I've been listening to 1970s Elvis music. It's both better and worse than I remembered it to be.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

His handlers would book marathon recording sessions. His producer, Felton Jarvis, would then take the best 10 songs and piece together an album. Then the second best 10. Then the third best. The process would be repeated until they ran out of songs, then they'd schedule another recording session.

One such session produced:

"Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old)"...a classic.

From Wikipedia:

The bulk of the album came from five days of recording sessions in June 1970 which yielded 35 usable tracks. Presley performed every track "live", recording his vocal part in the same take as the band as was standard practice for him. During the sessions, Presley and producer Felton Jarvis realized they had several country songs in hand, and decided to record several more to create a full album of country material. Needing two more satisfactory tracks, Elvis returned to the same studio in September where he recorded "Snowbird" and a manic, one-take version of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin On."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Country_%28I%27m_10,000_Years_Old%29

1. Snowbird
2. Tomorrow Never Comes
3. Little Cabin On The Hill
4. Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On
5. Funny How Time Slips Away
6. I Really Don't Want To Know
7. There Goes My Everything
8. It's Your Baby, You Rock It
9. The Fool
10. Faded Love
11. I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water
12. Make The World Go Away
13. It Ain't No Big Thing (But It's Growing)
14. A Hundred Years From Now
15. If I Were You
16. Got My Mojo Working/Keep Your Hands Off Of It
17. Where Did They Go, Lord
18. I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago

AND

"That's The Way It Is" (another classic, which mixed in some live tracks as well)



1. I Just Can't Help Believin'
2. Twenty Days And Twenty Nights
3. How The Web Was Woven
4. Patch It Up
5. Mary In The Morning
6. You Don't Have To Say You Love Me
7. You've Lost That Loving Feeling
8. I've Lost You
9. Just Pretend
10. Stranger In The Crowd
11. Next Step Is Love
12. Bridge Over Troubled Water

...and the dregs were hobbled together for "Love Letters," one of his weakest albums:



01 Love Letters - 02 When I’m Over You - 03 If I Were You - 04 Got My Mojo Working / Keep Your Hands Off Of It - 05 Heart Of Rome -06 Only Believe - 07 This Is Our Dance - 08 Cindy, Cindy - 09 I’ll Never Know - 10 It Ain’t No Big Thing (But It’s Growing) - 11 Life

It makes you wonder what would have happened if he'd actually made an album...the way The Beatles made Sgt. Pepper, a deliberate effort to record specific songs that had some form of cohesion as an album.

A number of musicians, from Springsteen to Led Zeppelin, have stated in interviews that they would have willingly and eagerly gone into the studio with him to do just that...serve as his backing band, help him record greatness.

Instead, we have flashes of greatness and songs he never should have touched.

:toast:

[HopeHoops]

1. He was pretty wasted by then. I wasn't shocked when he died of terminal constipation.

That isn't a joke. He had to take pills to start crapping and take more to stop. He basically had a heart attack on the toilet trying to take a dump. :hurts:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. Not when that session happened...that was basically the last of the greatness.

The sessions that followed...the ones that produced "Elvis Now" and the albums that followed...were the beginning of the end. On some tracks he sounds sedated.

The three albums above...well, the two actually, because "Love Letters" really is barrel-scrapings...were the last ones where you could really hear the power, and more importantly, the ones where he sounded like he was into it.

These sessions were in 1970...most critics see his last "win" as the 1972 "Aloha From Hawaii" show, but for that, he had to go on a crash diet as weight had become a problem. Performance-wise, it's never been one of my favorites. The "Elvis Country" album above is a KILLER (although, like most critics of the era, I could have done without Anne Murray's "Snowbird").

:toast:

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. Consider ourselves lucky that money-makers like the Beatles etc. ever had the chance

to create anything wholistic...with all of the Sir Eton Hoggs out there (oh, that still and always cracks me up), it's a wonder that any artists ever even got the chance.

Or did Elvis even ever care about a concept album, an "unfulfilled vision"? Could we have ever gotten something like "Quadrophenia" out of Elvis?

And since I'm running on as usual, I'll add a quip from an interview with Three Mustaphas Three: "We listened to Elvis on the radio when we were growing up. You can almost hear his hips move." :rofl::hi:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. He wanted to be an actor...one of his major role models was Dean Martin.

Seriously. To a degree he saw the music as a bridge to be in movies, and unfortunately, except for a small few (like "King Creole" and "Jailhouse Rock") we know how THAT went...his last role in "Change of Habit" centered around his corruption of a NUN (Mary Tyler Moore)!



:rofl:

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. The first time I heard an Elvis song... 56?

coming thru the tinny little radio by my bed, it was instantly obvious this guy was different.

Strangely, I was never a "big' fan, but now, when I hear his earlier stuff, pre-1970, I do appreciate his
voice and his impact.

Such a tragic end.