For the Asking
The ‘Lost’ Album of 1964
Introduction
The story here is that as the sixties progressed, Elvis’ career became unbalanced. In the fifties Elvis had combined live performance, films and their soundtracks, and studio work split between albums and singles. Even in the fifties, however, Elvis’ album profile was somewhat uncertain. For all that it earned classic status, Elvis’ first RCA album of 1956 was padded out with five tracks from Sun and hence not a true representation of his RCA recordings. His second album was a true representation, but after that the albums were from the films (‘Loving You,’ ‘King Creole’), a Christmas album, and two more collections rounding up material as yet unissued on album (‘For LP Fans Only,’ ‘A Date with Elvis). There was also the first volume of the Gold Record series that issued the hit singles in one place. It is evident, then, that in the eyes of Elvis’ management and recording company, Elvis was not an album artist, in the sense of an artist who enters the studio with an artistic vision in mind.
Upon leaving the army, Elvis resumed this strategy. But changes were afoot. First to go were the live concerts. Elvis was retired as a live performer. That was an act of artistic vandalism and sabotage. Behind this decision was a clear mercenary focus upon the films. If people wanted to see Elvis, then they would have no option but to go and watch the films. It was a logical development of this to argue that if people wanted to hear Elvis, then they would have no option but to buy the soundtrack albums. It was all about exercising a ruthless control of Elvis, reigning in and even ending his artistic ambitions in order to serve entirely commercial purposes. Elvis had issued three albums of studio material since returning from the army, ‘Elvis is Back,’ ‘Something for Everybody,’ and ‘Pot Luck.’ The albums were good but sold poorly relative to the soundtracks. The films also had the advantage of enabling Elvis’ words and actions to be scripted. Elvis was relieved of artistic autonomy, his role being limited to turning up on time for work and following the script. The approach was the artistic murder of Elvis. He lost his critical reputation as a result. The Beatles, Dylan et al showed up and Elvis ceased to matter. He ceased to be part of the pop, rock and soul world that he, more than anyone, had created. It is arguable that Elvis never recovered. He would return to make great music again. But he was forever fighting a rearguard action against his own ‘machine.’
Elvis entered the studio in the early sixties to record material for album issues every year, 1960, 1961, and 1962. He did likewise in 1963, but the album did not materialize. Elvis was unhappy with some of the material, and would return to it in 1964. But still no album was issued. The material was broken up and scattered, issued as ‘bonus’ tracks on the film soundtracks and as B-sides to singles. The album was never issued, hence the title ‘The Lost Album.’ There would not be another non-album of non-film studio material from Elvis until 1969. At a time when contemporary pop music was being revolutionized by artists who, in the main, were inspired by Elvis, this was and remains a scandal, a stain on all concerned. Elvis should have cleared the whole lot out and recovered control of his talent, art, and career. He didn’t. $1million up front for the wretched movies he made bought his complicity, but he was sold out and spent in no time.
I have been an Elvis fan for as long as I can remember anything. I presume I learned it from my mother, much like I learned everything else as I was growing up. An affinity for Elvis came naturally to me. Elvis died in 1977, meaning that we could expect no more music to come from him. Instead of speculating about the direction Elvis’ music was going to take in the future, debating the merits of his latest single and album, we had to go back over his catalogue and play the game of would have/could have/should have. The big debates now were over the Elvis catalogue, how it was issued and how it ought to have been issued. Something that became obvious was how his music had been butchered to give a false impression of the man. This happened with a number of weak and padded albums in the early seventies, which could so easily have been much stronger documents had RCA not been so concerned with quantity of ‘product’ to fulfil impossible contractual obligations. Elvis was contracted for four albums per year, for crying out loud. It’s like employing Dante as a penny-a-liner. But at least the albums came out in the seventies. After 1962 the studio albums simply disappeared. The ‘Lost Album’ from 1963/4 is one. There is at least another one from 1966-68. I would argue that the material here separates into two distinct albums. Both also lost. Here, I wish to focus on the material of 1963/4.
RCA finally got round to issuing this material in one place in 1990, over a quarter of a century after it was recorded. The album was entitled For The Asking: The Lost Album. I bought it, I liked it. Of course. This was the album that had been anticipated for nearly three decades. It’s issue felt like finally making amends for past artistic vandalism on the company’s part. It was well done, with artwork and concept being of the period and fitting the previous three Elvis albums of sixties wonderfully well.
The title The Lost Album may have tempted new, non- and casual Elvis fans into believing that they were buying recently discovered recordings that had been hidden away in the vaults until now. That was the story behind The Lost Performances video from 1992, with outtakes from That's The Way It Is and Elvis On Tour found in an abandoned salt mine. This was not the case here. The ‘lost’ tracks were well known and had been issued in various places. They had not, however, been issued in the one place, as had been intended. This was the album that should have been.
Except that it isn’t, not quite. The Elvis albums of the early sixties contained twelve tracks. To be truly that lost album of 1963/4, For the Asking should have been limited to just the twelve tracks. More than twelve were included, weakening the coherence, consistency, and quality. It was inevitable at this distance in time, of course, given that albums were now being reissued with extra tracks. The problem was further compounded by the ‘Follow That Dream’ label deciding to reissue the album as Elvis Sings Memphis, Tennessee, adding even more tracks. It’s not a big issue, and actually makes perfect sense seeing as we live in the present and not 1964. That time has been lost and is beyond recovery. But there is still interest in pondering over the ‘lost’ album that could and should have been, whilst appreciating the album that we finally got. I prefer the title For The Asking to the 'lost' idea, for the reason that it is clever – Elvis fans have been asking for this album since the sixties – it references one of the best songs on the album – Ask Me – and it slots in nicely with the previous Elvis albums of this period.
With this established, there are basically two issues for me: song selection and sequencing. Any album issued in 1964 would have been restricted to twelve tracks at six a side. Instead of issuing all the 1963/4 material as is now done, the brief is to select the best twelve tracks, singles included (the singles were usually left off at this time, but since Elvis’ singles were no longer performing as well as they had once down, I feel entitled to include them).
In retrospect, I see now why I loved the ‘Elvis Gold Records volume 4’ album. This album met with critical disdain and popular indifference when it came out in 1968. I acquired it some time in the mid-seventies and loved it immediately. The album contained songs that were hard to come by. Many of these songs should have been issued on the ‘lost’ album. So that Gold records album served as my ‘lost’ album, in the same way that Hits of the Seventies served as the Gold Records volume 5 that for some reason had yet to be issued.
So I come to song selection and sequencing.
Here is the track listing for the original 1990 album:
Side 1
• Long, Lonely Highway
• Western Union
• Witchcraft
• Love Me Tonight
• What Now, What Next, Where To?
• Please Don't Drag That String Around
• Blue River
• Never Ending
Side 2
• Devil in Disguise
• Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers
• Echoes of Love
• Slowly But Surely
• It Hurts Me
• Memphis Tennessee
• Ask Me
It may be my incurable Aspie curiosity, but the first thing I notice here is that the sides are numerically imbalanced, eight tracks on side one and seven on two. The second thing I notice is that at fifteen tracks, the album is three tracks longer than the Elvis sixties’ albums. The third thing I notice is padding. The exceptional material on this album is weakened by the presence of poor material. I prefer to concentrate force in order to punch true weight.
Before I proceed any further, I did seriously contemplate playing silly beggars on this by including film material from this period. Many of the songs here were used as ‘bonus’ songs on the film soundtracks. Why not implement that policy in reverse and use songs from the films that are not quite film songs in a studio release? I really want ‘Bossa Nova Baby,’ which is an absolutely irresistible dancer, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Mexico, despite its being located in the film ‘Fun in Acapulco.’ I couldn’t get away with doing the same with ‘Viva Las Vegas,’ mind, seeing as it is the title of that film. But ‘What’d I Say’ would belong here. It ended up on the Gold Records vol 4 album. Then there are a couple of tracks which were cut from ‘Viva Las Vegas,’ ‘Night Life’ and ‘You're the Boss.’ Each, any, and every one of these tracks could properly find their way onto a ‘lost’ album of 1963/4. The problem is that they already have a place somewhere, and their inclusion would mean displacing tracks that properly belong. Still, these are much better tracks than some of the material making up the numbers on the ‘lost’ album.
Refusing such complications, the task becomes relatively easy. There are fifteen tracks from 1963/4, with the bulk of the material coming from 1963. Eliminate three and put the remainder in the right sequence and the problem, such as it is, is solved.
In fact, it is remarkable that there ever was a problem in the first place. That there was indicates the presence of something rotten at the core of Elvis’ career. There were malign forces at work, subverting his artistic integrity and, here, managing to abort the serious studio work he did. In two days in the May of 1963 Elvis recorded 14 songs in two days at RCA's Studio B in Nashville. That was enough for one album of twelve songs and a two-sided single. Job done. ‘Devil In Disguise' backed with 'Please Don't Drag That String Around' was released and became a substantial hit single. No album was issued.
It isn’t difficult to find the reason why – the films. Looking back from a time when the Elvis films are considered to be something of a joke, it seems incredulous to think there was a time when the films were serious business, looming so large in their importance as to put an end to Elvis as a live performer and as an album artist. But that’s the unbelievable truth. Films like ‘Girl Happy,’ containing gems like ‘He’s Your Uncle, Not Your Dad,’ and ‘Paradise Hawaiian Style,’ with ‘Queenie Wahine’s Papaya,’ were big business grossing easy money. The Elvis albums, as good as they were, did not generate anything like as much commercial interest. Remarkably, Elvis is Back, sold just 200,000 copies, nothing like the millions that ‘GI Blues’ and ‘Blue Hawaii’ sold. The reason this album was abandoned was because it was not a movie soundtrack. Give the public what they were asking for. Whatever that was, it wasn’t For the Asking. The public interest was in the films. For whatever reason, Elvis' movie soundtrack albums outsold his studio albums by a considerable number. Blue Hawaii outsold Elvis is Back by ten to one. That represents a substantial victory for the forces of commerce over art. With Elvis, it was never a case of these two being in opposition to one another, but in combination. Elvis’ tragedy as a pop singer is that commerce and art not only parted company but fell into opposition, with the issue being decided the only way it could have been – by numbers measured in hard money.
Rather than issue the material on an album, RCA delayed. The disappointing sales of 1962’s Pot Luck caused RCA to issue Elvis' Golden Records Vol. 3 in the August release slot originally slated for an original album containing the May 1962 material. With that delay, the material started to be dissipated. The outstanding R&B track 'Witchcraft' was issued as a B-side to 'Bossa Nova Baby,' promoting the movie Fun in Acapulco. Another two tracks from the May 1963 material – ‘Love me Tonight’ and ‘Slowly But Surely’ - were lost in November 1963 by being issued as ‘bonus’ tracks on the Fun In Acapulco album.
Elvis had been unhappy with his recording of 'Memphis, Tennessee' and 'Ask Me' in May and so returned to the studio in January 1964 to have another attempt at them. In the same session he recorded a new song, the powerful ballad 'It Hurts Me,’ one of his greatest ever recordings. The problem, however, is that the idea of the album was now dead, it had been killed flat by prevarication caused by callous monetary calculation. RCA proceeded to raid the May session recordings to pad out various other releases in the 1960s. The incredible ‘It Hurts Me’ suffered the indignity of being issued as a B-side to ’Kissin’ Cousins.’ ‘Kissin’ Cousins’ is actually a catchy twister but is far from Elvis at his best. The film it gave its name to is a wretched abomination. A sense of humour helps. It’s good for morale and probably essential for survival.
And that was the end for the potential album of 1963. Elvis’ studio work, as well as his stellar ballad It Hurts Me, was thrown away. Money was made, but Elvis’ critical reputation and standing in the pop world was lost. Worse still, the damage to Elvis’ artistic integrity and confidence must have been immense. What, really, was the point in striving for the best when a) the public were indifferent and b) management and recording company were against you?
In a year or two Elvis was singing A Dog’s Life, Smorgasbord, Adam and Evil, Queenie Wahine’s Papaya, Old MacDonald, and Yoga is as Yoga Does. If you want to know how and why such a thing could happen, a large part of the explanation lies in the story of 1963.
The Album
I am not making the claim that the ‘lost’ album of ‘63/4 is a lost classic. Elvis’ albums were becoming more polished and refined in the Nashville style, but were losing the edge that Elvis at his best had. Pot Luck from 1962 is classy sophisticated pop, but it is dull in comparison with Elvis is Back. I would argue that the 1963/4 material contains numbers which are livelier than the material on Pot Luck. An album of this material from 1963 would have been most welcome. Looking at the fifteen tracks available, the quality is uneven, with weak spots, but overall very worthy and, in places, substantial. In making that point, there is still a need to recognize the hard truth that had the album been issued in 1963 or 1964 it would almost certainly have met with the same fate as the previous three studio albums and sold poorly relative to the soundtrack albums. The die was cast.
Let me now go through the fifteen songs one at a time.
Let's check it out song-by-song.
I shall take them in the order in which they were recorded.
'Echoes of Love'
This song is something of a little underrated gem, or a guilty pleasure, depending on your tastes. The song is badly let down by the cheesy arrangement, that soon outstays its welcome. If you listen to Elvis’ voice alone, then this is a pleasing little love song, even if of no great consequence. The background sounds like incidental music in a lightweight film comedy, which is OK for thirty seconds but becomes irritating and intrusive after that. Elvis’ voice and the beautiful lyric show the real potential of this song, a potential that was thrown away by appalling musical arrangement. With a stripped back arrangement and simple instrumentation, a slightly slower approach with piano and acoustic guitar, this could have been a classic love song. As it is, what could have been beautiful sounds merely kitsch. Even kitsch has its appeal, though. It says something that this song, when added as a bonus song to the Kissin' Cousins album, is one of the better songs on that soundtrack. It is infinitely superior to Barefoot Ballad.
'Please Don't Drag That String Around'
This song is written by Otis Blackwell (actually co-written with Winfield Scott), who contributed some immense songs to the Elvis catalogue (Don’t Be Cruel, All Shook Up, Return to Sender, Paralyzed). The song is considered weak by most critics. It is a gentle rhythm number, certainly, but it has a certain infectious bounce to it. It is uplifting in a way that many of the movie songs were, so critics may be right in considering it slight. I’ll make no bones about it, I like the song and always did from the time I heard it on Elvis Gold Records vol 4 and Elvis in Demand. I think critics have a downer on this song. Of course, it’s not 'Don't Be Cruel' or ‘All Shook Up, but how many songs were? At the same time, this is a classic example of Elvis making material sound much better than it actually is through the joyous genius of his voice. And to think that there are still people who criticize Elvis for not writing his own songs. He re-wrote songs through his voice, and re-wrote them for the better. Here, he makes a decent song sound good enough to be issued on a single.
'Devil In Disguise'
This is a fantastic country rocker brilliantly performed by Elvis, a definite all-time Elvis classic. It’s a clever song and vocally very challenging, with Elvis going from slow to fast then slow again, singing low to high, crooning and then rocking out. It’s a vocal tour de force. My only bugbear with this song is with the mixing, with Hank Garland’s magnificent guitar solo being muted instead of being turned up to 11. I love instrumental break when things are let loose. It’s a spirited number in that country rock vein that Elvis would lose rather than develop as he ought to have done, recovering lost ground only four years later in 1967 with Guitar Man. A great track which hit the UK #1.
'Never Ending'
'Never Ending' is a very fine love song that gives some indication as to how ‘Echoes of Love’ could have sounded with a more musically appropriate arrangement. The strings are quite beautiful and really enhance the song. Like a lot of Elvis’ material of the early sixties, the song has a Latin feel. The song was issued as the B-Side of 'Such A Night' in 1964, the latter being a re-release of a song from 1960. In other words, RCA were showing desperation in their releases, wasting the May 1963 material.
'What Now, What Next, Where To'
The title of this track immediately suggests ‘movie song.’ It is actually a very good rhythmic ballad written by Don Robertson and Hal Blair. Robertson was contributing a lot of the best Elvis ballads of this period: ‘There’s Always Me,’ ‘They Remind Me Too Much of You,’ ‘I Met Her Today,’ ‘I’m Yours’ and others. This is more rhythmic and up-tempo, but is still of that high quality. I believe the song had been offered to Johnny Cash, but he passed on it. I could hear Cash singing this, but nothing like to this standard. Again, Elvis had the voice to enhance the material put in front of him.
'Witchcraft'
This is an absolute stunner of a track, an R&B tour de force on which Elvis rocks out in his old fifties style. This track could easily have found a place on the Elvis Is Back album from 1960, only rocking harder. The track combines a powerful vocal performance from Elvis with the raucous and raunchy saxophone of Boots Randolph. Elvis has complete control of the dynamics and the phrasing. Unfortunately, the song was wasted as a B-Side.
'Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers'
A slight number which isn’t too different from the material found in the soundtracks. The lyrics sound childish, too. It’s catchy but contrived, clearly written with the intent to attract immediate appeal. It is what it is, and Elvis delivers it well enough to make something innocuous actually fairly memorable.
'Love Me Tonight'
Another quiet, understated ballad written by the prolific Don Robertson. As with another Robertson song, ‘There’s Always Me,’ this song allows Elvis to show his soft and sensitive side before singing with real vocal power. This quality song was wasted as a ‘bonus’ song on the Fun In Acapulco album. Of course, Elvis fans were buying the soundtrack albums in much greater numbers than they were the studio albums, so the song would have found an audience. But here’s the problem with that approach. Elvis’ career as a studio artist was effectively being wound down in favour of a concentration on the films and their soundtracks. The Elvis fans would hear the songs, but no-one else. Non-Elvis fans had long since lost interest in the Elvis soundtracks. So this material which ought to have been winning new adherents was actually being unheard by the great public. As Elvis’ critical reputation and music went into retreat, he was effectively dependent on the films keeping the money rolling in. In time, when interest in the films diminished, Elvis would have nothing to fall back on. And he would have lost the music public along the way. Quality songs like this were lost from view. Instead of enhancing Elvis’ reputation, they were used to pad out the albums that were losing him that reputation.
'Memphis, Tennessee'
An absolute belter of a track, from the use of double drums in the opening on, it has a superb jungle rhythm. In fact, the opening reminds me a great deal of the way in which Elvis would use ‘That’s All Right’ to open his Las Vegas concerts. Elvis had recorded this track during the May 1963 session but was unsatisfied with the master and therefore returned to the studio in January 1964 to re-record it. According to Ernst Jorgensen, Elvis played his yet-to-be-released recording of 'Memphis, Tennessee' for Johnny Rivers, who promptly went off, recorded and released his own version before Elvis (Jorgensen, Elvis Presley: A Life In Music). The delay cost Elvis, with Rivers having the hit that was properly Elvis'. Elvis’ superb recording of this classic Chuck Berry song had to wait until being issued on the odds and sods Elvis For Everyone of 1965. It was thrown away, in other words, summing up precisely what was being done to Elvis’ career. This was a marketing strategy put together by merchants, morons, and miscreants. The damage to Elvis is incalculable.
'Long, Lonely Highway'
Another excellent country rocker, forming the perfect counterpart to ‘Devil in Disguise.’ This is an incredibly lively track, which rocks consistently harder and faster than ‘Disguise.’ Written by the crack writing team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, it has all the hallmark quality of their best work. Pomus and Shuman had contributed four songs to the Pot Luck album, including the glorious ‘Suspicion’. ‘Highway’ is more of a piece with the cracking road song 'Night Rider' from that album. The songs from Pomus and Shuman as well as the Robertson songs give the ‘lost’ material clear continuity with the Elvis albums of the early sixties. That the album was ‘lost’ constitutes nothing short of a scandal. Again, RCA wasted this superb track by adding it as a bonus song to the lamentable Kissin' Cousins soundtrack. Instead of making new fans and boosting his critical and artistic standing, these tracks were being used to tempt Elvis fans into remaining complicit with the ruination of Elvis’ career.
'Ask Me'
That Elvis worked so hard for so long on this sing should tell you a) how difficult the song and b) how much Elvis thought of its quality. It’s a top quality ballad with a distinguished pedigree. The original song is ‘Io,’ an Italian song written and performed by song "Io" Domenico Modugno. It’s a vocally demanding song that Elvis spent over thirty takes working on. That he would work so hard on such a song indicates where his artistic interests as a singer lay, with ballads. That would become evident come 1970, and it would have been interesting to hear Elvis attempt the song again at that time with his richer, deeper voice. As it is, this is a beautiful recording. Elvis was unsatisfied with his recording in May 1963 and so returned to record it again in January 1964. I think Elvis sings well in 1963 but even better in 1964. He plainly had heard something in the song and wouldn’t rest until he had delivered it. He delivered. The song has a haunting, nostalgic quality. It was a very odd song to pit against the invasion of The Beatles, but that was its fate. The remarkable thing is that it made for a creditable chart performance, just outside the top ten. It is far from beat music. It’s just a beautiful song that sounds as good now as it ever did. The fact that it always sounded dated means that it never dates.
'Western Union'
I find it incredibly difficult to judge this song objectively, as a song in its own right. The problem is that the song is so obviously an attempt to copy ‘Return to Sender’ that falls far, far short that the immediate instinct is to dismiss it as utterly dire. It isn’t that bad at all. In fact, if you can delete 'Return to Sender' from your memory bank, the song is actually not half bad. It is catchy. But it was contrived to be such. Hear this once and it is well-nigh impossible to erase the Jordanaires singing 'Western Union! Clickety-clack!' from your head. That this song was acknowledged to be one of the weaker songs from the May 1963 sessions is indicated by the fact that it wasn’t issued until as late as 1968 as a ‘bonus’ song on the Speedway soundtrack album. By then, the sales of the soundtrack albums were dwindling down to the numbers of the early sixties studio albums. Instead of concentrating on quality and maximising sales around quality issues, the approach went for easy money and quantity, and met with a predictable fate. It was Elvis who suffered. He was cheapened and turned into a joke, and his reputation never recovered.
‘Return to Sender’ is a classic Elvis song written by Otis Blackwell, a man who contributed other classics like Don’t Be Cruel, All Shook Up, and Paralyzed. 'Western Union' was written by Sid Tepper and Roy Bennett, who contributed over forty songs to the Elvis catalogue, most of them fodder. Tepper and Bennett were hacks who wrote some of the worst songs recorded by Elvis. 'Western Union' may well be their masterpiece, merely by being a lame copy of Otis Blackwell’s Return to Sender. Elvis will have spotted the similarity to Return to Sender immediately. He would also have noted the lack of quality in the copy. He nevertheless sings with spirit and makes this piece of plagiarism swing. Full marks to Elvis, he’s a sport. But he really should have been drawing conclusions and taking decisive action to sort the management and direction of his career out.
'Slowly But Surely'
The song suffers from inane lyrics, lumbering tempo, and clumsy arrangements, but for all that remains of interest. Elvis does his best, but try as hard as he does, he can’t redeem the material. The song is dead and can’t be moved or lifted. The song boasts one of the first uses of fuzz-tone guitar, predating The Rolling Stones on Satisfaction. I remember reading that piece of information before I had heard the track. I was disappointed. I had expected so much better. The song was actually one of the first to be issued, as a ‘bonus’ track on Fun In Acapulco. The addition of this and ‘Love Me Tonight’ on that album made no sense whatsoever. The Mexican feel of that album meant any extraneous tracks were bound to sound out of place. They did, and to their detriment.
'Blue River'
I try hard to like 'Blue River,' not least for the reason that the song itself tries hard to catch fire and set us dancing. Elvis tries hard too. It’s in a similar vein to Bossa Nova Baby just not in the same class in that it lacks the latter’s effortless ease in getting our feet, body, and bones moving. It's OK, just not good enough for a frontline Elvis song. That said, it was released as the B-Side of 'Tell Me Why' in 1965.
That leaves us with the final track, recorded in January 1964 when Elvis returned to the studio.
‘It Hurts Me’
This powerful ballad shows that the big voiced romantic Elvis of 1970 did not come out of nowhere. This is one of Elvis’ very best songs, of any period. I can remember Roy Orbison defending Elvis in interview at the time. When the interviewer suggested that Elvis was not as good as he used to be, Orbison asked him if he had heard 'It Hurts Me,' declaring that Elvis was singing better than he had ever done. Roy Orbison was right. It’s just remarkable that he, or anyone of taste, had even heard the song. With a masterpiece in their hands, RCA decided to issue it as the B-Side to 'Kissin' Cousins.' Seriously, Elvis surely had a case for suing this company and his manager for failing to look after their clients best interests. All I have to add here is that I loved comparing and contrasting the released version, with the vocal background, with the stripped down version issued on Elvis in Demand. I got used to hearing the former and tend to stick with the familiar. But I have to admit I do like the latter. Both are exceptional.
As my commentary makes clear, the songs from May 1963 and January 1964 were impressive in the main, with four or five really outstanding. That a number of these were wasted as B sides is nothing short of a scandal, giving some indication as to why Elvis Presley’s career very nearly ended up in the toilet. There are a number of lesser songs, too, but even these deserved better than being broken up and thrown away as bonus songs and album fillers. In the critical histories of pop, Elvis Presley is considered to be someone who was once great, disappeared into Hollywood, and then made a ‘comeback’ in 1968. The truth is that Elvis never went away, it only seems that he did. His recording career was seriously hampered by the mercenary approach of his management and recording company, and the quality he continued to record also got butchered in release. Those who think that 1963 and 1964 represent ‘lost’ years in Elvis' recording career as a result of an exclusive focus on the movies and their soundtracks need to think again. In addition to the movie songs, Elvis was still a serious studio artist working hard on some quality material and working harder still to redeem some lesser material. Slowly but Surely, as the song goes, people such as I are going over Elvis’ recording career and piecing it back together to restore its artistic integrity.
With respect to the For the Asking album, the artwork on the cover is authentic period style. But it’s the content that concerns me.
The Final Selection
This material forms an essential part of the career of Elvis Presley. It’s scattering by RCA effectively left a huge gap in Elvis’ musical history. Music that should have made a substantial impact, at least telling the world that Elvis was still around and still a force to be reckoned with, ended up being used in the attempt to shore up the films and singles. The songs were thrown away, and Elvis lost his artistic profile. All that was left was the public image of Elvis the film star, an image that was already by then something of a joke. To those non-Elvis fans and casual fans who have bought the popular image of Elvis as ‘lost’ in the sixties, this album will come as a revelation. There are some outstanding songs on here.
As for my selection of twelve and their sequencing, six a side, this is my verdict:
Side 1 –
01 Memphis, Tennessee 2:11
02 Witchcraft 2:24
03 Please Don't Drag That String Around 1:57
04 It Hurts Me 2:30
05 Love Me Tonight 2:03
06 Never Ending 2:02
Side 2
07 (It's A) Long Lonely Highway 2:23
08 (You're The) Devil In Disguise 2:22
09 Ask Me 2:09
10 Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers 1:53
11 Blue River 2:11
12 What Now, What Next , Where To 2:01
The three omitted tracks are:
Slowly But Surely 2:15, it’s just too leaden and lifeless, and Elvis can’t revive it.
Echoes Of Love 2:42, a little too lightweight, although it has its charms.
Western Union 2:14, just too obviously a copy, and a fairly lame one at that.
So there it is folks. I maintain that if you were to put this album back to back with Elvis is Back (1960), Something for Everybody (1961), and Pot Luck (1962), it fits perfectly. I will go further and say that Elvis’ studio work in this period demonstrated a trend towards becoming more polished and sophisticated, with the result that he was losing an edge and starting to sound a little too slick. I have that distinct impression listening to Pot Luck. These twelve sides comprising For the Asking check that trend and bring more drive and edge back into the music. One final point, I think this album sounds far stronger when limited to twelve tracks. The addition of the three omitted tracks dilutes the quality. Instead of enhancing the stronger material of the album, they highlight the weaker moments. This album is strong at twelve, but becomes flabby at fifteen. Here is a definite instance where less is considerably more.