Blame It On The Supernova: Forrest sings the praises of VD!

[ForrestGump]

Valentine's Day, that is.

It's all supernova's fault:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=4740289&mesg_id=4741849

:P

Actually, these are just some random songs I did lately, though it's easy enough to pull out some of them and claim I did 'em expressly for a lovey-dovey day like today:

For those of us in love, or remembering love, or anticipating love, on Valentine's Day

Fountain Of Love (1962)

Any Day Now (1969)

Mary In The Morning (1970)

The Next Step Is Love (1970)

Funny How Time Slips Away (1970)

Until It's Time For You To Go (1971)

For The Heart (1976)

"Fountain Of Love" is an album cut from sessions when Elvis' voice was impossibly perfect, as was instrumentation and backing vocals (all done, as was the norm for Elvis, live on each take), that gets that whole Italianate early-'60s thing going. Pretty suave! Mine may not be as suave or perfect, but I felt most bellissimo as I did my best to warble the thing.

"Any Day Now," from the Most Excellent 1969 sessions Elvis did in Memphis, is one that I posted here a while back, recorded when I had a cold...I have a sinking feeling that I may have been better with a cold!

"Mary In The Morning," "The Next Step Is Love," and "Funny How Time Slips Away" (the latter written by Willie Nelson and later a concert staple for Elvis) are all ballads, of sorts, from Elvis's Nashville sessions of 1970. I always thought "Mary In The Morning" was a pretty good example of Elvis' latter-day balladeering because he's singing a ballad vocal but there's a rock drum beat going on in the background (and Spanish-influenced horns, for that matter). I always loved this song, too. And I managed to curb my impulse to come out with Elvis' rehearsal ad-libs on "The Next Step Is Love" (specifically "The next step is sex" and "we've yet to taste the icing on the cake that we've been shoving up your ass" -- presumably, this latter is the same cake featured in the horrific experience that is "McArthur Park" -- and my own ad lib on one repeated part that requires a huge lungful of air: "the next step is breath").

"Until It's Time For You To Go" has always seemed a little too sappy to me, but that's what V-Day is all about, I guess. Actually, the lyrics are kind of bittersweet, if you listen to them. It was written by Buffy St-Marie, a Canadian. I like one of Elvis' concert ad-libs: "and though I'll never in my life play here again"...

"For The Heart" was a song Elvis did in early '76 in the infamous Jungle Room at Graceland -- Elvis had become averse to recording sessions, so they brought him a mobile studio. It was here that he recorded "Moody Blue" and "Hurt" ("For The Heart" was the flipside of the "Hurt" single) and, later in the year, "Way Down." These were the last studio sessions Elvis did. I put this song up here a while back but it wasn't very good -- the first time I tried it I had a really bad microphone and lots of wind noise and the version I posted had a good mic but awful, thrashed, overworked voice...hopefully this one is better! I just felt like singing it again, really.


For those of us on the wrong side of love, on Valentine's Day

I'll Never Fall In Love Again (1976)

Another song from the Jungle Room.


For those of us who like their love bittersweet, on Valentine's Day

Long Black Limousine (1969)

Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain (1976)

I did both of these before -- the first from the 1969 Memphis sessions and the second from the Jungle Room -- but the sound should be better this time around and, hey, we've got to have something for those of us who take love a little on the less-rosy side (or a lot, in the case of the very sad first song, in which said conveyance is a hearse).


Random recordings

...not particularly romantic unless you like trains, guitars, or sadistic bosses...

Mystery Train (1955)

This song is so central to the development of rock 'n' roll and associated genres that critic Greil Marcus named his 1976 rock-culture book after it...I hated to touch it, not least because Elvis was 20 when he did it in the Sun studio in the summer of '55 and I was 20 way back in the '80s, as was my voice. I would not wish that anyone witness the true horror of me trying to capture Elvis' exuberant whoop at the end of the song -- he didn't take the song seriously (which is, after all, exactly how "That's All Right," the song that started it all came about, in the first place) so he sang it with abandon...Sam Phillips knew he had the magic sound on that first impromptu take so they only did the one run-through. It took me a few more... :D

Flaming Star (1960)

After Elvis got out of the Army, in 1960, he worked on the film GI Blues that was the first of the 'travelogue' 60s films so many of us grew up with...the archetypal 'Elvis movie.' The next film was a change of pace, to say the least, and because Flaming Star didn't meet the phenomenal box-office take of the overtly family-friendly GI Blues, Elvis ended up doing more and more of the kinds of films that he later said were like someone shot the GI Blues or Blue Hawaii story and just kept changing the backdrops. Flaming Star is a film I've always loved because it's perhaps the only one in which you might forget that he is Elvis..it's got a good story (originally written for Marlon Brando), good acting all around, and is pretty violent for its time (Don Seigel, who later did Dirty Harry, among others, directed). For his portrayal of a half-Kiowa man, Elvis got inducted into the Los Angeles Tribal Council...it also got the film banned in South Africa (Elvis played a 'colored' man). I have always loved the title song. More to the point, a friend of mine -- a very good friend to my best friend since childhood -- told me, soon before he died from leukemia when we were both around 20 or 21 years of age -- that his song was his favorite Elvis song. He wasn't a big fan, but he loved this song. Every time I hear it, I think of him (Elvis, too, because the last scene in the movie always gets me). Kind of getting that tearing-up feeling now, thinking of Robert and how quickly he was gone. Anyway, this song's for Robert...

Memphis, Tennessee (1964)

In May of 1963 Elvis recorded this Chuck Berry song (it wasn't especially a hit for Berry) and, for some reason, re-recorded it the next January, at a short session (when he also did "It Hurts Me"), with the same arrangement. He planned to release it as a single. He took the acetate back to Graceland and played it for the boys, as well as for Johnny Rivers, who was visiting. Johnny Rivers was fascinated by the record and kept asking Elvis to play it over and over. Elvis was happy to oblige because he was excited about the song and was sure it had hit potential -- he'd proven pretty adept at picking good singles. The next thing anyone knew, Rivers' version of the song was on the Hot 100. His is a different approach, and it's been said by at least one person that the record's release was coincidental, but Johnny Rivers was never welcome in Graceland again. Elvis' version ended up released on a 1965 LP that collected unreleased odds and ends from as far back as 1955.

Guitar Man (1967)

In September, 1967, Elvis went to Nashville for what was by then a rare non-soundtrack session, a session that produced some great songs that received critical acclaim and prefaced Elvis' return to center stage with the 1968 Tv Special and live concerts in 1969. The first song was "Guitar Man," a song by singer-songwriter (also one of the hottest lead guitarists in Nashville and subsequently an actor) Jerry Reed. Elvis loved the song, as done by Reed, and wanted exactly the same backing and arrangement, so he had someone from the studio head out to bring Jerry in -- they found the guitar man fishing in the Cumberland River and brought him in as he was, in dirty, smelly fishing clothes, unshaven, and otherwise pretty much in character. He and Elvis hit it off -- I wish they'd worked more together (Elvis had him come back the following January to work on a session that kicked off with Reed's "US Male" and Elvis recorded a couple more of his songs in the '70s) -- and Jerry told Elvis that he was the prettiest man he'd ever seen: "kinda wish I was a girl, now, Elvis!"

Big Boss Man (1967)

Another one for DanCa, whose requests made me sing 20 years higher than is natural and, on this one, ravaged my throat -- I'm not really good at doing the 'rough voice' sound that Elvis had on some recordings (especially those from 1967-69, but also to an extent on original versions of earlier songs like "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock") and I tried my best to get some of that going in this cool song. I guess I could have just settled for a 'cleaner' vocal, but the touch of roughness that Elvis had on this one added to it. Jerry Reed played guitar on this one, as well (it was the next song recorded after "Guitar Man").

I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water (1970)

Elvis again revved up a country song on this one, recorded during marathon sessions in Nashville in June, 1970. For these sessions, Elvis had some premier songs sent in from independent songwriters (much to Colonel Parker's chagrin...Elvis and him had fought the year before over this, because the Colonel engineered a massive take on each song that was routed through one of Elvis' publishing company -- thank goodness Elvis won, for a change, or we'd never have songs like "Suspicious Minds," "In The Ghetto," and "Kentucky Rain"), had his usual in-house material routed through his own companies (much of which he tossed as soon as he heard the demos), and then the rest he just made up on the spot. Much of the considerable country (country rock, really) material recorded during these sessions came from impromptu studio jams of the kind that Elvis customarily did. To me, they're most of the sessions' highlights, and the resultant 1971 album (Elvis Country) was a critical success and considered an effective 'concept' album. This song's one of those gems that are lesser known but that, in form and structure, lay out a lot of what Elvis' music consisted of. It's another one-take wonder and if it's not actually a jam, it's got that jammy feel about it, as did much of the uptempo and blues material that Elvis did in his last decade. It was very difficult for me to not to unconsciously incorporate one of Elvis' lyric changes when he did it in a concert rehearsal in July of 1970: "he told me/if you keep your ass clean/ we might just make a good man of you yet" :o

Little Sister/Get Back (live, 1970)

I put this one up a while back, too, but I'm hoping the sound is better this time. Elvis threw this medley together while rehearsing in the summer of 1970 (shown in the re-edited film Elvis - That's The Way It Is and did it on stage that Vegas season just once, sitting down and playing his Gretsch electric guitar as he did in rehearsal. The piece was still pretty loose and jammy on stage and was probably not on the setlist. When he came back to Vegas the following January he again did this medley in a faster, shorter, tighter arrangement that he'd use on and off through the end of 1972.

[supernova]

1. Awww, thanks FG!

:hi:

Looking forward to listening when I get home tonight. :D :D :D

[HuskerDU]

2. Great stuff Forrest! I will have to check it out more tonight.

BTW, Forrest, have you heard the Neil Young song 'He Was the King?' It is a pretty fun song about Elvis!

I think that you might like it. Take care.