Showing posts with label Elvis Presley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elvis Presley. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Scotty Moore, Hard-Driving Guitarist Who Backed Elvis Presley, Dies at 84
Guitarist Scotty Moore, left, helped define Elvis Presley's early sound. Moore died June 28.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Scotty Moore, a guitarist whose terse, bluesy licks on Elvis Presley’s early hits virtually created the rockabilly guitar style and established the guitar as a lead instrument in rock ’n’ roll, died on Tuesday at his home outside Nashville. He was 84.
His death was confirmed by James L. Dickerson, Mr. Moore’s biographer and friend.
In 1954, Mr. Moore was performing with a country group, Doug Poindexter and the Starlite Wranglers, and recording at Sun Records in Memphis when Sam Phillips, the label’s owner, asked him to audition a young singer his secretary kept mentioning.
On July 4, Presley showed up at Mr. Moore’s house. Bill Black, the bass player for the Starlite Wranglers, arrived soon after, and the three men began running through a random selection of songs. Mr. Moore was not overly impressed but told Phillips that the young fellow had a nice voice and might be worth a try.
The next evening, at the Sun studio, the trio recorded an up-tempo version of “That’s All Right,” a blues song by Arthur Crudup, known as Big Boy, which Sun released with a rockabilly version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the flip side.
The record caught fire locally, and Presley was on his way, electrifying audiences with a new sound defined in large part by Mr. Moore, whose slashing chords, inserted like musical punctuation, and hard-driving solos inspired future rock guitarists around the world, including Keith Richards, George Harrison, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler and Chris Isaak.
“All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like that,” Mr. Richards told Mr. Dickerson, who helped Mr. Moore write the 1997 memoir “That’s Alright, Elvis.” He added: “Everyone else wanted to be Elvis. I wanted to be Scotty.”
Mr. Moore and Mr. Black, joined by the drummer D. J. Fontana in 1955, recorded more than 300 songs with Presley for Sun and RCA, including “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Hound Dog.” Billed as the Blue Moon Boys, they also backed Presley on tour and appeared in several of his films.
“Moore’s concise, aggressive runs mixed country picking and blues phrasing into a new instrumental language,” Rolling Stone wrote in 2011, ranking Mr. Moore No. 29 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. “The playing was so forceful that it’s easy to forget there was no drummer.
“If Moore had done nothing but the 18 Sun recordings — including ‘Mystery Train’ and ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ — his place in history would be assured. But he continued to play with Elvis, contributing the scorching solos to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Hound Dog.’”
Scotty Moore at the Ponderosa Stomp music festival in New Orleans in 2003. Judi Bottoni / AP
Winfield Scott Moore III was born on Dec. 27, 1931, on a farm near Gadsden, Tenn. He started playing the guitar at 8, and over the years he developed a style that incorporated country, blues and jazz. Mr. Moore was particularly fond of the jazz guitarists Tal Farlow and George Barnes.
"All I can tell you is I just stole from every guitar player I heard over the years,” he told the makers of the television documentary “Elvis Presley” in 2001. “Put it in my databank. And when I played, that’s just what come out."
At 16, he enlisted in the Navy, lying about his age, and served in the Pacific. After leaving the service, he went to work as a hatter at his brother’s dry-cleaning business and organized the Starlite Wranglers, who recorded one of his songs at Sun, “My Kind of Carryin’ On,” when he and Presley crossed paths.
Presley developed a strong musical rapport with his three sidemen and was personally close to Mr. Moore, who played the role of a protective older brother. “I tried to play around the singer,” Mr. Moore told Mr. Dickerson. “If Elvis was singing a song a certain way, there was no point in me trying to top him on what he just did. The idea was to play something that went the other way — a counterpoint.”
When Presley went into the Army in 1958, Mr. Moore became a partner in Fernwood Records, which released a Top 10 hit in 1959, Thomas Wayne’s teenage tear-jerker “Tragedy.”
For a time, he supervised operations at Phillips’s studios in Memphis and Nashville, but he was fired by Phillips in 1964 after he recorded “The Guitar That Changed the World,” an album on the Epic label made up of instrumental versions of Presley hits. He later had a career as a freelance studio engineer, working with Dolly Parton, Tracy Nelson, Ringo Starr and other artists.
Like his fellow sidemen, Mr. Moore, who served as Presley’s manager until 1955, never enjoyed the financial rewards of the Presley phenomenon. The Blue Moon Boys were paid a weekly salary of $200 when they toured, $100 a week when they were idle.
All told, Mr. Moore earned a little over $30,000 from his partnership with Presley, which came to an end after the 1968 special on NBC that reintroduced Presley to a new generation of listeners and revived his career.
Mr. Moore, left out of the equation when Presley embarked on the Las Vegas phase of his career, put away his guitar and barely touched it for nearly 25 years. In the early 1990s, after a tape-recording business he established in 1976 went bankrupt, he began recording and touring again, initially with Carl Perkins and later with performers who had been influenced by his playing.
Mr. Moore, who lived in Nashville, was married and divorced three times. He is survived by a son, Donald; four daughters, Linda, Andrea, Vikki Hein and Tasha; and several grandchildren. “Scotty and Elvis: Aboard the Mystery Train,” a revised and updated version of his 1997 memoir, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2013.
Throughout his life, Mr. Moore gave a modest account of the momentous Sun sessions with Presley. “We didn’t know we were trying to create something new,” he told The New York Times in 1997. “We were trying to do something with a little different angle from what was on the market.”
Friday, January 08, 2016
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Elvis Birthday Bash, 'Aloha From Hawaii' CDs due Jan. 8
By Randy Lewis
The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com
1:20 PM PST, January 7, 2013
Elvis Presley would have turned 78 on Jan. 8, and even though he’s been gone for 35 years, the birthday celebrations continue. Here in Los Angeles, a grand tradition returns Tuesday night at the Echo in Echo Park, where the annual Elvis Birthday Bash will play out, as usual, with “all fun, no impersonators,” promises longtime co-organizer Art Fein.
This year’s lineup includes rockabilly veterans Ray Campi, Jimmy Angel and Rip Masters, alt-rock singer-songwriter Syd Straw and next-generation roots rockers including singer Karling Abbeygate. Other acts slated to perform include Church Keys, Count Smokula, Justin Curtis, Dick Deluxe, Fur Dixon and South Bay Surfers.
Most of the solo artists will be supported by the Elvis All-Star Band with Marty Rifkin, Harry Orlov, Skip Edwards, Paul Marshall and Dave Raven. Proceeds from this year’s show are being donated to the Los Angeles Mission.
In fitting tribute to the artist who broke so many rules as he helped usher in the age of rock 'n’ roll, only a few guidelines are imposed upon birthday bash performers: Nobody can repeat a song anyone else has played, and no “ETAs -- Elvis Tribute Artists.”
That phrase “is an actual professional term, I’ve learned,” Fein noted on the 25th anniversary of the event, which started in 1986 by rocker James Intveld and roots-rock promoter Ronnie Mack, who contines his role with Fein as co-organizer.
Meanwhile, Presley’s label, RCA Records, is marking this year’s anniversary with the release of “Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite -- Legacy Edition,” an expanded and remastered edition of his 1973 album from the first global satellite concert 40 years ago.
The two-CD set includes a remastered disc with the original concert, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard album chart upon its release in 1973 and knocked Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” out of the top slot. The second CD contains a remixed and remastered version of “The Alternate Aloha,” which is a rehearsal performance recorded as a “safety copy” with a slightly different set list, plus five additional songs Presley and his entourage recorded exclusively for the U.S. broadcast, which was originally delayed so it wouldn’t compete with the theatrical film then in release, “Elvis on Tour.”
It’s the first time the original Hawaii concert and the alternate show have been together in one package. “The Alternate Aloha” originally appeared in an official release in 1988, and has been remixed from the original multi-track tapes, according to RCA/Legacy officials.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Chris Isaak goes way back on 'Beyond the Sun'
By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/
October 18, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – Bill's Place is Chris Isaak's kind of place. Great burgers, sinful fries and saucy waitresses.
There's something decidedly retro about the joint. Ditto the guy digging into his lunch out on the patio, given his, well, let's just say it, Elvis voice and looks.
"The '50s was a pretty wonderful time for people, it was hopeful," says Isaak, 55. "But I didn't record this new album out of nostalgia."
Isaak's new disc, Beyond the Sun, out Oct. 18, was recorded with his longtime band at Memphis' fabled Sun Studio, and includes both rock staples (from "Great Balls of Fire" to "Ring of Fire") and uptempo originals such as the album's first single, "Live It Up".
But in tackling this material, Isaak wasn't interested in lionizing an era ("The '50s had polio and racism, too," he says bluntly) but rather paying tribute to his modest childhood in scrappy Stockton, Calif.
A memorable serenade
Chris Isaak knew early on that something about Elvis Presley rocked his world. And it didn’t hurt that he could look and sound like The King with ease. “Elvis was my nickname when I was a boxer as a kid,” says Isaak, who in his 20s boxed as a light heavyweight for a university in Japan. “I was like, ‘OK, well, maybe.’ But I knew I didn’t want to be an impersonator.” Once he’d made a name for himself, Isaak felt more comfortable tackling Presley’s canon on stage. Which led to what he considers one of the most fantastically embarrassing moments of his life. I was playing the Greek Theatre (in Los Angeles) a few years back, and I walked into the crowd to sing a song,” he says. “I started in on "Love Me Tender" and looked around in the dark for someone to sing it to, kind of like a lounge singer would. So I turned to this woman and starting singing. And then I saw who it was. Priscilla Presley. “I just went, ‘Uh ... uh ...’ I forgot the words. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she gave me this smiling look like, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard this song before.’” "My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up, so to me songs by Jerry Lee (Lewis) and Fats Domino are the classics, they're the best songs ever," says the man who sprung into the cultural mainstream in the early '90s with "Wicked Game".
"I write my own songs, and I only see their flaws," he says. "But 'It's Now or Never'? There's nothing ever wrong with that."
Isaak says that for years he shied away from covering his heroes for fear of being pigeonholed as a retro crooner. That was a wise move, says Alan Light, Rolling Stone contributing writer.
"He was smart to not do an album like this early in his career, but now he can," says Light. "The tricky thing is, how do you win in a head-to-head battle with those (legends)? You can't really advance a song like "I Walk the Line". But Isaak can easily pass the sincerity test, which makes his versions of these songs work."
Besides, adds Light, anything that "brings a spotlight to a place like Sun Studio is a good thing. (Studios such as) Stax and Hitsville are gone. But Sun remains."
The idea for Beyond the Sun came years ago, after Isaak read an interview with Sam Phillips, Sun Studio's monarch who crowned the careers of Elvis, Johnny Cash and Lewis, among others. In the article, Phillips cited Isaak as a personal favorite.
"Reading that brought tears to my eyes, because it was what Sam did that made me a musician," says Isaak, who was planning to meet Phillips when the legend died at 80 in July 2003. "I loved that he knew that I loved all that stuff."
Preparations for the album began at his home studio here. The woodshedding sessions went late into the night, fueled by pots of spaghetti cooked up by Isaak, who is Italian on his mother's side. ("And let's face it," he says with a laugh, "whatever your mother is, is what you are.")
Once prepared, the band made for Memphis. Setting up nightly just as the studio's public tours wound down, Isaak and his gang pounded through a few dozen classics, doing just one or two takes each, breaking only to get milkshakes from the diner next door.
"It was the most fun I've ever had," he says of the sessions. "We knew our stuff cold."
Sun Studio is a comically small place, considering its global impact; it's as if The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who had all recorded in the same small London building. So does it have an aura?
"I'm not a very spiritual guy when it comes to music," says Isaak. "I remember hearing Carlos Santana say that angels helped him write his songs. And I thought, 'Really, angels?'
"Well, Carlos was right. Now I get it. It's not like those guys were talking to me in that room, but you feel like you want to do your very best out of respect for them," he says. "It's like, Babe Ruth hit it out of the park. You know you're not going to be as good as Elvis or Jerry Lee, but I just wanted to go in there and hit a good one."
New album carries tunes Isaak heard growing up in Stockton
By Tony Sauro
Stockton Record Staff Writer
http://www.recordnet.com/
October 20, 2011 12:01 AM
Chris Isaak's dad "doesn't say much, you know."
This time he said it all about his son's new album.
Isaak's mom, Dorothy, played an advance copy of Chris' "Beyond the Sun" for her 83-year-old husband, Joe, a few weeks ago. His five-star response?
" 'That's the way I would have sung it,' " Chris said. He's proudly keeping the faith.
Isaak sings the songs on "Beyond the Sun," which was released Tuesday, very much the way he heard them being sung while growing up in Stockton.
On his parents' scratchy, "suitcase"-like record player. Or dad's tinny truck radio.
Living out a fantasy, Isaak recorded his 15th album at historic Sun Studio in Memphis, Tenn.
That's where immortals who inspired the boyhood Isaak - Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley - forged country-western and rhythm-and-blues into rock 'n' roll. With the defiant guidance of rebellious Sam Phillips.
"These were all the records my dad knew growing up," Isaak, 55, said of the 14-song CD that's also available in a two-CD, 25-track version and as a vinyl LP. "I tried to make a blend. A bouquet of flowers. They're songs I sing all the time. Some of them, people will know right away. Some will be pretty new-sounding.
Isaak and his band (Silvertone) captured that old sound, too. Which is just what he wanted. They played live and stayed true to the sonic template and studio set-up Phillips used to transform his modest Memphis Recording Service into a rock 'n' roll temple: The home of Sun Records.
"It's awesome," said Isaak, who "cut" 40 songs for the album. "I guarantee you'll like it, though it'll probably sell 10 copies. Everything links together. Every artist is connected to Sam Phillips. It was probably the most fun of anything I've ever done. We just loved getting to play in that room."
During his 26-year career, the Stagg High School and University of the Pacific graduate's music has echoed with affectionate evocations of rock 'n' roll's roots.
Isaak includes an autobiographical essay in the liner notes that connects his Stockton roots to his musical passions and the fabled Sun story.
"I still remember, on Harding Way, the second-hand shop where I bought a 45 (-rpm vinyl record) of 'I'll Never Let You Go,' " he recently said of a song from Presley's debut album in 1956, the year Isaak was born.
"That was the start. 'Oh, my god, this is great.' "
Isaak's motivation intensified when he discovered a copy of Presley's "Sun Sessions" recording (1954) while studying in Tokyo: "It changed my life. I went from having a flat-top (haircut) on the boxing team to saying I'd still be a heavyweight only as long as I could have hair like Elvis (a duck-tail pompadour)."
Not surprisingly, nine of the 25 tunes on "Beyond the Sun" are associated with Presley. It's also no surprise that Phillips once praised Isaak by saying, "He's very talented ... his music is so honest. It's incredible."
Isaak, who produced the album, growls and glides on the fast-and-hard ones. He really soars on "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "It's Now or Never" (1960), a re-write of " 'O Sole Mio."
Isaak's take on "My Happiness" is suitably sweet. Presley recorded it at Phillips' studio, ostensibly for his mom Gladys, in 1953. Phillips' office manager later insisted he check out the young novice's voice. History was made. (Connie Francis' "My Happiness" became a top-10 single in 1958.)
Isaak and his band's joy and freewheeling, one-take spontaneity are evident everywhere. Parts of the album - Isaak's first for Vanguard Records after 14 at Warner/Reprise - were recorded in San Francisco, where Isaak lives, and Los Angeles. Respecting another old-school axiom, the double-CD clocks in at a concise 64 minutes.
Isaak really digs into Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964). There are devoted takes on Johnny Cash: His signature "Ring of Fire" (1964) and the low rumble of "I Walk the Line" (1956). Isaak frolics through Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire" (1957) and greases Perkins' "Dixie Fried" (1956) just right.
Demonstrating his skill at writing them "that way," too, Isaak includes two original tunes: "Live It Up," a rockabilly romp, and "Lovely Loretta," a sprightly, yet sad, shuffle ("This whole world turned against me/You're the only friend I found").
Isaak also discovered the pleasure of working with Sun legends Jack "Cowboy" Clement and Roland James.
"We played 'til our fingers looked like baseball mitts," Isaak said. "I don't think there's a band that can touch us on this stuff."
It's "dedicated to my folks Joe & Dorothy." The double-CD concludes with a close-the-circle version of "That Lucky Old Sun" (1949). In Isaak's case, it's "that lucky old son," too.
Busy, busy, busy. ...
Isaak also harmonizes with Glenn Campbell on "Ghost on the Canvas," the 75-year-old singer-songwriter's impressive new recording.
Campbell, a "really, really nice guy," chit-chatted and performed on "The Chris Isaak Hour" TV show.
Isaak's version of "Crying Waiting Hoping" is one of the more-faithful interpretations on "Listen to Me: Buddy Holly," a 16-track tribute to the late rock 'n' roll pioneer who would've turned 75 on Sept. 7.
As a Turner Classic Movies host on Oct. 11, Isaak led into a version of Robert Penn Warren's novel by saying: "Shot in my hometown of Stockton, California, from 1949, 'All the King's Men.' "
To paraphrase the title of an Elvis tune on "Beyond the Sun": Isaak never forgets to remember.
Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at www.recordnet.com/lensblog.
Related:
Chris Isaak loves classics, but not old 55 -
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/isaak-loves-classics-but-not-old-55/story-e6frg8n6-1226162503877
http://www.usatoday.com/
October 18, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – Bill's Place is Chris Isaak's kind of place. Great burgers, sinful fries and saucy waitresses.
There's something decidedly retro about the joint. Ditto the guy digging into his lunch out on the patio, given his, well, let's just say it, Elvis voice and looks.
"The '50s was a pretty wonderful time for people, it was hopeful," says Isaak, 55. "But I didn't record this new album out of nostalgia."
Isaak's new disc, Beyond the Sun, out Oct. 18, was recorded with his longtime band at Memphis' fabled Sun Studio, and includes both rock staples (from "Great Balls of Fire" to "Ring of Fire") and uptempo originals such as the album's first single, "Live It Up".
But in tackling this material, Isaak wasn't interested in lionizing an era ("The '50s had polio and racism, too," he says bluntly) but rather paying tribute to his modest childhood in scrappy Stockton, Calif.
A memorable serenade
Chris Isaak knew early on that something about Elvis Presley rocked his world. And it didn’t hurt that he could look and sound like The King with ease. “Elvis was my nickname when I was a boxer as a kid,” says Isaak, who in his 20s boxed as a light heavyweight for a university in Japan. “I was like, ‘OK, well, maybe.’ But I knew I didn’t want to be an impersonator.” Once he’d made a name for himself, Isaak felt more comfortable tackling Presley’s canon on stage. Which led to what he considers one of the most fantastically embarrassing moments of his life. I was playing the Greek Theatre (in Los Angeles) a few years back, and I walked into the crowd to sing a song,” he says. “I started in on "Love Me Tender" and looked around in the dark for someone to sing it to, kind of like a lounge singer would. So I turned to this woman and starting singing. And then I saw who it was. Priscilla Presley. “I just went, ‘Uh ... uh ...’ I forgot the words. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she gave me this smiling look like, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard this song before.’” "My mom and dad played this music all the time when I was growing up, so to me songs by Jerry Lee (Lewis) and Fats Domino are the classics, they're the best songs ever," says the man who sprung into the cultural mainstream in the early '90s with "Wicked Game".
"I write my own songs, and I only see their flaws," he says. "But 'It's Now or Never'? There's nothing ever wrong with that."
Isaak says that for years he shied away from covering his heroes for fear of being pigeonholed as a retro crooner. That was a wise move, says Alan Light, Rolling Stone contributing writer.
"He was smart to not do an album like this early in his career, but now he can," says Light. "The tricky thing is, how do you win in a head-to-head battle with those (legends)? You can't really advance a song like "I Walk the Line". But Isaak can easily pass the sincerity test, which makes his versions of these songs work."
Besides, adds Light, anything that "brings a spotlight to a place like Sun Studio is a good thing. (Studios such as) Stax and Hitsville are gone. But Sun remains."
The idea for Beyond the Sun came years ago, after Isaak read an interview with Sam Phillips, Sun Studio's monarch who crowned the careers of Elvis, Johnny Cash and Lewis, among others. In the article, Phillips cited Isaak as a personal favorite.
"Reading that brought tears to my eyes, because it was what Sam did that made me a musician," says Isaak, who was planning to meet Phillips when the legend died at 80 in July 2003. "I loved that he knew that I loved all that stuff."
Preparations for the album began at his home studio here. The woodshedding sessions went late into the night, fueled by pots of spaghetti cooked up by Isaak, who is Italian on his mother's side. ("And let's face it," he says with a laugh, "whatever your mother is, is what you are.")
Once prepared, the band made for Memphis. Setting up nightly just as the studio's public tours wound down, Isaak and his gang pounded through a few dozen classics, doing just one or two takes each, breaking only to get milkshakes from the diner next door.
"It was the most fun I've ever had," he says of the sessions. "We knew our stuff cold."
Sun Studio is a comically small place, considering its global impact; it's as if The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who had all recorded in the same small London building. So does it have an aura?
"I'm not a very spiritual guy when it comes to music," says Isaak. "I remember hearing Carlos Santana say that angels helped him write his songs. And I thought, 'Really, angels?'
"Well, Carlos was right. Now I get it. It's not like those guys were talking to me in that room, but you feel like you want to do your very best out of respect for them," he says. "It's like, Babe Ruth hit it out of the park. You know you're not going to be as good as Elvis or Jerry Lee, but I just wanted to go in there and hit a good one."
New album carries tunes Isaak heard growing up in Stockton
By Tony Sauro
Stockton Record Staff Writer
http://www.recordnet.com/
October 20, 2011 12:01 AM
This time he said it all about his son's new album.
Isaak's mom, Dorothy, played an advance copy of Chris' "Beyond the Sun" for her 83-year-old husband, Joe, a few weeks ago. His five-star response?
" 'That's the way I would have sung it,' " Chris said. He's proudly keeping the faith.
Isaak sings the songs on "Beyond the Sun," which was released Tuesday, very much the way he heard them being sung while growing up in Stockton.
On his parents' scratchy, "suitcase"-like record player. Or dad's tinny truck radio.
Living out a fantasy, Isaak recorded his 15th album at historic Sun Studio in Memphis, Tenn.
That's where immortals who inspired the boyhood Isaak - Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley - forged country-western and rhythm-and-blues into rock 'n' roll. With the defiant guidance of rebellious Sam Phillips.
"These were all the records my dad knew growing up," Isaak, 55, said of the 14-song CD that's also available in a two-CD, 25-track version and as a vinyl LP. "I tried to make a blend. A bouquet of flowers. They're songs I sing all the time. Some of them, people will know right away. Some will be pretty new-sounding.
Isaak and his band (Silvertone) captured that old sound, too. Which is just what he wanted. They played live and stayed true to the sonic template and studio set-up Phillips used to transform his modest Memphis Recording Service into a rock 'n' roll temple: The home of Sun Records.
"It's awesome," said Isaak, who "cut" 40 songs for the album. "I guarantee you'll like it, though it'll probably sell 10 copies. Everything links together. Every artist is connected to Sam Phillips. It was probably the most fun of anything I've ever done. We just loved getting to play in that room."
During his 26-year career, the Stagg High School and University of the Pacific graduate's music has echoed with affectionate evocations of rock 'n' roll's roots.
Isaak includes an autobiographical essay in the liner notes that connects his Stockton roots to his musical passions and the fabled Sun story.
"I still remember, on Harding Way, the second-hand shop where I bought a 45 (-rpm vinyl record) of 'I'll Never Let You Go,' " he recently said of a song from Presley's debut album in 1956, the year Isaak was born.
"That was the start. 'Oh, my god, this is great.' "
Isaak's motivation intensified when he discovered a copy of Presley's "Sun Sessions" recording (1954) while studying in Tokyo: "It changed my life. I went from having a flat-top (haircut) on the boxing team to saying I'd still be a heavyweight only as long as I could have hair like Elvis (a duck-tail pompadour)."
Not surprisingly, nine of the 25 tunes on "Beyond the Sun" are associated with Presley. It's also no surprise that Phillips once praised Isaak by saying, "He's very talented ... his music is so honest. It's incredible."
Isaak, who produced the album, growls and glides on the fast-and-hard ones. He really soars on "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "It's Now or Never" (1960), a re-write of " 'O Sole Mio."
Isaak's take on "My Happiness" is suitably sweet. Presley recorded it at Phillips' studio, ostensibly for his mom Gladys, in 1953. Phillips' office manager later insisted he check out the young novice's voice. History was made. (Connie Francis' "My Happiness" became a top-10 single in 1958.)
Isaak and his band's joy and freewheeling, one-take spontaneity are evident everywhere. Parts of the album - Isaak's first for Vanguard Records after 14 at Warner/Reprise - were recorded in San Francisco, where Isaak lives, and Los Angeles. Respecting another old-school axiom, the double-CD clocks in at a concise 64 minutes.
Isaak really digs into Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964). There are devoted takes on Johnny Cash: His signature "Ring of Fire" (1964) and the low rumble of "I Walk the Line" (1956). Isaak frolics through Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire" (1957) and greases Perkins' "Dixie Fried" (1956) just right.
Demonstrating his skill at writing them "that way," too, Isaak includes two original tunes: "Live It Up," a rockabilly romp, and "Lovely Loretta," a sprightly, yet sad, shuffle ("This whole world turned against me/You're the only friend I found").
Isaak also discovered the pleasure of working with Sun legends Jack "Cowboy" Clement and Roland James.
"We played 'til our fingers looked like baseball mitts," Isaak said. "I don't think there's a band that can touch us on this stuff."
It's "dedicated to my folks Joe & Dorothy." The double-CD concludes with a close-the-circle version of "That Lucky Old Sun" (1949). In Isaak's case, it's "that lucky old son," too.
Busy, busy, busy. ...
Isaak also harmonizes with Glenn Campbell on "Ghost on the Canvas," the 75-year-old singer-songwriter's impressive new recording.
Campbell, a "really, really nice guy," chit-chatted and performed on "The Chris Isaak Hour" TV show.
Isaak's version of "Crying Waiting Hoping" is one of the more-faithful interpretations on "Listen to Me: Buddy Holly," a 16-track tribute to the late rock 'n' roll pioneer who would've turned 75 on Sept. 7.
As a Turner Classic Movies host on Oct. 11, Isaak led into a version of Robert Penn Warren's novel by saying: "Shot in my hometown of Stockton, California, from 1949, 'All the King's Men.' "
To paraphrase the title of an Elvis tune on "Beyond the Sun": Isaak never forgets to remember.
Contact Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at www.recordnet.com/lensblog.
Related:
Chris Isaak loves classics, but not old 55 -
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/isaak-loves-classics-but-not-old-55/story-e6frg8n6-1226162503877
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Rockabilly Queen Prolongs Her Party
By MELENA RYZIK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
January 21, 2011
Top, Chad Batka for The New York Times; bottom from left, Jo McCaughey; Wanda Jackson Enterprises (2)
Top, Wanda Jackson performing at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. From left, Jack White, producer of her coming album; a publicity shot; Ms. Jackson with Elvis Presley.
THE crowd was rockabilly through and through: girls in pegged jeans and crimson lipstick, boys in flattops and pompadours, shrunken leather jackets. When Wanda Jackson, 73, took the stage with her guitar for a sold-out show at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn recently, it was all cat growls, howls and hip swivels — and that was from Ms. Jackson herself. The audience followed suit, with a chorus of fans joining in on her song “I Gotta Know.” She first recorded it in 1956, not long after she met and began dating Elvis Presley.
“Now girls, don’t get ahead of me here,” Ms. Jackson said, telling the story from the stage as the crowd hooted. “It was 1955. My daddy traveled with me and kept my reputation intact.”
Elvis, though, changed her life. In 1958 Ms. Jackson recorded “Let’s Have a Party,” which he originally performed (as “Party” in the 1957 movie “Lovin’ You”). Released as a single two years later, her version became a hit on the pop charts — cementing her place in music history as the first woman to record a rock song. In the years since, she has swung from rock to country to gospel, earning a cult following as the Queen of Rockabilly. Now, like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Mavis Staples before her, she is the latest veteran artist to work with a devoted younger producer, in the hopes of a third-act career shift.
On Tuesday, Third Man and Nonesuch Records will release “The Party Ain’t Over,” Ms. Jackson’s first studio album in eight years and the first produced by a paragon of contemporary rock: Jack White. The collaboration, with Mr. White playing guitar, is largely retro, a collection of covers recorded live with a 12-piece band. But everyone involved hopes it will introduce Ms. Jackson to a new audience, affording her a level of attention that’s closer to her more famous contemporaries like Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, all of whom she performed with. “She’s influential to every modern female singer, whether they know about her or not,” Mr. White said. “She broke down those walls in the beginning, when it was the hardest to do.”
Since she was discovered at 15 in Oklahoma City, Ms. Jackson’s career has been etched by men: Hank Thompson, the country star who got her signed after hearing her on local radio; Elvis, who encouraged her to wield her singular voice — a graveled purr — in rock instead of country; Wendell Goodman, her husband of 50 years, her tour manager and constant companion; and now Mr. White. But through it all she has become a shimmying emblem of female independence in a male-dominated industry, testing boundaries with her forward style and lyrics about mean men and hard-headed women (and those are the love songs). As she allowed, winkingly, at the Knitting Factory show, “No wonder I have a bad-girl reputation.”
Terry Stewart, the president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said, “She’s still working sort of a wildcat sound, and she had it as a young lady, which was pretty much unheard of at the time.” Vouched for by the likes of Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen, Ms. Jackson was inducted in 2009 as an early influencer, and she will be a spokeswoman for the museum’s “Women in Rock” exhibition, opening in May. And she continues to tour, as many as 120 dates a year in the United States and abroad. (Mr. White will join her for a few concerts this year; she plays the Bowery Ballroom in New York on Feb. 24.) “They all point to her as the source of the Nile on this stuff,” Mr. Stewart said of early rock fans.”
For Ms. Jackson the album with Mr. White is the latest surprise in a career full of them. “You can’t hardly name anything that I haven’t experienced somewhere along the way,” she said in a recent interview in a quiet Midtown hotel. Her husband sat nearby, typing on a computer, pausing to offer a cough drop. Ms. Jackson wore gray slacks, a gray cardigan, and a gray sequined top — she favors sparkly — and her blue eyes were sharp. “I always liked fishnets,” she said, complimenting a reporter’s. Her taste can be grandma-sweet too; she called Mr. White “so cute.”
“He’s not one of these sloppy dressers,” she explained. “I said, I’d like to just take you home, Jack, and set you up on the mantel on my fireplace and just get to see you when I walk by.”
She knew his name mostly from a 2004 record he produced for Ms. Lynn, “Van Lear Rose,” which was well received and earned two Grammys. But she was not a fan of the White Stripes. “I told Jack too, I love him, but that type of music, I just don’t relate to it,” Ms. Jackson said. “It kind of goes over my head.”
Initially Ms. Jackson and her husband hoped to make a Sinatra-and-friends-style duet record. “I think those kind of albums should be made illegal, they are such a bad idea,” Mr. White wrote in an e-mail. Instead he preferred to get Ms. Jackson in the studio at his home in Nashville, recording an album of her own.
She was reluctant at first. “I was nervous about it because I didn’t know what he was going to expect,” she said. And she worried that her rockabilly fans would rebel at more contemporary stuff. “Wendell kind of had to drag me into the studio kicking and screaming,” she added.
Chad Batka for The New York Times
Brooklyn, New York. Wanda Jackson (sitting - left) meets a fan (right) after her show at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, New York.
Mr. White, who first heard “Let’s Have a Party” as a teenager in a cover by the 5678s, an all-girl Japanese garage-rock group, put her at ease quickly, helped by the familiar songs he selected: the Andrews Sisters’ “Rum and Coca-Cola,” Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain” and the country staple “Dust on the Bible.” Ms. Jackson suggested an Elvis tune, “Like a Baby,” and they both loved “Teach Me Tonight,” recorded by the Cuban-born De Castro Sisters.
One song that Mr. White offered made his singer balk — Amy Winehouse’s “You Know That I’m No Good.” Some of the raunchy lyrics were too much for Ms. Jackson, a born-again Christian since 1971. So Mr. White rewrote them. “He sang in my headphones with me to teach me the melody,” Ms. Jackson said, “and then once I got it I said, ‘Oh yeah, this is a great song.’ ”
But he was a demanding producer. “I’m not really used to that,” she said.
In the studio Ms. Jackson likened his approach to a “velvet brick,” which he said was one of the best compliments he’s ever received. (“It’s got me wondering about coating my tombstone in red velvet flocking,” Mr. White said. “I’m looking into that.”)
They played with the song selection to achieve the right mix of inspiration and believability. “Making an album of rockabilly covers would’ve been too easy and boring,” he said. “The idea was this woman has an attitude in her that can work in calypso, funk and yodeling, just like it can in rockabilly. Wanda and I wanted to get someplace further out there and see what she could pull off at this stage in her career.”
Ms. Jackson had a string of country hits in the 1970s, and in the ’80s and ’90s she was kept afloat by European fans, alongside the nostalgists who make up the rockabilly scene in the United States. Now she is being discovered by a younger generation of vintage-loving artists. “I watch YouTubes of her all the time,” said Zooey Deschanel, the actress and one-half of the indie-pop duo She & Him. “I’m obsessed with her. She can growl and she has amazing rhythm. She does stuff that no one else can do.”
That unique sound is still evident on “The Party Ain’t Over,” which begins with a yowling, sped-up version of “Shakin’ All Over,” by the ’60s English group Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. With the exception of the album’s last track, which showcases Ms. Jackson’s yodeling — a skill her husband told Mr. White about — the arrangements are pulsing, not stripped down, with bits of surf rock and oompah driven by guitar. (Members of Mr. White’s other bands, the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs, sat in, along with his wife, the model and singer Karen Elson, who sometimes also fixed lunch.)
Ms. Jackson’s style is a throwback too. For the album she’s photographed in one of Mr. White’s vintage cars, wearing a pair of her own ’50s sunglasses. She was one of the first Southern artists to reject the fussy cowgirl outfits of her era in favor of pencil skirts, high heels, big jewelry and bouffants. (When she toured Japan after her song “Fujiyama Mama” became a surprise No. 1 hit there in 1958, she learned how to tease her hair by imitating the geishas, she said.) Told she couldn’t wear a strapless gown to the Grand Ole Opry, she adopted a tight, fringed shift dress — sewn by her mother — as her costume. “All I had to do on that dress was tap my foot and everything moved,” Ms. Jackson said, pleased.
She still wears fringe to perform, and plays guitar at home in Oklahoma City. She and Mr. Goodman raised their children there, and now two of her granddaughters have taken up music. The couple is devoted to family — Mr. Goodman gave up his career at I.B.M. to work with his wife — and church. Which doesn’t mean that Ms. Jackson is above gossiping about her ex.
When she and Elvis were performing together and dating, he took her outside to his car during a break between matinee and evening shows. “He asked me to wear his ring and be his girl,” Ms. Jackson said. He gave her a ring off his finger, with tiny stones — “itty-bitty,” she said. “They were diamonds. I had them checked.” She laughed. “I’m bad, I’m no good.”
(Or as Mr. White put it. “She was cool before they had a name for it.”)
Did she ever wish she’d had as much fame early in her career as her contemporaries?
“Well, yeah,” Ms. Jackson said. “Wouldn’t you?”
She’s jealous, she said, of country artists today, with their magazine covers and cosmetics deals. “I expected to be a big star and I got to be a star, but not that big star I wanted to be,” she said. But, she added, “I have more celebrity status now than I ever had in my life, and I appreciate it more. I’ve paid my dues in the business, but I’ve been rewarded for it. Almost every night someone will come and say, ‘After hearing you and seeing you on YouTube, I’ve always wanted to form a girl band — and I’ve done it.”
After her show at the Knitting Factory she signed autographs until 1:30 a.m. “The fans keep me young,” she said, “the spirit of those songs and the way the kids love it.” Without making much of a fuss about it Ms. Jackson has outlasted nearly all her male contemporaries.
She wears Elvis’s ring sometimes, on a chain around her neck. “Yes, girls, he was a good kisser,” she told the crowd.
“You were too!” a female voice shouted back.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
January 21, 2011
Top, Chad Batka for The New York Times; bottom from left, Jo McCaughey; Wanda Jackson Enterprises (2)
Top, Wanda Jackson performing at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn. From left, Jack White, producer of her coming album; a publicity shot; Ms. Jackson with Elvis Presley.
THE crowd was rockabilly through and through: girls in pegged jeans and crimson lipstick, boys in flattops and pompadours, shrunken leather jackets. When Wanda Jackson, 73, took the stage with her guitar for a sold-out show at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn recently, it was all cat growls, howls and hip swivels — and that was from Ms. Jackson herself. The audience followed suit, with a chorus of fans joining in on her song “I Gotta Know.” She first recorded it in 1956, not long after she met and began dating Elvis Presley.
“Now girls, don’t get ahead of me here,” Ms. Jackson said, telling the story from the stage as the crowd hooted. “It was 1955. My daddy traveled with me and kept my reputation intact.”
Elvis, though, changed her life. In 1958 Ms. Jackson recorded “Let’s Have a Party,” which he originally performed (as “Party” in the 1957 movie “Lovin’ You”). Released as a single two years later, her version became a hit on the pop charts — cementing her place in music history as the first woman to record a rock song. In the years since, she has swung from rock to country to gospel, earning a cult following as the Queen of Rockabilly. Now, like Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Mavis Staples before her, she is the latest veteran artist to work with a devoted younger producer, in the hopes of a third-act career shift.
On Tuesday, Third Man and Nonesuch Records will release “The Party Ain’t Over,” Ms. Jackson’s first studio album in eight years and the first produced by a paragon of contemporary rock: Jack White. The collaboration, with Mr. White playing guitar, is largely retro, a collection of covers recorded live with a 12-piece band. But everyone involved hopes it will introduce Ms. Jackson to a new audience, affording her a level of attention that’s closer to her more famous contemporaries like Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, all of whom she performed with. “She’s influential to every modern female singer, whether they know about her or not,” Mr. White said. “She broke down those walls in the beginning, when it was the hardest to do.”
Since she was discovered at 15 in Oklahoma City, Ms. Jackson’s career has been etched by men: Hank Thompson, the country star who got her signed after hearing her on local radio; Elvis, who encouraged her to wield her singular voice — a graveled purr — in rock instead of country; Wendell Goodman, her husband of 50 years, her tour manager and constant companion; and now Mr. White. But through it all she has become a shimmying emblem of female independence in a male-dominated industry, testing boundaries with her forward style and lyrics about mean men and hard-headed women (and those are the love songs). As she allowed, winkingly, at the Knitting Factory show, “No wonder I have a bad-girl reputation.”
Terry Stewart, the president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said, “She’s still working sort of a wildcat sound, and she had it as a young lady, which was pretty much unheard of at the time.” Vouched for by the likes of Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen, Ms. Jackson was inducted in 2009 as an early influencer, and she will be a spokeswoman for the museum’s “Women in Rock” exhibition, opening in May. And she continues to tour, as many as 120 dates a year in the United States and abroad. (Mr. White will join her for a few concerts this year; she plays the Bowery Ballroom in New York on Feb. 24.) “They all point to her as the source of the Nile on this stuff,” Mr. Stewart said of early rock fans.”
For Ms. Jackson the album with Mr. White is the latest surprise in a career full of them. “You can’t hardly name anything that I haven’t experienced somewhere along the way,” she said in a recent interview in a quiet Midtown hotel. Her husband sat nearby, typing on a computer, pausing to offer a cough drop. Ms. Jackson wore gray slacks, a gray cardigan, and a gray sequined top — she favors sparkly — and her blue eyes were sharp. “I always liked fishnets,” she said, complimenting a reporter’s. Her taste can be grandma-sweet too; she called Mr. White “so cute.”
“He’s not one of these sloppy dressers,” she explained. “I said, I’d like to just take you home, Jack, and set you up on the mantel on my fireplace and just get to see you when I walk by.”
She knew his name mostly from a 2004 record he produced for Ms. Lynn, “Van Lear Rose,” which was well received and earned two Grammys. But she was not a fan of the White Stripes. “I told Jack too, I love him, but that type of music, I just don’t relate to it,” Ms. Jackson said. “It kind of goes over my head.”
Initially Ms. Jackson and her husband hoped to make a Sinatra-and-friends-style duet record. “I think those kind of albums should be made illegal, they are such a bad idea,” Mr. White wrote in an e-mail. Instead he preferred to get Ms. Jackson in the studio at his home in Nashville, recording an album of her own.
She was reluctant at first. “I was nervous about it because I didn’t know what he was going to expect,” she said. And she worried that her rockabilly fans would rebel at more contemporary stuff. “Wendell kind of had to drag me into the studio kicking and screaming,” she added.
Chad Batka for The New York Times
Brooklyn, New York. Wanda Jackson (sitting - left) meets a fan (right) after her show at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, New York.
Mr. White, who first heard “Let’s Have a Party” as a teenager in a cover by the 5678s, an all-girl Japanese garage-rock group, put her at ease quickly, helped by the familiar songs he selected: the Andrews Sisters’ “Rum and Coca-Cola,” Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain” and the country staple “Dust on the Bible.” Ms. Jackson suggested an Elvis tune, “Like a Baby,” and they both loved “Teach Me Tonight,” recorded by the Cuban-born De Castro Sisters.
One song that Mr. White offered made his singer balk — Amy Winehouse’s “You Know That I’m No Good.” Some of the raunchy lyrics were too much for Ms. Jackson, a born-again Christian since 1971. So Mr. White rewrote them. “He sang in my headphones with me to teach me the melody,” Ms. Jackson said, “and then once I got it I said, ‘Oh yeah, this is a great song.’ ”
But he was a demanding producer. “I’m not really used to that,” she said.
In the studio Ms. Jackson likened his approach to a “velvet brick,” which he said was one of the best compliments he’s ever received. (“It’s got me wondering about coating my tombstone in red velvet flocking,” Mr. White said. “I’m looking into that.”)
They played with the song selection to achieve the right mix of inspiration and believability. “Making an album of rockabilly covers would’ve been too easy and boring,” he said. “The idea was this woman has an attitude in her that can work in calypso, funk and yodeling, just like it can in rockabilly. Wanda and I wanted to get someplace further out there and see what she could pull off at this stage in her career.”
Ms. Jackson had a string of country hits in the 1970s, and in the ’80s and ’90s she was kept afloat by European fans, alongside the nostalgists who make up the rockabilly scene in the United States. Now she is being discovered by a younger generation of vintage-loving artists. “I watch YouTubes of her all the time,” said Zooey Deschanel, the actress and one-half of the indie-pop duo She & Him. “I’m obsessed with her. She can growl and she has amazing rhythm. She does stuff that no one else can do.”
That unique sound is still evident on “The Party Ain’t Over,” which begins with a yowling, sped-up version of “Shakin’ All Over,” by the ’60s English group Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. With the exception of the album’s last track, which showcases Ms. Jackson’s yodeling — a skill her husband told Mr. White about — the arrangements are pulsing, not stripped down, with bits of surf rock and oompah driven by guitar. (Members of Mr. White’s other bands, the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs, sat in, along with his wife, the model and singer Karen Elson, who sometimes also fixed lunch.)
Ms. Jackson’s style is a throwback too. For the album she’s photographed in one of Mr. White’s vintage cars, wearing a pair of her own ’50s sunglasses. She was one of the first Southern artists to reject the fussy cowgirl outfits of her era in favor of pencil skirts, high heels, big jewelry and bouffants. (When she toured Japan after her song “Fujiyama Mama” became a surprise No. 1 hit there in 1958, she learned how to tease her hair by imitating the geishas, she said.) Told she couldn’t wear a strapless gown to the Grand Ole Opry, she adopted a tight, fringed shift dress — sewn by her mother — as her costume. “All I had to do on that dress was tap my foot and everything moved,” Ms. Jackson said, pleased.
She still wears fringe to perform, and plays guitar at home in Oklahoma City. She and Mr. Goodman raised their children there, and now two of her granddaughters have taken up music. The couple is devoted to family — Mr. Goodman gave up his career at I.B.M. to work with his wife — and church. Which doesn’t mean that Ms. Jackson is above gossiping about her ex.
When she and Elvis were performing together and dating, he took her outside to his car during a break between matinee and evening shows. “He asked me to wear his ring and be his girl,” Ms. Jackson said. He gave her a ring off his finger, with tiny stones — “itty-bitty,” she said. “They were diamonds. I had them checked.” She laughed. “I’m bad, I’m no good.”
(Or as Mr. White put it. “She was cool before they had a name for it.”)
Did she ever wish she’d had as much fame early in her career as her contemporaries?
“Well, yeah,” Ms. Jackson said. “Wouldn’t you?”
She’s jealous, she said, of country artists today, with their magazine covers and cosmetics deals. “I expected to be a big star and I got to be a star, but not that big star I wanted to be,” she said. But, she added, “I have more celebrity status now than I ever had in my life, and I appreciate it more. I’ve paid my dues in the business, but I’ve been rewarded for it. Almost every night someone will come and say, ‘After hearing you and seeing you on YouTube, I’ve always wanted to form a girl band — and I’ve done it.”
After her show at the Knitting Factory she signed autographs until 1:30 a.m. “The fans keep me young,” she said, “the spirit of those songs and the way the kids love it.” Without making much of a fuss about it Ms. Jackson has outlasted nearly all her male contemporaries.
She wears Elvis’s ring sometimes, on a chain around her neck. “Yes, girls, he was a good kisser,” she told the crowd.
“You were too!” a female voice shouted back.
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Sunday, January 10, 2010
Why Elvis was so loved
BY CRAIG D. LINDSEY - STAFF WRITER
The Raleigh News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/
January 10, 2009
This weekend is a very special weekend for Elvis Presley fans. I'm sure they spent all of Friday in their homes, watching that marathon of his films on Turner Classic Movies, snacking down on fried-peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. Local Elvis fans may have also checked out the annual Elvisfest in Chapel Hill on Friday and Saturday.
On Friday, Elvis Aaron Presley would've been 75 years old. (Yes, I'm going out on a limb and saying that the man did, in fact, die in 1977.) And as we begin the second decade of the 21st century, it's fascinating to see how Presley is still considered an icon worth honoring, even worshiping. According to a recent Vanity Fair article, 84 percent of Americans have had their lives touched by Elvis Presley in some way.
A friend told me not long ago that her mother used to serve Presley and his family when she was a flight attendant. Presley kissed her mom on the cheek when she was at one of his shows. My friend said she had to pull this bit of knowledge out of her mom, as though this were sacred information to take to her grave. That's what Elvis did to people, folks. He made mere mortals feel as though it was the highest honor to be in his presence. And many people were glad to accept that idea.
That certainly appears to be the focus of two new books on Presley: "Elvis: My Best Man" (Crown) and "Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him" (It Books). Released Tuesday, the books are different in scope. "Man" is written by disc jockey and longtime associate George Klein (with Chuck Crisafulli) and is more of an affectionate memoir of how Klein (dubbed "GK" by Presley) went from high-school acquaintance of Presley to one of the closest members of his "Memphis Mafia" posse.
Elvis and women
For critical commentary, detailed storytelling and juicy gossip, you might want to thumb through "House," written by music journalist and Elvis biographer Alanna Nash. A thick tome, it details Presley's lifelong relationship with the opposite sex. It starts off, of course, with the extremely close (practically to the point of unhealthy) bond he had with his mother, Gladys. Then, it clocks off all the courtships, flings, dalliances and respectable friendships he's had with the ladies - some famous (Ann-Margaret!), some infamous (a dysfunctional coupling with a particularly unhinged Natalie Wood).
Both books mention how accessible and giving Presley was to his fans. While Presley was not the first artist to receive pop-star adoration (he showed up on Frank Sinatra's hipster heels), he seemed to have been the first to be openly grateful for it. As adults feared Presley and his sexually suggestive dance moves, androgynous appearance, and favoring of performing music with a black influence, the young crowd was coming in droves. And Presley fed off it.
In his book, Klein recalls how one run-in with a fan ended with Presley reprimanding Klein and another crony:
"I remember pulling off the MGM lot one day, and as usual we slowed for a moment so that Elvis could wave to fans of his who had been waiting at the gate. One guy approached our open window and shouted, 'Elvis, I wrote a song for you!' Alan yelled back, 'Sing it! Sing it!' As the car started to pull away, this guy was running alongside trying to sing his song. Alan and I started laughing, but Elvis shot us the dirtiest of looks and told us to stop. 'That's a guy who buys my records and goes to my movies,' he said. 'Don't make him feel bad about it.'"
Even people who have never met Presley, like Raleigh music producer John Custer (for groups such as Corrosion of Conformity, Dag), can understand the effect he had on people. "Elvis seemed to retain the idea of being a decent person, or at least trying to be a decent person," says Custer, who says he met many people in his career who had interacted with Presley.
"That's one of the ways he honored his mother. From everybody that I've ever met that knew of him, they said he was exceptionally kind. Of course, subsequently, celebrities are not, you know, in most cases."
Custer also insists that, just like with another dearly departed pop god, Presley needed the fans as much as they needed him.
"It's interesting losing Michael Jackson last year," he says. "It seems to be the same kind of thing, that the fans were everything to those guys. They were so isolated and cut off that the fans were the only opportunity to have any kind of real human connection. It's impossible to imagine that kind of isolation that those guys went through. So I would imagine that fans would become very important to feed that part of your ego, your emotional need for connection."
With all true pop stars, it's about the total package: looks, charisma, likability and actual talent. Presley did have all those things, but he also had the ability to remain relatable and vulnerably human. Presley may forever be known as The King, a godlike, otherworldly creature who introduced rock 'n' roll to sexually repressed masses. But he was always that shy boy from Memphis, trailing around with a guitar in hand, looking for somebody to sing to.
craig.lindsey@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4760
The Raleigh News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/
January 10, 2009
This weekend is a very special weekend for Elvis Presley fans. I'm sure they spent all of Friday in their homes, watching that marathon of his films on Turner Classic Movies, snacking down on fried-peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. Local Elvis fans may have also checked out the annual Elvisfest in Chapel Hill on Friday and Saturday.
On Friday, Elvis Aaron Presley would've been 75 years old. (Yes, I'm going out on a limb and saying that the man did, in fact, die in 1977.) And as we begin the second decade of the 21st century, it's fascinating to see how Presley is still considered an icon worth honoring, even worshiping. According to a recent Vanity Fair article, 84 percent of Americans have had their lives touched by Elvis Presley in some way.A friend told me not long ago that her mother used to serve Presley and his family when she was a flight attendant. Presley kissed her mom on the cheek when she was at one of his shows. My friend said she had to pull this bit of knowledge out of her mom, as though this were sacred information to take to her grave. That's what Elvis did to people, folks. He made mere mortals feel as though it was the highest honor to be in his presence. And many people were glad to accept that idea.
That certainly appears to be the focus of two new books on Presley: "Elvis: My Best Man" (Crown) and "Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him" (It Books). Released Tuesday, the books are different in scope. "Man" is written by disc jockey and longtime associate George Klein (with Chuck Crisafulli) and is more of an affectionate memoir of how Klein (dubbed "GK" by Presley) went from high-school acquaintance of Presley to one of the closest members of his "Memphis Mafia" posse.
Elvis and women
For critical commentary, detailed storytelling and juicy gossip, you might want to thumb through "House," written by music journalist and Elvis biographer Alanna Nash. A thick tome, it details Presley's lifelong relationship with the opposite sex. It starts off, of course, with the extremely close (practically to the point of unhealthy) bond he had with his mother, Gladys. Then, it clocks off all the courtships, flings, dalliances and respectable friendships he's had with the ladies - some famous (Ann-Margaret!), some infamous (a dysfunctional coupling with a particularly unhinged Natalie Wood).
Both books mention how accessible and giving Presley was to his fans. While Presley was not the first artist to receive pop-star adoration (he showed up on Frank Sinatra's hipster heels), he seemed to have been the first to be openly grateful for it. As adults feared Presley and his sexually suggestive dance moves, androgynous appearance, and favoring of performing music with a black influence, the young crowd was coming in droves. And Presley fed off it.
In his book, Klein recalls how one run-in with a fan ended with Presley reprimanding Klein and another crony:
"I remember pulling off the MGM lot one day, and as usual we slowed for a moment so that Elvis could wave to fans of his who had been waiting at the gate. One guy approached our open window and shouted, 'Elvis, I wrote a song for you!' Alan yelled back, 'Sing it! Sing it!' As the car started to pull away, this guy was running alongside trying to sing his song. Alan and I started laughing, but Elvis shot us the dirtiest of looks and told us to stop. 'That's a guy who buys my records and goes to my movies,' he said. 'Don't make him feel bad about it.'"
Even people who have never met Presley, like Raleigh music producer John Custer (for groups such as Corrosion of Conformity, Dag), can understand the effect he had on people. "Elvis seemed to retain the idea of being a decent person, or at least trying to be a decent person," says Custer, who says he met many people in his career who had interacted with Presley."That's one of the ways he honored his mother. From everybody that I've ever met that knew of him, they said he was exceptionally kind. Of course, subsequently, celebrities are not, you know, in most cases."
Custer also insists that, just like with another dearly departed pop god, Presley needed the fans as much as they needed him.
"It's interesting losing Michael Jackson last year," he says. "It seems to be the same kind of thing, that the fans were everything to those guys. They were so isolated and cut off that the fans were the only opportunity to have any kind of real human connection. It's impossible to imagine that kind of isolation that those guys went through. So I would imagine that fans would become very important to feed that part of your ego, your emotional need for connection."
With all true pop stars, it's about the total package: looks, charisma, likability and actual talent. Presley did have all those things, but he also had the ability to remain relatable and vulnerably human. Presley may forever be known as The King, a godlike, otherworldly creature who introduced rock 'n' roll to sexually repressed masses. But he was always that shy boy from Memphis, trailing around with a guitar in hand, looking for somebody to sing to.
craig.lindsey@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4760
Friday, January 08, 2010
Today's Tune: Elvis Presley - Long Black Limousine
Elvis Presley - Long Black Limousine
Recorded: 1969/01/13, first released on "From Elvis in Memphis"
(Words & Music: Vern Stovall / Bobby George)
There's a long line of mourners
Driving down our little street
Their fancy cars are such a sight to see, oh yea
They're all rich friends who knew you in the scene
And now they've finally brought you
Brought you home to me
When you left you know you told me
That some day you'd be returnin'
In a fancy car, all the town to see, oh yea,
Well now everyone is watching you
You finally had your dream, yea
You're ridin' in a long black limousine
You know the papers told of how you lost your life, oh yea
The party, the party and the fatal crash that night
Well the race along the highway, oh the curve you didn't see
When you're riding in that long black limousine
Through tear filled eyes I watch as you pass by oh yea
A chauffeur, a chauffeur at the wheel dressed up so fine
Well I'll never, I'll never love another
Oh my heart, all my dreams yea, they're with you
In that long black limousine
Yea, yea, they're with you in that long black limousine
Yea, yea, they're with you in that long black limousine
Recorded: 1969/01/13, first released on "From Elvis in Memphis"
(Words & Music: Vern Stovall / Bobby George)
There's a long line of mournersDriving down our little street
Their fancy cars are such a sight to see, oh yea
They're all rich friends who knew you in the scene
And now they've finally brought you
Brought you home to me
When you left you know you told me
That some day you'd be returnin'
In a fancy car, all the town to see, oh yea,
Well now everyone is watching you
You finally had your dream, yea
You're ridin' in a long black limousine
You know the papers told of how you lost your life, oh yea
The party, the party and the fatal crash that night
Well the race along the highway, oh the curve you didn't see
When you're riding in that long black limousine
Through tear filled eyes I watch as you pass by oh yea
A chauffeur, a chauffeur at the wheel dressed up so fine
Well I'll never, I'll never love another
Oh my heart, all my dreams yea, they're with you
In that long black limousine
Yea, yea, they're with you in that long black limousine
Yea, yea, they're with you in that long black limousine
Review- Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight
Music
Posted by Chris Herrington on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 7:00 AM
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Home
How do you put together a four-disc introduction to Elvis Presley? Ask my advice, and I'd probably tell you to seek out four separate but almost equally essential discs: Start with The Sun Sessions, which compiles all the essential music (and then some) that Presley recorded in Memphis with Sam Phillips to launch his career. Next comes 30 #1 Hits, the self-descriptive compilation that captures Presley the genius pure singer and mutable pop superstar across a 20-plus-year span. The third choice would be The Memphis Record, a 1987 disc that pulls together the very best of his 1969 Memphis homecoming sessions (initially released across multiple albums and singles). The final pick is a tough one. I'd be tempted to tab Elvis is Back!, the most recent CD issue of Presley's first post-Army LP which also includes the separate singles from those sessions. But really I'd hate to miss out on the casual yet often overpowering live material he recorded for his 1968 "comeback" television special. And you can hear one of those full sets — with no fat — on the 1998 Tiger Man release.
Not bad, but not without problems. Whichever way you go on that fourth disc, you're missing some classic stuff. And even with both there are pockets of material crucial to the Elvis story unrepresented.
A bigger problem is that The Sun Sessions and The Memphis Record are long out of print, replaced in the catalogue by double-disc sets (Sunrise and last year's From Elvis In Memphis reissue, respectively) packed with alternate versions and lesser songs nice for completists but unnecessary for normal everyday listening.
So it isn't easy. But the powers that be at RCA have attempted to tell Presley's story in four discs with Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight, a 100-song boxed set timed to coincide with what would have been Presley's 75th birthday today.
Given all the constant repackaging of the King's catalogue and my own inherent skepticism toward single-artist boxed sets, I'm happy to report that Elvis 75 is not consumer fraud. True, if you already have a pretty full Elvis collection, this probably isn't for you. But if you're starting from scratch or if you're a novice wanting to dig beyond 30 #1 Hits (all but two of which — the admittedly expendable "Wooden Heart" and "Wonder of You" — are included) but don't want to struggle too hard to find those superior out-of-print collections, this is the way to go.
The chronological set hits most of the key periods in Presley's career in acceptable fashion, with one glaring exception (more on this in a bit), and shines new light on some nice moments still not well known. Unlike my cobbled-together four-disc suggestion, it acknowledges passages that are crucial to the Elvis story but not exactly "highlights" — the movie music, Vegas, Hawaii.
Sure, four discs is an awful lot of music for a newcomer or novice to wade through, but in this case it's not overkill. Elvis' career, however disappointing in its well-established way, could hardly be contained by less. Though not tightly thematic, Elvis 75's four discs divide into relatively self-contained segments of Presley's career.
Disc one is the most obvious and most essential, covering the Sun years and his earliest pre-Army work with RCA, first in Nashville (the Sun trip augmented by drums and piano, featuring the breakthrough but somewhat overrated "Heartbreak Hotel"), then New York ("Don't Be Cruel"), and finally Hollywood ("All Shook Up").
The disc contains only six recordings from the Sun sessions, which seems skimpy considering it's both Presley's best and most important work. Though I cherish it, I can understand leaving out the whispery, spooky version of "Blue Moon," but "Tomorrow Night" and "Milkcow Blues Boogie" ("Let's get real, real gone") should really be here.
Elvis Presley on stage at the International in 1969
The second disc starts with some stray pre-Army singles that couldn't fit on the first disc, but really focuses on his post-Army re-entry in the early Sixties, an explosion of rich, diverse recordings he made in Nashville ("Stuck On You," "It's Now or Never," "Crying in the Chapel," "Reconsider Baby").
The third disc opens heavy with pure movie music ("Bossa Nova Baby," "Viva Las Vegas") and reflects Presley's diminishing artistry, featuring only one recording each from 1964 and 1965, when Presley should have been in his prime, but rebounds in the late Sixties with six selections from those "Memphis" sessions. As with Sun, six seems too skimpy, and the absence of Presley's personalized reading of "Long Black Limousine" is a head-scratcher. But even that isn't as questionable as the treatment Elvis 75 gives the "’68 Comeback" special, including only two orchestral selections ("If I Can Dream," "Memories") and not a single example of raw, casual live performances that are among Presley's most compelling music.
The final disc, with no more obvious glories to survey, contains the least essential music — big hits "Burning Love" and "Way Down" — but in pulling together the stray strands of Presley's final years, it's a compelling listen: "Polk Salad Annie" live in Vegas. "Funny How Time Slips Away" in a Nashville studio. "Always on My Mind," an inevitable, towering match of song and singer. Three songs — including a take on Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" — from a little-known 1973 session at Stax.
Though it's hard to imagine leaving "Milkcow Blues Boogie" or "Long Black Limousine" off a 100-song Elvis overview, Elvis 75 is a pretty well executed compilation. If you or someone you know is starting an Elvis collection from scratch, this is now probably the way to go.
Posted by Chris Herrington on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 7:00 AM
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Home
How do you put together a four-disc introduction to Elvis Presley? Ask my advice, and I'd probably tell you to seek out four separate but almost equally essential discs: Start with The Sun Sessions, which compiles all the essential music (and then some) that Presley recorded in Memphis with Sam Phillips to launch his career. Next comes 30 #1 Hits, the self-descriptive compilation that captures Presley the genius pure singer and mutable pop superstar across a 20-plus-year span. The third choice would be The Memphis Record, a 1987 disc that pulls together the very best of his 1969 Memphis homecoming sessions (initially released across multiple albums and singles). The final pick is a tough one. I'd be tempted to tab Elvis is Back!, the most recent CD issue of Presley's first post-Army LP which also includes the separate singles from those sessions. But really I'd hate to miss out on the casual yet often overpowering live material he recorded for his 1968 "comeback" television special. And you can hear one of those full sets — with no fat — on the 1998 Tiger Man release.
Not bad, but not without problems. Whichever way you go on that fourth disc, you're missing some classic stuff. And even with both there are pockets of material crucial to the Elvis story unrepresented.A bigger problem is that The Sun Sessions and The Memphis Record are long out of print, replaced in the catalogue by double-disc sets (Sunrise and last year's From Elvis In Memphis reissue, respectively) packed with alternate versions and lesser songs nice for completists but unnecessary for normal everyday listening.
So it isn't easy. But the powers that be at RCA have attempted to tell Presley's story in four discs with Elvis 75: Good Rockin' Tonight, a 100-song boxed set timed to coincide with what would have been Presley's 75th birthday today.
Given all the constant repackaging of the King's catalogue and my own inherent skepticism toward single-artist boxed sets, I'm happy to report that Elvis 75 is not consumer fraud. True, if you already have a pretty full Elvis collection, this probably isn't for you. But if you're starting from scratch or if you're a novice wanting to dig beyond 30 #1 Hits (all but two of which — the admittedly expendable "Wooden Heart" and "Wonder of You" — are included) but don't want to struggle too hard to find those superior out-of-print collections, this is the way to go.
The chronological set hits most of the key periods in Presley's career in acceptable fashion, with one glaring exception (more on this in a bit), and shines new light on some nice moments still not well known. Unlike my cobbled-together four-disc suggestion, it acknowledges passages that are crucial to the Elvis story but not exactly "highlights" — the movie music, Vegas, Hawaii.
Sure, four discs is an awful lot of music for a newcomer or novice to wade through, but in this case it's not overkill. Elvis' career, however disappointing in its well-established way, could hardly be contained by less. Though not tightly thematic, Elvis 75's four discs divide into relatively self-contained segments of Presley's career.
Disc one is the most obvious and most essential, covering the Sun years and his earliest pre-Army work with RCA, first in Nashville (the Sun trip augmented by drums and piano, featuring the breakthrough but somewhat overrated "Heartbreak Hotel"), then New York ("Don't Be Cruel"), and finally Hollywood ("All Shook Up").
The disc contains only six recordings from the Sun sessions, which seems skimpy considering it's both Presley's best and most important work. Though I cherish it, I can understand leaving out the whispery, spooky version of "Blue Moon," but "Tomorrow Night" and "Milkcow Blues Boogie" ("Let's get real, real gone") should really be here.
Elvis Presley on stage at the International in 1969
The second disc starts with some stray pre-Army singles that couldn't fit on the first disc, but really focuses on his post-Army re-entry in the early Sixties, an explosion of rich, diverse recordings he made in Nashville ("Stuck On You," "It's Now or Never," "Crying in the Chapel," "Reconsider Baby").
The third disc opens heavy with pure movie music ("Bossa Nova Baby," "Viva Las Vegas") and reflects Presley's diminishing artistry, featuring only one recording each from 1964 and 1965, when Presley should have been in his prime, but rebounds in the late Sixties with six selections from those "Memphis" sessions. As with Sun, six seems too skimpy, and the absence of Presley's personalized reading of "Long Black Limousine" is a head-scratcher. But even that isn't as questionable as the treatment Elvis 75 gives the "’68 Comeback" special, including only two orchestral selections ("If I Can Dream," "Memories") and not a single example of raw, casual live performances that are among Presley's most compelling music.
The final disc, with no more obvious glories to survey, contains the least essential music — big hits "Burning Love" and "Way Down" — but in pulling together the stray strands of Presley's final years, it's a compelling listen: "Polk Salad Annie" live in Vegas. "Funny How Time Slips Away" in a Nashville studio. "Always on My Mind," an inevitable, towering match of song and singer. Three songs — including a take on Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" — from a little-known 1973 session at Stax.
Though it's hard to imagine leaving "Milkcow Blues Boogie" or "Long Black Limousine" off a 100-song Elvis overview, Elvis 75 is a pretty well executed compilation. If you or someone you know is starting an Elvis collection from scratch, this is now probably the way to go.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Review: From Elvis in Memphis (Legacy Edition)
US release date: 28 July 2009UK release date: 27 July 2009
By Christel Loar
PopMatters
Thursday, August 13 2009
Hot on the heels of the phenomenal success of his so called “‘68 Comeback Special”, aired that December on NBC, Elvis Presley made one of the smartest moves of his career. He returned to Memphis, for the first time since his days with Sun Records, to record an album.
From Elvis in Memphis: Legacy Edition is the result of those 1969 recordings, and 40 years later, it’s easy to see why so many fans and critics consider this the pinnacle of the King’s powers as an artist. It’s Elvis at his best, and fully aware of that fact. He’s surrounded by top-notch writers and musicians and, as with the television performance, he’s clearly having fun doing something he loves. He’s in the best vocal shape since before his stint in the army, and he’s quite possibly more open to various styles and sounds than when he did his first Sun sessions.
Disc one of the Legacy Edition follows the 12 original From Elvis in Memphis tracks with four bonus recordings from the sessions, including a cover of “Hey Jude” that, although Presley plays fast and loose with the lyrics—or possibly, just doesn’t know them very well, given his laughter at the end of the song—is yet another surprising example, among many on this album, of both the power of his voice and his willingness to pull from all sorts of musical sources.
Disc two adds the ten tracks, also from the 1969 Memphis sessions, initially featured on the first half of From Memphis to Vegas - From Vegas to Memphis, which has seen some of its songs reissued over the years as Back in Memphis, and as parts of various compilations. These, along with four single mixes of album tracks and six non-album singles, round out the Legacy Edition release for a total of 36 tracks from Elvis’s sessions at Chip Moman’s American Studio. The singles appear in their original mono format and include both the chart hits, like “In The Ghetto”, “Suspicious Minds”, “Kentucky Rain”, and “Don’t Cry Daddy”, as well as their B-sides, such as “Any Day Now”, “You’ll Think of Me”, “My Little Friend”, and “Rubberneckin’”.
Extensive liner notes for this set were written by the Memphis based authors, filmmakers, and historians Robert Gordon and Tara McAdams, whose works include the books It Came From Memphis and The Elvis Handbook and the documentary films Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan: Cowboy Jack Clement’s Home Movies. In addition to those notes, the accompanying booklet features several wonderful photos of Elvis with his Memphis band and back up singers and of his opening night in Las Vegas. A complete list of musicians at the sessions and details of the overdubs is also included.Of course, it’s still the music that really sets this set apart. The newly remastered recordings allow listeners to experience every nuance of Elvis’s phrasing and delivery, and it’s truly difficult to choose specific tracks that stand out among such singular performances. On the first disc, “Any Day Now” and “In the Ghetto” are naturally the clinchers, but “Power of My Love” is a stunningly, well, powerful mid-album dark horse. On the second disc, one might argue that it’s all about the singles, but that would do grave injustice to Elvis’s masterful interpretation of Percy Mayfield’s “Stranger in My Own Home Town,” which is a true testament his unique ability to pay tribute to the artists he loved while simultaneously making a song incontestably his own.
With the fortieth anniversary of the recordings—and the remastering, repackaging, and releasing as a complete collection—From Elvis in Memphis: Legacy Edition has, at long last, given these tracks the treatment they deserve as some of the best music Elvis Presley ever made.
Elvis Presley
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Elvis fans ignore rain for graveside vigil
By WOODY BAIRD
Associated Press Writer
Nashville Tennessean
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Aug 16, 4:23 AM EDT
Jim Weber/The Memphis Commercial Appeal
This Elvis shrine created by artist Tommy Foster has traveled from Java Cabana to the Center for Southern Folklore and found a home at Goner Records in Cooper Young three years ago.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Mary Lou Martell put it off as long as she could. But she finally had to head to Memphis for an anniversary vigil at Elvis Presley's grave.
"It's my first Elvis Week. I'm a little ashamed to say that, but it is," Martell, 60, said as she took part in a candlelight procession to Presley's grave at Graceland, his former Memphis residence. "We watched it on the computer last year and I finally said, `I have to be part of that.'"
The procession, called the "Candlelight Vigil," drew several thousand Elvis fans who lined up in the street in front of Graceland for a single-file procession up a long, winding driveway to his grave in a small garden.
Fans weren't scared away by an intermittent drizzle during the vigil, which began at 9:30 p.m. EDT.
"We're doing fine," Martell said, peeping out from the hood of a plastic parka. "It's just for Elvis we stay out doing this."
The vigil, which runs into the early morning, is the highlight of a weeklong series of fan-club meetings, dances and Elvis-impersonator contests to commemorate the anniversary of his death. He died of heart disease and drug abuse at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977. He was 42.
Martell of Dunkirk, N.Y., said she visits Graceland often but avoided Elvis Week in the past because of the crowds. She came early for her first graveside vigil, though, setting up a lawn chair at 9 a.m. at Graceland's front gates.
Many Elvis pilgrims return each year, and the graveside vigil draws visitors from around the world. But it's largely ignored by Memphis residents.
Jennifer Hobson, 29, of Memphis and a group of hometown friends formed a "Blue Hawaii" club to try to change that and sent out vigil invitations to their friends.
The group set up a small canvas canopy in the street in front of Graceland and decorated it with inflatable palm trees, blue lights and an Elvis bust sporting a blue lei.
"This is part of our city," Hobson said, "but when we come down here, we rarely see people we know. Y'all need to come out."
Hobson said the group had to leave some decorations at home because of the rain.
"I have a velvet Elvis, but because of the rain we couldn't bring out all of our good stuff," Hobson said.
Graceland supports a sprawling complex of souvenir shops, and fans waiting for the procession packed the stores pouring over Viva Las Vegas bobble head dolls for $19.99, Burning Love scented candles for $14.99, Jailhouse Rock T-shirts for $24.99 and hundreds of other Elvis-flavored gifts and do-dads.
Nancy Rooks, a former Graceland cook, was set up at a souvenir shop table to sell her book, "Elvis' Maid Remembers," and talk with fans.
Generally, the 71-year-old Rooks said, the fans ask about Elvis' personal habits, when he went to bed, when he got up, what he liked to eat.
"I tell them he ate breakfast at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but then he'd eat dinner at 1 o'clock at night," she said. "We always had a meat loaf cooked, just in case he wanted it. If he didn't want meat loaf, then we knew to give him roast beef. He liked soul food."
Associated Press Writer
Nashville Tennessean
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Aug 16, 4:23 AM EDT
Jim Weber/The Memphis Commercial Appeal
This Elvis shrine created by artist Tommy Foster has traveled from Java Cabana to the Center for Southern Folklore and found a home at Goner Records in Cooper Young three years ago.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Mary Lou Martell put it off as long as she could. But she finally had to head to Memphis for an anniversary vigil at Elvis Presley's grave.
"It's my first Elvis Week. I'm a little ashamed to say that, but it is," Martell, 60, said as she took part in a candlelight procession to Presley's grave at Graceland, his former Memphis residence. "We watched it on the computer last year and I finally said, `I have to be part of that.'"
The procession, called the "Candlelight Vigil," drew several thousand Elvis fans who lined up in the street in front of Graceland for a single-file procession up a long, winding driveway to his grave in a small garden.
Fans weren't scared away by an intermittent drizzle during the vigil, which began at 9:30 p.m. EDT.
"We're doing fine," Martell said, peeping out from the hood of a plastic parka. "It's just for Elvis we stay out doing this."
The vigil, which runs into the early morning, is the highlight of a weeklong series of fan-club meetings, dances and Elvis-impersonator contests to commemorate the anniversary of his death. He died of heart disease and drug abuse at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977. He was 42.
Martell of Dunkirk, N.Y., said she visits Graceland often but avoided Elvis Week in the past because of the crowds. She came early for her first graveside vigil, though, setting up a lawn chair at 9 a.m. at Graceland's front gates.
Many Elvis pilgrims return each year, and the graveside vigil draws visitors from around the world. But it's largely ignored by Memphis residents.
Jennifer Hobson, 29, of Memphis and a group of hometown friends formed a "Blue Hawaii" club to try to change that and sent out vigil invitations to their friends.
The group set up a small canvas canopy in the street in front of Graceland and decorated it with inflatable palm trees, blue lights and an Elvis bust sporting a blue lei.
"This is part of our city," Hobson said, "but when we come down here, we rarely see people we know. Y'all need to come out."
Hobson said the group had to leave some decorations at home because of the rain.
"I have a velvet Elvis, but because of the rain we couldn't bring out all of our good stuff," Hobson said.
Graceland supports a sprawling complex of souvenir shops, and fans waiting for the procession packed the stores pouring over Viva Las Vegas bobble head dolls for $19.99, Burning Love scented candles for $14.99, Jailhouse Rock T-shirts for $24.99 and hundreds of other Elvis-flavored gifts and do-dads.
Nancy Rooks, a former Graceland cook, was set up at a souvenir shop table to sell her book, "Elvis' Maid Remembers," and talk with fans.
Generally, the 71-year-old Rooks said, the fans ask about Elvis' personal habits, when he went to bed, when he got up, what he liked to eat.
"I tell them he ate breakfast at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, but then he'd eat dinner at 1 o'clock at night," she said. "We always had a meat loaf cooked, just in case he wanted it. If he didn't want meat loaf, then we knew to give him roast beef. He liked soul food."
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Today's Tune: Elvis Presley - Blue Moon
Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley and Bill Black - The Blue Moon Boys
(Click on title to play video)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Friday, February 01, 2008
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Elvis Presley (1935-1977): Blue Hawaii
Tragic news from the mainlandBy Greil Marcus
Rolling Stone Magazine
Posted Sep 22, 1977 12:00 AM
August 18th Maui, Hawaii
There was a message to call the mainland, so I did. We don't follow the news much here when we are on vacation; the radio, especially on the outer islands, is mostly static, and this time we had brought along a cassette machine and some homemade tapes and didn't listen to the radio at all. "They want you to write a piece about Elvis," I was told on the phone. "An obituary." What kind of joke is that? I thought. Rolling Stone doesn't keep a ready file of obits. "What kind of joke is that?" I said. "Why, he died today," I was told. "A heart attack, apparently."
I didn't accept it at all, not in any way, but at the same time I knew it was true, and even as part of me withdrew from that fact, headlines began to fly through my brain: Nude body of George "Superman" Reeves found. Singer drowns in own vomit. James Dean spoke to me from the grave, man claims. I went down to the bar at the hotel where we are staying, and while I was waiting for my wife I ordered a Jack Daniel's. I would have asked for Wild Turkey, but this was no night to drink Kentucky whiskey; Jack Daniel's in straight from Tennessee, just like Elvis Presley's first 45.
Like most other people my age -- thirty-two -- Elvis mattered to me in the Fifties; I loved his music, bought some of his records, and never went to any of his movies. He was great, but he was also weird, and I kept my distance. Clearly, though, I had some sort of buried fascination for the man, and when he appeared on TV late in 1968 for his comeback, I found I could handle that fascination; in fact, I was caught up in it, and for five years I spent far more time listening to Elvis' music, from the beginning on down, than to the music of anyone else. I found, or at least decided, that Elvis contained more of America -- had swallowed whole more of its contradictions and paradoxes -- than any other figure I could think of; I found that he was a great, original American artist; and I found that neither of these propositions were generally understood, at least not in sufficient depth. So of course I wrote about it all, feeling, after 20,000 words, that while I had never written anything so good before, I had only scratched the surface.I did not write about "a real person"; I wrote about the persona I heard speaking in Elvis' music. I wrote about the personalization of an idea, of lots of ideas -- freedom, limits, risk, authority, sex, repression, youth, age, tradition, novelty, guilt and the escape from guilt -- because they all were there to hear; reading my perceptions back onto their source, I understood Elvis not as a human being (his divorce was interesting to me musically) but as a sort of force, as a kind of necessity: that is, the necessity existing in every culture (or anyway ours) that leads it to produce a perfect, all-inclusive metaphor for itself. This, I tried to find a way to say safely, was what Herman Melville attempted to create with the white whale, but this was what Elvis Presley turned out to be. Or rather, made himself into, or maybe, agreed to become. And because such a triumph had to combine absolute determination and self-conscious ambition with utter ease, with the grace of one to whom all good things come naturally, I imagined a special dispensation for Elvis, or, really, read it in the artifacts of his career: that to make all this work, to make this metaphor perfectly, transcendently American, to make it new, it would be free. In other words, this would, as it had to, be a Faustian bargain, but someone else -- and who cared who? -- would pick up the tab.
I thought about all this, sitting at the bar, still believing every word I had written but wondering: if I had not somehow turned myself into the most lunatic Elvis fan of all. Suddenly I began to get angry. I thought: disgusting, sordid, ugly, sleazy, stupid, wasteful, pathetic. I thought of George Reeves again; for some reason I still could not make the event real -- every time I focused on it consciously, the idea of Elvis dead, not here, seemed to imply that he had never been here, that his presence over 23 years had been some kind of hallucination, a trick -- and as a way to avoid the recite, I began to glide toward the corpse. I got tough. I played journalist. No one could tell me he died of anything but booze and broads, I said to myself. Isn't that what everybody in show biz dies from? Why should I think Elvis would be any different? Heart attack, my ass. I dumped the whole affair into Vegas. I wanted to cut loose from it all, but I was still too angry, and confused, not at anyone or anything: not at Elvis, or myself, or "them," or the fans, or the media, or "rock," or "success?" It was simply rage. I was devastated.
The following night I watched two separate television specials on Elvis' death, aired for most of the country the night before but broadcast a day late here in Hawaii. They were strange shows. On ABC one saw Chuck Berry who had never hidden his bitterness at the fact that it took a white man to symbolize the new music Chuck and others, Elvis among them, created; here he did not really try to hide his satisfaction at having lasted longer than "the King." "For what will Elvis be remembered among other musicians?" Chuck was asked. "Oh," he replied, "boop boop, boop; shake your leg; fabulous teen music; the Fifties; his movies." Not a man you'd want to trade ironies with in a dark alley -- but even Jerry Lee Lewis, laughing, raving drunk and packing a pistol outside Graceland, demanding to be let in to see the King, had lasted longer. And could television have possibly aired whatever it might have been that Jerry Lee had to say about all this? One saw Elvis performing in Hawaii in 1973 -- we had been here at the time, too, and I remember feeling like an idiot as I looked for him on the beach -- and in his later incarnation Elvis even began to look like George Reeves.On NBC's special, hosted in an even tone by David Brinkley, a panel of experts had been assembled: Murray the K, famous DJ, was the "first civilized person [i.e., Northerner] to play an Elvis record" -- The first civilized person [i.e., Northerner] to play an Elvis record -- Steve Dunleavy, the as-told-to part of a quartet of authors responsible for a just-published scandal bio called Elvis What Happened? (his co-writers are former Elvis bodyguards, fired over the last year or so), and my friend and colleague Dave Marsh of ROLLING STONE. Murray the K looked subdued and played the insider; Elvis, he informed America, had told him, Murray, that he, Elvis, would "not outlive his mother," who as it happened also died at the age of 42. Uh huh. Dunleavy looked bored, note his Australian accent, and spoke coolly -- in the manner of, "Well, you know these showbiz types" -- of Elvis in his last few years as a "walking drugstore." It was a classic case of too much too soon,'" Dunleavy said, trying to slide around the cliché. Dave Marsh, however, is a rock critic; in his case that means not that rock is part of his life because it is his job, but that rock is his job because it is his life. Dave looked shellshocked, scared. He looked the way I was feeling, and he said intelligent things that perhaps not a large percentage of those watching were prepared to understand.
"It's that Elvis has always been there," Marsh said. "I always expected him to be apart of American culture that I would share with my children." And of course that was it. Elvis was not a "phenomenon." He was not a "craze." He was not even, or at least not only, a "singer," or an "artist." He was that perfect American symbol, fundamentally a mystery, and the idea was that he would outlive us all -- or, at least, live for as long as it took both him and us to reach the limits of what that symbol had to say."
Since I had already read Steve Dunleavy's book, though, I could not help but think that Elvis' death might mean that those limits had already been reached, that the symbol had collapsed back upon itself and upon those who had, over the years, paid attention to it. The moment I enjoyed most in Elvis What Happened? came when I read that in 1966 Robert Mitchum offered Elvis the lead in Thunder Road -- perfect role for Elvis, and one that would have given him the chance to become the serious actor he had always dreamed of being -- and I enjoyed that moment most because I knew that Mitchum had already made Thunder Road, in 1958, and so could conclude that the accuracy of the test of the book might be suspect. Because while many of the events detailed in What Happened? are trivial, of the most unforgettable pillow fight I ever had sort, and some of the most sensationalized (Elvis demanding that his bodyguards set up a hit on the man who took away his wife) clearly inflated, what Red West, Sonny West and Dave Hebler have to say rings mostly true.The Elvis of What Happened? is a man whose success had, simply, driven him nuts. As presented here-in, of course, the present tense, the authors make much of their desire to save Elvis from himself -- Elvis has no sense of the real world whatsoever. He is schizophrenic, a manic depressive, insanely jealous, crazily "generous," desperate to hay loyalty and able to trust no one. Each of these characteristics is seen as inherent in his personality and his unique situation; each is intensified by huge, constant doses of uppers and downers, by an entourage of paid sycophants, by Elvis' obsession with firearms and by his paranoid fantasies of vengeance and death. Each of these neurotic dislocations seeks some sort of resolution in Elvis' desire to check the limits of what he can get away with (Can the near death of a young girl be overdosed --according to the book --- be covered up? Sure it can.), coupled with his desire to bring punishment upon himself for breaking rules he booms are right. Commentator after commentator on the night of Elvis' death mentioned that his life was never complete after his mother died, implying that had she lived he would have also; it seems clear, after reading What Happened?, that one route of Elvis' pathology was his inability -- from, inevitably, the beginning -- to be as good a boy as his mother must have wanted him to be.
I thought of this, however, only after Elvis' death; before that, I had not taken the book all that seriously. Now I realize that what I had read in it was at the source of my anger at his death, my sense of ugliness, and waste. The book had disturbed me when I read it, but not that much; I wrote a brief review and forgot about it. It is only now that I can see through the padding and the mean-spiritedness of the volume to what it has to show us: a picture of a man who lived with almost complete access to disaster, all the time. The stories that illustrate this are not all that important; you can read them, or you can make them up, whether they have to do with the onstage freak-out brought on by dope and who knows what else; the M-16 that went of at the wrong time; the rage no one could cool down. There is nothing in this book. I think, that would have ended Elvis' career had he lived (perhaps today, even the worst possibilities imaginable regarding Elvis' Army relationship with the then 14-year-old Priscilla might not really biter him with Middle America; Elvis did finally marry her, after all.) But the book's last pages, purportedly the transcript of a telephone conversation Elvis had with Red West sometime after Elvis fired him a conversation in which they discussed the book that had come out as What Happened? -- are themselves ending enough.
The feeling I get, reading stuff like this, is that Elvis may well have wanted this book to appear; that he wanted the burden and the glory of acting the King removed once and for all; that he wanted, finally, relief. Of course, that may only be what the authors of What Happened? want us to think. Peter Guralnick has often written about Elvis, and always brilliantly; every time, I think, he has headed his pieces with a quote from William Carlos Williams: "The pure products of America go crazy." In Elvis' case both Peter and Williams were obviously right. But it still seems too pat to me, as do the detailed explanations of What Happened?, because the merely reduce something we cannot quite get our heads around to something that can be laid to rest by a line.With Elvis in the ground his death is still out of my reach. This isn't, I know, just another rock & roll death; it isn't any kind of rock & roll death, because it is the only rock & roll death that cannot he contained by the various metaphors rock & roll has itself creased. Nor can it be contained, as Steer Dunleavy, and as times I, try to contain it, by showbiz metaphors. The problem-and it may take us years to really understand this, years during which some of us will base so keep these tiles clean and she stacks in order, reminding others that Elvis was not influenced by Chuck Berry, but by Roy Brown, and soon-is that there is just too much there, and that all of it -- the art, the buy, the man, the source in the South, his reward is Hollywood, the recognition and adulation all over the world far more than twenty years -- is all mixed up together.
The problem is that Elvis did flat simply change musical history, though of course he did that. He changed history, pure and simple, and in doing so, he became history -- he became part of it, attached to is, as those of us who were changed by him, or changed ourselves because of things we glimpsed in him, are not. And it must be added that so change history is so do something that cannot be exactly figured our pinned dawn; it is to create and so pursue a mystery. That Elvis did what he did-and we donut know precisely what he did, because "Milkcow Blues Bougie" and "Hound Dog" cannot be figured out, exactly-means that the world became something other than what it would have been had he not dune what h0 did, and that half-circle of a sentence has to be understood at the limit of its ability to mean anything at all. Because of Elvis' emergence, because of who he was and what he became, because of his recur and what we made of it, she American past, from the Civil War to the civil-rights movement, from Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, looks different than it would have without Elvis. Because of that event, its moment-the mid-Fifties-was convulsed, and started over. Because of that event, she future has possibilities that otherwise would have been foreclosed.
And you see, we all knew this. We knew it, I think, all the time. You can hear it in the music. Somehow, Elvis must have had a sense of it, too That is why, really, his death makes no sense, no matter if he died of an "irregular heartbeat," an overdose, as a suicide, is an accident, or m any other way. And this is what, I think, Dave meant when he said that Elvis had always been there, and hinted thus, at least for those of us who helped make Elvis' event, Elvis would of necessity have to outlive it. As with the death of FDR far another generation, it is not simply a man's death that wakes no sense, and is in same crucial, terrible way not real when history is personified and the person behind that history dies, history itself is no longer real.My wife and I talked about some of this down at the bar, while I watched the ice melt in my Jack Daniel's. She mentioned that she had asked me to take Elvis' "Long Black Limousine," from the 1969 comeback album, for our trip; for some reason I had never gotten around suit. It is quite a song: the story of a country girl who goes off to make it in the city, sell her soul, and come home, as she promised, riding in a fancy car -- a hearse. Elvis never sang with more passion; he was bitter, and of what other recording by Elvis Presley can you say that? Of course, Elvis was no fool; he knew the song was about him, the country boy lost to the city if there ever was one, but he sang as if he liked that and loathed it all at once. He contained multitudes. His singing cut through the contradictions, blew them up. William Carlos Williams might say thus "the pure products of America go crazy," but you might also say that the crazy product of America are pure, or something like that. When the stakes are as high us they always were in Elvis' case, the neat phase is not to be trusted; always it will obscure more than it will reveal. So we talked about "Long Black Limousine" and about the only Elvis music we did have along, an outtake of "Blue Moon of Kentucky," from Elvis' very first sessions in July of 1954, with studio dialogue bouncing back and forth between a nineteen-year-old Elvis, his accompanists Scotty Moose and Bill Black, and producer Sam Phillips. They were jammin' like crazy, they said. And they were.
We sat for a while longer, and I ordered another Jack Daniel's. My wife explained the rationale behind the drink to the bartender, who seemed amused. There was, he said, much more appropriate drink. We asked what. "Why, a Blue Hawaii, of course," he said. "You know, the movie?" That was two nights ago, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to try one.
Elvis' fans surrendered to him instinctively, willing to take what he gave (no master how silly), always confident that he could possess them completely any time he chose. Their faith, coupled with the complacency of his advisers, was both his glory and a plague. For if he was so great an artist in an environment where his were presence was enough to incite riotous devotion, what might he have become in an atmosphere where creative challenge was fostered, risk encouraged, banality derided?
Three is no denying that the final few years were depressing and humiliating -- especially since their mediocrity followed the great moments of redemption, the 1968 TV show and the string of vital hits that surrounded is. "If I Can Dream," "Kentucky Rain," "The Wonder of You" and "Suspicious Minds" were among the greatest records he ever made. As depressing as the musical backsliding -- perhaps more so -- was the physical deterioration. From a lithe, athletic and infinitely sexual creature, Elvis became the antithesis of our dreams.
Still, many of us turned to each new record with expectations that must confound thaw who missed even the final glimmerings of his majesty. Why did we bother?
Because Elvis was unique. He had is all Every element of the rock & roll dream was his -- pink Cadillacs, beautiful women, untold wealth, true genius and inspiration -- and that was a claim no one else could ever make. A few others might have had some hope of it, most notably Chuck Berry. Berry united his own set 0f opposites: black and white, adult and teenage, verbal and nonverbal. But Berry was also black, and though he, too, blazed a tough and glorious path, his race denied him the full honor due his genius.
In a way, though, it was Berry's story, because of songs like "Johnny B. Goode" and "Promised Land," even though those songs came to stand as prophecies of Elvis, and finally as epitaphs for him. (It is especially ironic that those two songs were among the finest recordings of Elvis' final years.( "Johnny B. Goode" was a story Elvis, and Elvis alone, lived out to the hilt. "Promised Land" must have seemed a plain fact so him -- at least some of the time.Perhaps I make too much of Elvis Presley -- he was, after all, not a saint or a guru. But if any individual of our time can be said so base changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness but of our own potential. If those things were not already so well integrated into our lives that they have become commonplace, it would be simpler to explain how astonishing a feat Elvis Presley's advent really was.
Of course, it is unquestionable that there would base been rock & roll music without Elvis Presley. But oh it's just as unquestionable that the kind of rock & roll we have -- a matter of dreams and visions, not just facts and figures or even songs and singers -- was shaped by him in the most fundamental ways.
His life must have been brutally lonely, for Elvis went it alone, took the biggest chance of all. One reason the Beatles did better, or at least lasted longer at their peak, was that they had learned from his mistakes and successes. Elvis had no such map to guide him, so he had to invent himself, over and over, come up with new terms for dealing with each situation. In the process, he invented us, whether or not we all know it. We are a hero-worshiping, thrill-crazy mob, I suppose, but at any best one that's tuned into the heart of things -- open, honest, unpretentious. Which is to say that he made us in his image.
Elvis was the King of rock & roll because he was the embodiment of its sins and virtues: grand and vulgar, rude and eloquent, powerful and frustrated, absurdly simple and awesomely complex. He was the King, I mean, in our hearts, which is the place where the music really comes to life. And just as rock & roll will stand as long as our hearts beat, he will always be our King: forever, irreplaceable, corrupt and incorruptible, beautiful and horrible, imprisoned and liberated. And finally, rockin' and free, free at last.
GREIL MARCUS
(RS 248 - September 22, 1977)
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