Andrew Hickey
14 May 2020
Episode eighty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" by Elvis Presley, and the way his promising comeback after leaving the Army quickly got derailed. This episode also contains a brief acknowledgment of the death of the great Little Richard, who died just as I was recording this episode. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Muleskinner Blues" by the Fendermen. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources Apologies for the delay this week -- I've been unwell, as you might be able to tell from the croaky voice in places. Don't worry, it's not anything serious... No Mixcloud this week, as almost every song excerpted is by Elvis, and it would be impossible to do it without breaking Mixcloud's rules about the number of songs by the same artist. My main source for this episode is Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, the second part of Peter Guralnick's two-volume biography of Elvis. It's not *quite* as strong as the first volume, but it's still by far the best book covering his later years. I also used Reconsider Baby: The Definitive Elvis Sessionography 1954-1977 by Ernst Jorgensen. The box set From Nashville to Memphis contains all Elvis' sixties studio recordings other than his gospel and soundtrack albums, and thus manages to make a solid case for Elvis' continued artistic relevance in the sixties, by only including records he chose to make. It's well worth the very cheap price. And Back in Living Stereo, which rounds up the 1960s public domain Elvis recordings, contains the gospel recordings, outtakes, and home recordings from 1960 through 1962. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Errata I say that by the time “Stuck on You” had come out, Elvis had already made his TV appearance with Sinatra. In actual fact, he was still rehearsing for it, and wouldn't record it for a few more days. I also say that the Colonel had managed Gene Austin. In fact the Colonel had only promoted shows for Austin, not been his manager. Transcript Before I start this week's episode, I had to mark the death of Little Richard. We've already covered his work of course, in episodes on "Tutti Frutti" and "Keep A Knockin'", and I don't really have a lot to add to those episodes in terms of his importance to twentieth-century music. We can argue about which of Elvis, Chuck Berry, or Little Richard was the most important artist of the fifties, but I don't think you can make a good argument that anyone other than one of those three was, and I don't think you can argue that those three weren't the three most important in whatever order. Without Little Richard, none of the music we're covering in this podcast after 1955 would be the same, and this podcast would not exist. There are still a handful of people alive who made records we've looked at in the podcast, but without intending the slightest offence to any of them, none are as important a link in the historical chain as Richard Penniman was. So, before the episode proper, let's have a few moments' noise in memory of the force of nature who described himself as the King and Queen of Rock and Roll: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Ooh! My Soul!"] Now on to the main podcast itself. Today we're going to take what will be, for a while, our last look at Elvis Presley. He will show up in the background of some other episodes as we go through the sixties, and I plan to take a final look at him in a hundred or so episodes, but for now, as we're entering the sixties, we're leaving behind those fifties rockers, and Elvis is one of those we're definitely leaving for now. Elvis' two years spent in the Army had changed him profoundly. His mother had died, he'd been separated from everyone he knew, and he'd met a young woman named Priscilla, who was several years younger than him but who would many years later end up becoming his wife. And the music world had changed while he was gone. Rockabilly had totally disappeared from the charts, and all the musicians who had come up with Elvis had moved into orchestrated pop like Roy Orbison or into pure country like Johnny Cash, with the exception of a handful like Gene Vincent who were no longer having hits, at least in the US. Elvis had, though, continued to have hits. He'd recorded enough in 1958 for RCA to have a tiny stockpile of recordings they could issue as singles over the intervening two years -- "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", "Hard-Headed Woman", "One Night", "I Need Your Love Tonight", and "A Big Hunk O' Love". Along with those hits, they repackaged several single-only recordings into new albums, and managed to keep Elvis in the spotlight despite him not recording any new material. This had been a plan of the Colonel's from the moment it became clear that Elvis was going to be drafted -- his strategy then, and from then on, was to record precisely as much material for RCA as the contracts stipulated they were entitled to, and not one song more. His thinking was that if Elvis recorded more songs than they needed to release at any given time, then there would be nothing for him to use as leverage in contract negotiations. The contract wasn't due for renegotiation any time soon, of course, but you don't want to take that chance. This meant that Elvis didn't have long to relax at home before he had to go back into the studio. He had a couple of weeks to settle in at Graceland -- the home he had bought for his mother, but had barely spent any time in before being drafted, and which was now going to be inhabited by Elvis, his father, and his father's new, much younger, girlfriend, of whom Elvis definitely did not approve. In that time he made visits to the cinema, and to an ice-dancing show -- he went to the performance for black people, rather than the one for whites, as Memphis was still segregated, and he made a brief impromptu appearance at that show himself, conducting the orchestra. And most importantly to him, he visited the grave of his mother for the first time. But two weeks and one day after his discharge from the Army, he was back in the studio, recording tracks for what would be his first album of new material since his Christmas album two and a half years earlier. We talked a little bit, a few weeks back, about the Nashville Sound, the new sound that had become popular in country music, and how Chet Atkins, who had produced several of Elvis' early recordings, had been vitally responsible for the development of that sound. Many of the Nashville A-team, the musicians who were responsible for making those records with Atkins or the other main producer of the sound, Owen Bradley, had played on Elvis' last session before he went into the Army, and they were at this session, though to keep fans from congregating outside, they were told they were going to be playing on a Jim Reeves session -- Reeves was one of the country singers who were having hits with that sound, with records like “He'll Have to Go”: [Excerpt: Jim Reeves, “He'll Have to Go”] So with Chet Atkins in the control booth, the musicians were Hank "Sugarfoot" Garland -- the great guitarist who had briefly replaced Scotty Moore on stage when Elvis and his band had split; Floyd Cramer, who had been playing piano with Elvis on record since his first RCA session, Buddy Harman, who had doubled DJ Fontana on percussion on Elvis' last session from 58, on drums, and Bob Moore, who had played bass on those sessions, back on bass. And of course the Jordanaires were at the session as well -- as well as having sung on Elvis' pre-Army records, they were also part of the Nashville A-Team, and were the go-to male backing vocalists for anyone in Nashville making a country or pop record. Scotty and DJ were there, too, but they were in much reduced roles -- Scotty was playing rhythm guitar, rather than lead, and DJ was only one of two drummers on the session. Bill Black was not included at all -- Black had always been the one who would try to push for more recognition, and he was now a star in his own right, with his Bill Black Combo. He would never record with Elvis again. The session took a while to get going -- the first hour or so was spent ordering in hamburgers, listening to demos, and Elvis and Bobby Moore showing each other karate moves -- and then the first song they recorded, an Otis Blackwell number titled "Make Me Know It" took a further nineteen takes before they had a satisfactory one: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Make Me Know It"] Elvis' voice had improved dramatically during his time in the Army -- he had been practising a lot, with his new friend Charlie Hodge, and had added a full octave to his vocal range, and he was eager to display his newfound ability to tackle other kinds of material. But at the same time, all the reports from everyone in the studio suggest that these early sessions were somewhat hesitant. The best song from this initial session was Pomus and Shuman's "A Mess of Blues": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "A Mess of Blues"] But it was a song by Aaron Schroeder and Leslie McFarland that was chosen for the first single -- a mediocre track called "Stuck on You": [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "Stuck on You"] Such was the demand for new Elvis material that the single of "Stuck on You" backed with "Fame and Fortune" was released within seventy-two hours. By that time, RCA had printed up 1.4 million copies of the single, just to fulfil the advance orders -- they came out in sleeves that just read "Elvis' 1st New Recording For His 50,000,000 Fans All Over The World", because when they were printin
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