the "Jungle Room".

But the more I looked, my mood went from "Oh isn't it all goofy" to "What a tragic life this man had, self-medicating to the point of blocking up his entire system, dying so young and leaving his wife and daughter".

One building houses a bunch of his old cars and there's a loop of clips from his movies playing. Most of them are just awful, and again it just emphasized for me how outside forces manipulated a naive kid to monetize his great talent.

Maybe I'm not giving him enough credit - I haven't read the books, was he complicit in his own star-making or did he have genuine personal artistic goals that went unmet?

I haven't read the books, was he complicit in his own star-making or did he have genuine personal artistic goals that went unmet?

Difficult question, because the Graceland/Jungle Room Elvis is far different from the Sun Sessions Elvis, at least based on the Guralnick books. Early on, he definitely had a huge role in his own star making. He wasn't just a puppet of Sam Phillips or Col. Parker. He had his own path, and he knew exactly what he wanted to do.

The 70s Elvis, the kitschy Las Vegas one, is a different story. Again, based on the books, mainly Careless Love, Elvis could have done anything he wanted. It wasn't as if he wanted to make an artistic statement and Col. Parker wouldn't let him. It was Elvis' own decision. He chose the easy money in most cases, from movies and later touring. All the countless background singers and strange wardrobe decisions were his taste.

The biggest artistic hurdle was probably the publishing situation, explained well here. When Elvis chose a song, Col. Parker so Elvis got a big chunk of the royalties. In the sixties and seventies, this discouraged a lot of the top songwriters from submitting songs.

It was frustrating, particularly when you hear what he could do with A+ material like Dylan's Tomorrow Is a Long Time.

I think it's important to point out that for most of what is called "70s Elvis" he had renounced his movie career and vowed to never again record a song he didn't believe in. The narrative seems to be stuck w/r/t Elvis's decline, but he took the reigns back creatively in the 70s.

The dregs are the sixties, after Elvis is Back! (1960) and before Elvis in Memphis (1969)

those Elvis-ploitation movies.

The aforementioned Book of Rock Lists (1981 edition) has a pretty hilarious rundown of these, presumably penned by Dave Marsh. Kid Creole unsurprisingly gets the highest grade, while Clambake "makes Spinout look like Citizen Kane."

The narrative seems to be stuck w/r/t Elvis's decline, but he took the reins back creatively in the 70s.

Every Elvis studio album starting with From Elvis In Memphis - Back in Memphis, Elvis Country, Elvis Now, Elvis (aka Fool), Raised On Rock, Good Times, Promised Land, Elvis Today, From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee, and even Moody Blue - is worth hearing, and some of them are genuinely great. He was doing something really interesting in the '70s, blending rock, blues, soul, and country in a way that sounded like nobody else even when he was doing songs other people had already recorded and even had hits with.

there are great things in the sixties too, like the aforementioned "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" but also this astonishing cover, recorded in 1966 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OgyRSq5w4g

Honestly, I'll take 70s Elvis over 50s Elvis any day.

me too

I'll take 'em both. A classic example, especially in the cognitive dissonance 70s, but really all along, judging by the books (I've read way too many or at least many Elvis books), of the Rain Man muso, mostly (yet sometimes supremely) functional in music.
Enough about that now: it seemed evident in the 70s that a lot of his appeal was so "retro" it was actually what was happenin': that whole rootsy cross-genre convergence, not just for the sake of nostalgia but revitalization and reaffirmation and even self-expression (and also redemption for being part of the beast they called Rock, that ate rocknrollrhythmnblues and everything else tasty), that we were getting from Dylan and The Band, together and sep, yaddayadda, but maybe more relevant show-wise, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, which could incl. George Harrison and Duane Allman and Eric Clapton and maybe all the rest of Derek and the Dominos, among many others (also relevant: the crossroads tendencies of the Dead, especially Garcia and his several sidebands).
Oh yeah, shoulda posted this here already (from Rolling Country)
When I worked in a Deep South CD store in the mid-90s to early-00ties, Elvis sold almost as well as the Dead, and his gospel outsold all his other stuff. This Easter weekend, some public radio stations are re-broadcasting/-streaming "He Touched Me: Elvis' Gospel Music, " w cogent comments from colleagues, intros by Laura Cantrell. Sounds great, wish there were more live (do hear some live w Jordanaires x Sweet Inspirations, for some audiences adjusting or not to integration)(most of the material is from the SI's side of the tracks).
More info on the ever-handy (though Not Secure) Elvis Information Network:
http://www.elvisinfonet.com/elvisnews_HeTouchedMeRadioversion.html
The whole show may be posted somewhere.

― dow, Sunday, April 1, 2018 10:41 AM

Xpost "Kid Creole" is actually a decent movie, directed by Michael Curtiz, Walther Matthau as the villain. Elvis gets to indulge in some proper Brando/Dean angst in it. The guy could act too!

yeah elvis's 50s movies are p good for the most part

Oh, I love King Creole. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, having only seen bits and pieces of his worst films, but (among other things) it showed how Elvis the actor could really rise to the occasion, given decent material. It definitely set high expectations for future films that, to put it mildly, were not met.

xp

Yeah that was good, and Burning Star, directed by Don Siegel, is supposed to be pretty good. The people I knew who went to film school in the 70s really liked Siegel, don't think I've seen any of his though.

Actually Flaming Star, and I've actually seen a bunch of his without knowing the director: Invasion of the Body Snatchers and five Eastwoods, for instance.

So I listened to the 70s box this week based on the strong recommendations itt. I'm a child of the 70s, my mother had top 40 on all the time, we watched the big variety shows - Elvis was a regular presence in one way or another though we didn't have his records.

There's a ton of orchestral pop, which I know everyone was doing as the time, but it's just dripping with schmaltz! Unnecessary strings, overdone backup singers, clichéd harmonica bits, spoken word interludes when he's "getting serious". At times he just seems like a caricature of himself.

I like the straight blues and soul cuts the most and some of the country stuff on disc 3 stands out. There's even a track or two that brings to mind Scott Walker's early solo work. But where Scott definitely had a creative vision, Elvis was just going for the "easy money" as pointed out above.

It's the eternal mystery as to where he would've gone if he'd lived. Based on his 50s contemporaries post-1977 work, I'm not sure there was anything left in the tank. Johnny Cash is the only one from that time that I can think of who produced critical work after the first 20 years of their career.

Let me add that, because of his association with my childhood, I find his voice extremely comforting.

Seems like post-77 Elvis would probably have continued moving towards Country, although there are faint hints of Disco on his last couple of albums.

I've also entertained thoughts of him going New Wave and hooking up with Rockpile for collab.

Finished watching the first half of this last night. It's an interesting choice to go the no-talking-heads route, but I dunno if putting reverent slow-mos and close-ups of random gear and furniture or still photos is all that great a substitute, it became a little soporific.

As far as the subject himself and the overall content I was struck by a couple things. First, it is crazy to consider how brief his "peak" period was, ie the canonical stuff that rocketed him to fame and changed the music industry and the wider culture. It's all over in barely two years! He's immediately whisked into movies and then the army and at that point he's no longer really a musician per se, he's some kind of other entity, a pop star. And he really is like a comet, blazing through the firmament with a huge impact and startling everybody. Second, this survey of the first segment of his career just underscores what a tragic figure he ultimately he is. He is the proverbial dog-that-caught-the-car. He gets everything he ever wanted - massive fame, fortune, buying his parents ridiculous shit, etc. - and then he doesn't know what to do with it and spends the rest of his life a confused, directionless mess.

I have to say, generally my relationship to Elvis is kind of fraught. I can appreciate and understand his role in the culture, but to be honest the vast majority of his music doesn't affect me at all, and a huge swathe of it is downright awful. Apart from a handful of songs, I don't get the visceral joy that I get from, say, the canonical catalogs of Little Richard, or Chuck Berry, or (my favorite) Bo Diddley. It's often to hammy, too mannered, too corny. His commitment and eagerness to please always comes through, but I dunno I can't deal with that much white-man-gospel vibrato applied to such a random grab bag of material. He is, of course, still totally fascinating to watch right up until the end, but I wouldn't say it's because the music's amazing, it's more because of his story and his role and the weird mixture of country bumpkin good ol boy and strangely deluded drugged out rich guy that ultimately defined him. (To be fair, sometimes the music is genuinely amazing - that version of Dylan's "Tomorrow is Such a Long Time" is great and Dylan's appreciation of it is totally understandable).

It's funny to think how he's the musician who set up a template that's still very much in play in our current age, where the public persona's story arc is ultimately more significant/of greater interest to the audience than actual music. The cult of personality is the thing, the music is just a (sometimes minor) component of it.

he's also that kind of case where I really can only appreciate his impact only because of people telling me about it. I don't have any problem believing that Tom Petty or Bob Dylan or the Beatles or any number of other people had their lives change by their first exposure to Elvis. It obviously happened. At the same, time if I was unaware of all that and you had just played me his early singles for the first time I would say "hey that guy's pretty good!" but I wouldn't necessarily be blown away by them in the context of other stuff going on at the same time. I get *why* he was such a shock to people, how he was different etc. but I don't get that same shock myself. And maybe that's just because of being removed by several decades and his general omnipresence, but it is the kind of thing that requires explanation, to my ears and mind. I dunno how anyone in this day and age would come to Elvis and just go "hoooly shit what is THAT?!" upon initial exposure. (Whereas that *was* my initial reaction the first time I heard, say, "Keep a Knockin'")

I dunno how anyone in this day and age would come to Elvis and just go "hoooly shit what is THAT?!" upon initial exposure

i dunno im still impressed when i hear him knock out a tune i haven't heard before. he has tons of incredible performances, he is/was an incredible performer. not sure what is stopping someone from being impressed by an artist who has impressed millions of people for decades.

overexposure + archaic aesthetics

like, you can hear echoes of what Elvis did in so many other things before even hearing Elvis-the-source, things like that *can* weaken the impact

Coming on board now, there's also decades of "racist"/"thief"/"Elvis-wasn't-shit" rhetoric to wade through before you get around to hearing the actual records, too. It's hard to deny the effect of that on a modern listener.