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Post by rick on Aug 1, 2012 11:03:53 GMT -5
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Post by erik on Aug 1, 2012 12:16:43 GMT -5
That time frame of 1972 and '73 was perhaps the absolute peak of Elvis in terms of live performance standing, especially the shows he did at Madison Square Garden. It's especially true when one considers that, apart from the Ed Sullivan Show appearances in 1956 and '57, he had never given a legitimate live show in NYC at all up until June 1972. And besides, the original MSG album, which was mixed, pressed, and released just ten days after the shows in part to head bootleggers off at the pass, raced to #11 on the Billboard Album Chart, and sold so obscenely well.
The big issue that fans have had with these live albums that he put out in the 70s, however, is that the song selection was frequently the same on each album. It's also a troubling one, in retrospect, since it indicated how lethargy was starting to settle in on the King, how routine these tours and the Vegas spectacles had become, and how much of a threat to his mind and body they were. When Elvis was really challenged to give his all (the 1968 NBC Special; the 1969 Memphis recording sessions; the Vegas debut in '69; Madison Square Garden in '72; Aloha From Hawaii in '73), he was an unstoppable force. But when it became routine, he sought escape in the wrong things.
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Post by sliderocker on Aug 1, 2012 12:59:23 GMT -5
That time frame of 1972 and '73 was perhaps the absolute peak of Elvis in terms of live performance standing, especially the shows he did at Madison Square Garden. It's especially true when one considers that, apart from the Ed Sullivan Show appearances in 1956 and '57, he had never given a legitimate live show in NYC at all up until June 1972. And besides, the original MSG album, which was mixed, pressed, and released just ten days after the shows in part to head bootleggers off at the pass, raced to #11 on the Billboard Album Chart, and sold so obscenely well.
What was also weird was RCA had another album scheduled for release, "Standing Room Only," which ended up being cancelled to make way for the "Madison Square Garden" album. Fast forward a couple of decades and RCA (or BMG) finally gets around to releasing an album called "Standing Room Only" although they admitted that later album was not the album that was originally planned for release in 1972.
The big issue that fans have had with these live albums that he put out in the 70s, however, is that the song selection was frequently the same on each album. It's also a troubling one, in retrospect, since it indicated how lethargy was starting to settle in on the King, how routine these tours and the Vegas spectacles had become, and how much of a threat to his mind and body they were. When Elvis was really challenged to give his all (the 1968 NBC Special; the 1969 Memphis recording sessions; the Vegas debut in '69; Madison Square Garden in '72; Aloha From Hawaii in '73), he was an unstoppable force. But when it became routine, he sought escape in the wrong things.
The blame again for all the live albums lies with Col. Parker. Parker had made life for Elvis hell in the recording studio with his incessant attempts to grab 25% of the publishing of all songs Elvis recorded. And when Elvis avoided the recording studio because he didn't want to deal with Parker conducting business in the recording studio instead of outside the recording studio, Parker latched onto the practice of releasing the live albums as a way for Elvis to meet his recording obligations. Again, whereas an artist like Linda could release a new album every year or every other year, Elvis was still obligated (thanks to Col. Parker) to release four or five new albums per year, although RCA counted the live albums and reissues of older songs as meeting the obligation.
As for the live albums having the same material, it's possible that Elvis realized what Parker was up to and refused to perform a lot of new material in his concert. There is a story of Parker begging Elvis to add several new songs to his concert set lists and Elvis refusing. Curiously, Elvis and his band did rehearse several songs that were never performed in concert, including such songs as Leon Russell's "Delta Lady," Neil Diamond's "Holly Holy" (which one of Elvis MM aides said was also attempted in the recording studio) and George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord." Where was RCA when these songs were being rehearsed? In the recording studio, Elvis also held a jam session of where he did nothing but Chuck Berry songs, which was recorded but subsequently lost by RCA over the years. One has to wonder if any of this stuff was scooped up by Parker and hidden away, still waiting to be rediscovered or possibly permanently lost? Elvis deserved better but Parker was always willing to settle for mediocre.
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Post by erik on Aug 1, 2012 13:18:16 GMT -5
Quote by sliderocker:
If those Chuck Berry cover jam sessions ever emerge someday....
But as a consolation for fans, Elvis did record Berry's minor 1965 hit "Promised Land" at Stax in Memphis in December 1973; and to RCA's credit, they released it as a single in October 1974, subsequently peaking at a highly respectable #14 on the Hot 100 in December of that year. It was one of the King's best from that period (IMHO).
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Post by sliderocker on Aug 2, 2012 3:12:04 GMT -5
If those Chuck Berry cover jam sessions ever emerge someday....
...someday before we're all over on the other side with Elvis and all our family members. Not long before his own death, producer Felton Jarvis, who handled the technical side of Presley's recordings from 1966 up through Presley's death, named off most of the songs that were part of that jam session. As far as I can recall, RCA was never able to find the tape with those songs and now the people in charge of Elvis's recordings say they don't exist. But, I'd take the word of the man who was in charge of the technical side of the recordings who was there over someone who was never there when Presley was living and has no way of knowing 100% for sure what was and wasn't recorded.
But as a consolation for fans, Elvis did record Berry's minor 1965 hit "Promised Land" at Stax in Memphis in December 1973; and to RCA's credit, they released it as a single in October 1974, subsequently peaking at a highly respectable #14 on the Hot 100 in December of that year. It was one of the King's best from that period (IMHO)
"Promised Land" should've been a Top 10. It was better than much of what was in the Top 40 during the time it was in the single charts. And actually, an early version of "Promised Land" was one of the songs that was part of the jam session of Chuck Berry tunes. I recall a few other tunes being mentioned: remakes of "Memphis, Tennessee" and "Too Much Monkey Business," along with "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll," "School Days," and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." I think it's also likely that the list of tunes included an Elvis version of "Back in the USA." As mentioned, Jarvis named off the songs, which I think would tend to support his claim. I believe he mentioned the jam session took place in 1972 and said RCA had lost the session tapes with those songs. I'm not sure why RCA, then BMG and now Sony want to dismiss the idea that they exist. If I was head of that company, I'd tell the person in charge of Elvis to turn the archives upside down in searching for them and to not give up until they find them. There's no telling how much Elvis material they have lost over the years!
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Post by erik on Aug 2, 2012 8:54:40 GMT -5
Quote by sliderocker:
Re. Chuck Berry--Elvis did an actual legitimate recording of "Too Much Monkey Business" back in January 1968, with Jerry Reed on guitar. This was the period (1867-68) when Elvis was starting to once again record material more suited to him than, say, "Clambake"--stuff like "Big Boss Man", "Guitar Man", "U.S. Male" (the last two written by Reed himself), and "Hi Heel Sneakers."
In terms of "Promised Land", yes, it probably should have been a Top 10 hit; it likely would have convinced Elvis to give up a lot of bad habits (Colonel; Vegas), and maybe start doing one big tour a year, instead of seven or eight mini-tours, and then allow for some down time to rest and to make a good album, preferably in Memphis. He probably would have made even more money than he did had he done all this.
As for what happened to those Chuck Berry sessions done in 1972--you get the feeling somehow that they didn't see the light of day because the Colonel could never get a piece of the publishing on those songs. If RCA jettisoned those tapes at the behest of the Colonel, it wouldn't surprise me, but it'd be another case of a wasted opportunity with respect to Elvis.
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Post by sliderocker on Aug 2, 2012 14:07:17 GMT -5
Re. Chuck Berry--Elvis did an actual legitimate recording of "Too Much Monkey Business" back in January 1968, with Jerry Reed on guitar. This was the period (1867-68) when Elvis was starting to once again record material more suited to him than, say, "Clambake"--stuff like "Big Boss Man", "Guitar Man", "U.S. Male" (the last two written by Reed himself), and "Hi Heel Sneakers."
Elvis also recorded a version of "Memphis, Tennessee" in 1963 and a second, Beatlesque version of the song in early 1964. Elvis had played one of the versions of the song for singer Johnny Rivers, indicating he planned on releasing it as a single. Rivers recorded a version of the song as well and released his version of the song as a single, ticking off Elvis in the process and resulting in Elvis barring Rivers from his house. The issue was a sore point for Rivers, who claimed he wasn't the one who released his version of the song as a single. His producer, Lou Adler, said he made the decision to release Rivers's version as a single and that Rivers didn't know anything about it. Elvis's guitarist James Burton also added that Elvis spoke highly of Rivers and never seemed to have a problem with him. It's possible Elvis might have been mad at the time but got over it and didn't hold a grudge. I thought it possible either of Elvis's versions of the song could've been a Top 40 hit and I could see where he may have been bitter about playing the song for someone he regarded as a friend and then that person released his own version, undercutting Elvis in the process.
In terms of "Promised Land", yes, it probably should have been a Top 10 hit; it likely would have convinced Elvis to give up a lot of bad habits (Colonel; Vegas), and maybe start doing one big tour a year, instead of seven or eight mini-tours, and then allow for some down time to rest and to make a good album, preferably in Memphis. He probably would have made even more money than he did had he done all this.
I don't think Elvis would've given up the Colonel - wished many times he would have but as long as he had Parker, he would've had the Vegas shows and the grinding tour schedule. When it comes to Elvis's 1970s singles, I've always been of the opinion that Billboard intentionally gave Elvis's records lower positions on their charts and that the records should've had a higher showing. "Burning Love" should've been a number one - it sold more than Chuck Berry's "My Ding a Ling" yet the Berry single allegedly received more radio airplay, airplay which Billboard counted as sales. Likewise, "Way Down" outsold everything else that was on the charts in 1977 (thanks to Elvis's death) yet the record could do no better than 18??? I recall it being nearly impossible to find a radio station and not hear "Way Down" being played. And Elvis was, almost single handedly, the only artist still releasing singles in the 70s where both sides of the record were being played, yet Billboard didn't score the B-side individually as they had done in the 50s and 60s. They just noted it with the designation of an F, indicating the flip was being played and accounting for some of the sales. But, I believe Billboard did give chart positions to a handful of 45s where both sides were being played. But, some of Elvis's 70s record sales did not match their chart ranking in Billboard and it's hard to believe radio airplay could've impacted their rankings in Billboard.
As for what happened to those Chuck Berry sessions done in 1972--you get the feeling somehow that they didn't see the light of day because the Colonel could never get a piece of the publishing on those songs. If RCA jettisoned those tapes at the behest of the Colonel, it wouldn't surprise me, but it'd be another case of a wasted opportunity with respect to Elvis.
I couldn't see Parker getting a piece of the publishing on Berry's songs, nor butting heads with Berry or his publisher. The period in which Elvis recorded the songs was still a time when Elvis owned the rights to his masters and presumably, he or Parker likely kept what there was locked in their own archive system and provided RCA with the album mixes whenever it was time to release an album. Of course, then Parker sold the Presley masters to RCA in 1973 on everything recorded up to March 31, 1973 and RCA got everything, or did they? I think it possible the amazing buyout referred to everything Elvis recorded and released up to March 31,1973 but did not include everything Elvis had recorded but didn't release. But, if Parker kept anything, he kept a tight lid on everything and may not have surrendered everything he had to Elvis's estate in the 80s when he and the estate parted ways after all of the court proceedings.
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Post by the Scribe on Aug 2, 2012 15:51:43 GMT -5
Anyone have any insight as to why Elvis stayed with The Colonel for so long even at his own detriment?
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Post by erik on Aug 2, 2012 18:42:39 GMT -5
Quote by ronstadtfanaz:
I think the answer can be found in the fact that he was of a generation that was bought up to strictly respect their elders. He had been managed in his early years by Bob Neal and Sam Phillips while at Sun Records, and those two men genuinely respected his talent and let him bring out his own natural ability. But it was only after the Colonel and RCA bought out Elvis' Sun Records contract in 1955 for a then-unheard-of $35,000 that he went from regional sensation in the South to arguably the single most important American popular music icon of the second half of the 20th century.
Up until about 1961, the relationship between Elvis and the Colonel was a largely beneficial one. But when the Colonel stuck him in with all of those lousy B-movies for the ensuing seven years, it became painfully evident that the Colonel didn't see Elvis as anything but a cash cow. Not only that, the Colonel never "got" this thing called rock and roll. And Elvis, unfortunately, preferrred the devil he knew (and a wetback at that [the Colonel was a Dutchman in America illegally]) to the one he didn't. He only went behind the Colonel's back on a few occasions, like with the NBC Special (Colonel wanted a stereotypical Christmas thing) or recording "Suspicious Minds" (Colonel couldn't get a cut on the publishing); and on those occasions, he blew the doors off, giving much more than anybody thought possible. Had he felt as secure in the business of business as he was with the making of great music, he likely would have jettisoned the Colonel, jettisoned Vegas, and maybe even gotten himself off the terrible prescription drug kicks he was on. Sadly, of course, none of those things ever happened.
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Post by sliderocker on Aug 3, 2012 13:56:04 GMT -5
I'd also add to Eric's post that Elvis perhaps had a lack of interest in the non-music business side of his career. I think that was very detrimental to his music career because he didn't exactly trust Parker. Parker also believed in isolating Elvis from anyone who could possibly tempt him to rock the boat. Elvis got some second rate songs because top notch songwriters were not willing to give Parker everything just to have Elvis record their songs.
There was nothing intrinsically wrong with Parker putting Elvis in the movies or demanding a piece of the publishing. The problem was in the way Parker did it. He didn't care about Elvis's artistic desires, so he didn't care if Elvis wanted to star in an Oscar-nominated movie like "Midnight Cowboy" (the producers of that movie originally wanted Elvis for the role played by Jon Voight) or that Sid Tepper and Roy Bennett (and a few others) supplied songs made up of melodies that were in the public domain over original songs written by the likes of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller or Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.
So Parker had Elvis starring grade B movies and singing (mostly) second rate songs from the songwriters. When the movies ended, Parker moved Elvis onto the never ending series of concerts, year in and year out, the same cities across the US. Elvis wanted to break the routine and do a European tour and a Japanese and Australian tour and anywhere else in the world he had never been to, but because Parker was an illegal citizen to begin with and didn't trust anyone else to oversee Elvis, a world tour never happened. Ironically, Parker claimed feebly after Elvis's death that the reason Elvis never had a world tour was because he was afraid Elvis's drug problem would get him arrested in a few countries. While that might have been possible, it's also possible Elvis would've straightened himself out and got off the drugs for a world tour.
As someone else once said, Elvis deserves much of the blame for what he didn't do but that was still not a valid enough reason to let Parker off the hook for what he did and didn't do.
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Post by erik on Aug 7, 2012 9:11:23 GMT -5
Quote by sliderocker:
True--and also what Elvis did to himself, with all the medications, was his own doing. In fact, it was one of his own bodyguards who early on warned him that it was an addiction to painkillers that caused Hank Williams to die an untimely death. But back in the 1970s, before there was ever any such place as the Betty Ford clinic, a hospital stay was the only available thing to do...and it obviously wasn't wholly successful in Elvis' case.
But perhaps the worst thing the Colonel did was to not encourage Elvis to go all-out with everything, which was what Elvis was best at. He seemed to think that if he let Elvis give everything, there would be nothing left; he didn't think talent was a renewable energy. And the huckster in him said that Elvis should leave his fans hungering for more, which seems to say that the Colonel didn't give a rat's a** about the fans any more than he did his own client. Even a blind person could see that this kind of thinking, besides being cold-blooded, is absolutely wrong when it comes to a performer of Elvis' stature.
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Post by sliderocker on Aug 7, 2012 11:45:29 GMT -5
True--and also what Elvis did to himself, with all the medications, was his own doing. In fact, it was one of his own bodyguards who early on warned him that it was an addiction to painkillers that caused Hank Williams to die an untimely death. But back in the 1970s, before there was ever any such place as the Betty Ford clinic, a hospital stay was the only available thing to do...and it obviously wasn't wholly successful in Elvis' case.
I don't exactly hold the bodyguards blameless when it came to the drugs as they only started saying something once it started getting out of hand. They also had a vested interest because Elvis was paying them a salary and what could they do if Elvis fired them in a tempermental burst of anger? Of course, some of them did have something they could fall back on but others seemingly had nothing. After Elvis died, some of them seemingly did absolutely nothing.
Of course, another part of the drug issue is that the bodyguards (Elvis's friends) could do nothing because they had no legal standing. Elvis's family? Priscilla was his ex-wife and likewise someone with no legal standing to interfere in Elvis's life. Elvis's dad probably had some legal standing but he was so averse to Elvis spending any of his own money, most likely he would've talked Elvis out of trying to get any medical help in breaking off the drugs. It was Elvis's dad who talked Elvis out of firing Parker in 1973, out of a fear Elvis didn't have enough money to pay Parker off or fight him in court, and a fear Elvis couldn't recoup any of the money paid to Parker from the records and concerts. In some respects, one could argue that Elvis's dad was responsible for what would eventually happen to Elvis in August 1977, as whether heart attack or an overdose, what really killed Elvis was the malignancy that was Col. Parker and the toll that Parker's presence took on Elvis's life.
But perhaps the worst thing the Colonel did was to not encourage Elvis to go all-out with everything, which was what Elvis was best at. He seemed to think that if he let Elvis give everything, there would be nothing left; he didn't think talent was a renewable energy. And the huckster in him said that Elvis should leave his fans hungering for more, which seems to say that the Colonel didn't give a rat's a** about the fans any more than he did his own client. Even a blind person could see that this kind of thinking, besides being cold-blooded, is absolutely wrong when it comes to a performer of Elvis'stature.
While I also think Parker never wanted Elvis to go all out with everything, I think part of the reason for that was the environment in which Parker came up in. And maybe he thought those rules still applied. The music industry was a pretty volatile market. Still is. Sometimes, a good artist who deserves hit after hit can only squeak by with a single hit. Or they're unlucky and never have any hits. Maybe Parker had looked at some of the artists who went all out and that was it, they never had anything else ever after again., artistry wise. For many, the Beatles reached their peak with "Sgt. Pepper" and even though they had 4.5/3.5 albums (counting the "Yellow Submarine" album as half an album since the Beatle songs only took up side one and depending on whether you count "Magical Mystery Tour" as an official album - it was in the US but nowhere else for a long time), the albums that followed, while good, were never considered to be on the same artistic peak as "Sgt. Pepper." But, there was a difference between Elvis and whatever acts Parker had used as his measuring stick in that Elvis was here to stay and wasn't going to be a one trick wonder. He could've encouraged Elvis to go all out each and every time he held a recording session or starred in any movie.
Maybe Parker truly feared the backlash of Elvis's fans: when "Flaming Star" and "Wild in the Country" both flopped at the box office, Parker said it was because Elvis's fans wanted to hear and see Elvis sing songs in his movies,and those movies didn't have any songs or few songs. Of course, if the fans had stayed away from those movies, how could they have known one way or the other how many songs were or were not in the movies? Fandom isn't like it is now, with instant communication and instant opinion. Of course, neither of the above movies were specifically aimed at Elvis's teen market and more at the adult market, but there were still many adults who rejected and feared Elvis, and not inclined to see or listen to anything he did, but Parker misread as Elvis's base not liking what he had done. FS wasn't a bad western, better than people expect but WITC had a dark and dirty feel to it , and somewhat slimy. And it's not a very good movie, even though it has one of the best adult scenes in any Elvis movie: when Elvis yanks Tuesday Weld, pulls her into what appears to be the bathroom and closes the door. You don't see what goes on when the door is closed, but you can only imagine it was something hot and steamy. It's surprising that scene stayed in the movie because Parker was something of a prude when it came to wanting Elvis's movies to all be good clean fun. Maybe they kept that scene from him?
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