Elvis Presley: Classic Or Dud?

Trailer:

"President Kennedy has been shot."

*5 sec later*

"Martin Luther King, Jr. has been shot."

Tbh Baz is maybe the only person who could hit all the Walk Hard cliche biopic notes and still make it work. At least his stuff doesn’t pretend to exist in reality. Big neon explosion of the myth.

The worst part about the trailer is Hanks. Feel like it’s been decades since I’ve seen him actually being a good actor.

Maybe I should finally read Peter Guralnick’s Sam Phillips book before or instead of watching this.

Yeah not a fan of the casting.

He’s such a big actor with a long career that It’s difficult not to see Tom Hanks as Tom Hanks with bad prosthetics and a weird accent.

I don’t want to judge Austin Butler’s performance solely based on looks but he looks like a skinny teenager to me, whereas Elvis looked very manly and “grown up” even in his early 20’s.

He does have the sort of dreamy eyes Elvis had though. Either way I don’t expect a great performance when directed by Baz Luhrmann tbh.

I don't even know if I'd want Elvis to look like Elvis in this.

I shall sulk if it turns out they haven't given Kurt Russell a cameo.

Kurt Russell plays an old man who kicks Elvis in the shin at the World's Fair

Lol

Remember when Michael St. Gerard played Elvis 4 times in 4 different movies? Guy really milked his Elvis look

Had to like that up because I didn't remember, if I ever knew.

Yeah not a fan of the casting.

He’s such a big actor with a long career that It’s difficult not to see Tom Hanks as Tom Hanks with bad prosthetics and a weird accent.

I don’t want to judge Austin Butler’s performance solely based on looks but he looks like a skinny teenager to me, whereas Elvis looked very manly and “grown up” even in his early 20’s.

Multiverse Elvi

Reviewing top 40 lists of the '70s without researching Elvis (a blind spot), I'm impressed by how well he sung and how judicious his song selections remained well into his putative decline -- and how many hits he earned.

Where were you when we did the POLL?

Honestly my favorite period of Elvis, vocally, is early 70’s, He could sing literally anything. The stuff he’s doing in “On Tour” is amazing. so gifted.

and he was a huge fan of all styles of music, which made him such a great, thoughtful interpreter of songs, especially if he was a fan of the artist. he almost method-style tries to inhabit the character of the song in his delivery & do the artist justice.

Honestly my favorite period of Elvis, vocally, is early 70’s

Would agree with that.

I mean, Elvis basically fucking ruled from beginning to end. Grew up with all the jokes about chubby, sweaty, 70s Elvis, but damn if that wasn’t him at his most transcendent.

I dunno. If you all are watching this trailer and Tom Hanks is the elephant in the room then we're seeing a different trailer. The whole thing looks like straight up garbage.

But it’s ELECTRIC garbage, man.

Honestly my favorite period of Elvis, vocally, is early 70’s, He could sing literally anything. The stuff he’s doing in “On Tour” is amazing. so gifted.

Those three box sets they released in the 1990s were all great in terms of content, but the third box set covering the 1970s was the biggest revelation simply for making me appreciate a decade I had more or less written off for Elvis. It's a bit of a cheat - the overwhelming majority comes from the first year or two, so in a way it's apiece with his miraculous late '60s comeback before leading into his permanent decline. But there's no denying how great the material sounds.

Well-curated compilations will always be the way to go for Elvis's ridiculously uneven career IMHO, but the Sun sessions, the Elvis in Memphis sessions and the DVD box set of the complete NBC sessions for his 1968 "comeback" special are great, towering achievements. I also have a soft spot for Elvis Is Back, an excellent album.

All of his studio albums from From Elvis in Memphis to the end of his career are worth hearing. He really wasn't an album artist until 1969, but when he started thinking in those terms he was capable of some amazing things. I'm a particularly big fan of Raised On Rock, Promised Land and Good Times, the bulk of which were recorded at a couple of sessions at Stax in 1972-73. (The 3CD set Elvis At Stax puts it all together.) But the 1972 s/t album and Elvis Now and Elvis Today make another really solid trilogy, and even Moody Blue holds up.

https://i.imgur.com/KUQnrZK.png

https://i.imgur.com/sAZnlVn.png

the third box set covering the 1970s was the biggest revelation simply for making me appreciate a decade I had more or less written off for Elvis

Yeah this specifically. I remember thinking so much of the material had this sense of drowned grandeur.

OTM. The one everybody, or at least Greil Marcus and Dave Marsh, talked about always seemed to be “Hurt,” justifiably so, but of course there was so much more.

i have probably said this 9 million times in this very thread but his cover of “You Gave Me A Mountain” is one of my favorite things he ever did

this early one from 72 is slower & more dramatic than later performances, gives it the full weight which i just love - video says its his first but i’m not 100% sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2Hic5_d3I

full show here, i have this one on cassette from bootleg a friend gave me in the 90’s, such a great show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg8v8O3XSGo

But it’s ELECTRIC garbage, man.

― circa1916, Saturday, February 19, 2022 9:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yow!

As all killer/no filler as the ‘70s box is, it doesn’t even include his greatest ‘70s studio record, He Touched Me. Perhaps not coincidentally, his greatest ‘60s studio album (pre-comeback) is How Great Thou Art. The gospel records were apparently one area where Elvis could keep the Colonel from meddling or otherwise fucking it up.

I've still never listened to the gospel material. Though the footage of him singing gospel songs in (I think) Elvis On Tour is pretty incredible.

they were the only Elvis albums my Mum had when i was growing up. she wasnt even that religious, she just thought his voice sounded the best when he sang those songs.
as a teen i thought it was insane that she didnt have “cool elvis” stuff but turns out mum was otm

He may have looked as a joke in the 70’s as a fat man doing karate kicks dressed in glittery jumpsuits, but his music and voice aged like fine wine. He was always a top notch performer, that video of him in his last concert is both sad and inspiring because you can really tell he didn’t look healthy and probably felt like shit and yet he’s giving it his all.

He speaks mumbling and it breaks my heart seeing him like this and yet he starts singing and it’s such a beautiful thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4svkR46CesI

xposts IIRC like the post-'50s movie soundtrack material, they decided to compile all of his gospel recordings into their own two-CD collection. They're still branded The Essential ('50s/'60s/'70s) Masters, so they're definitely meant to complement those box sets.

that's a painful video to watch. how fucked up it must've been to be elvis and be that unchecked and powerful and out of control and know your moment was passing. "elvis didn't mean shit to me" kinda put the last stake in the corpse but i hold out some hope that somebody like tyler might rediscover and re-reappropriate elvis old and new back into pop culture in a way that's more graceful than the brief bump of dance music remixes that made the scened a few years back

like if beyonce did an elvis album that would be kind of fucking awesome

but his music and voice aged like fine wine.

Yeah, I would argue that his voice was at its absolute peak in the ‘70s, a massively powerful, versatile, and awesome* instrument. ‘60s Elvis couldn’t have convincingly sung “Never Been To Spain”; ‘50s Elvis couldn’t have sung it at all.

*As a teacher of mine once said, I mean “awesome” in the sense of what that word meant before people started to use it to refer to pizza.

i can’t watch those final shows, it feels too much like car crash footage. (cannot get over the fact that he was only 42)

forks otm, it’d be great for him to one day be rediscovered, it’s sad to me how he’s become an empty signifier

tarfumes otm - never been to spain is a great example of the power he had by then

I think he is still pretty popular overall, it's just that he doesn't really appeal to a certain stripe of muso.

Yeah, “Spain” and “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” are two standouts for me on that set — those performances are heroic (and his band rises to the challenge).

xp

xposts IIRC like the post-'50s movie soundtrack material, they decided to compile all of his gospel recordings into their own two-CD collection.

Yup, there was a 2CD comp in 1994 called Amazing Grace: His Greatest Sacred Performances. It’s got all of His Hand In Mine, How Great Thou Art, and He Touched Me, plus religious songs from other records (and a few informal recordings). I got it not long after it was released , and it was my first exposure to his gospel, and his ‘70s, recordings. (I also remembered that Dave Marsh gave most of those records five stars in the RS Record Guide.)

i think i bought that comp for my mum, it’s really great

forks otm, it’d be great for him to one day be rediscovered, it’s sad to me how he’s become an empty signifier

I don’t think he/his legacy every completely shook off the flimsiness of how he was presented and packaged from roughly the early ‘60s through the early ‘90s. So many respectful and thorough reissues have come out in the last 30 years or so, but it feels like some of the stink of the Colonel’s carny ways is still wafting around.

*every = ever

And unfortunately there have been some cheesy recent things too, slapping his vocals on top of ultra-generic orchestral backing tracks and whatnot. But then there are things like the recent From Elvis In Nashville compilation that actually strips away the glop from a really amazing set of studio recordings from 1970.

In a weird way there's no middle ground in terms of public consumption -- he's either presented as cheaply disposable trash or sanctified. He can't just be a striking singer with notable hits.

I think he can be this last but one kind of has to make it clear that one is not from either of the first two camps. See the end of Francis Davis's Blues book.