The other ‘lost’ album. Or albums.
In another post I have written on the ‘lost’ Elvis album comprising the material from the May 1963 and January 1964 sessions. The album was not issued and the material was broken up and released as B-sides and album filler in the years after. Something similar happened to the material Elvis recorded in 1966, 1967, and 1968. The situation is slightly different in that these recordings were more sporadic than the May 1963 session (where fourteen tracks were recorded with the specific intention of being released as an album and a single). Still, there was sufficient material recorded in the 66-68 sessions to yield at least one album. No album was forthcoming comprising this material. Again, the material was released in piecemeal fashion. The coherence of the material was lost. Instead of strengthening Elvis’ musical profile, confusion reigned.
In 1999 RCA sought, at last, to remedy the situation by issuing all the material in one place on the Tomorrow is a Long Time CD. I was never happy with the CD. I was happy to have the material, of course. But I always felt that the 1967 and 1968 sessions belonged together and were quite distinct from the recordings of 1966. In 1999 it makes sense to put the material together. We are used to lengthy recordings in the age of the CD. But had this material been issued on an album at the time, then there would have been just the twelve selections instead of the eighteen on the 1999 release. There are also tracks missing from the 1999 release which, in my view, are among Elvis’ best performances. This makes sense as a 1999 release of this material, but really conflates two distinct albums as one.
I therefore propose to divide the material properly, with one album covering the material of 1966 and one the material of 1967 and 1968.
I shall take each album in turn.
1966
The first problem we face with respect to 1966 is the paucity of the non-film and non-gospel studio material. There isn’t enough to fill out an album, hence the decision RCA took in 1999 to put all the material from 1966-68 in one place. There are nine tracks, of which one is a session warm up, with Elvis blending his voice in with others and taking something of a back seat and the other is a Christmas song (which is fine by me). In the sixties RCA butchered Elvis’ studio work by adding material as ‘bonus’ tracks on film albums. Hence the immense Tomorrow is a Long Time was thrown away at the back end of the California Holiday album. I am inclined take some kind of revenge and use some of the film material as ‘bonus’ tracks on a studio album. I actually think that approach would serve to showcase the decent material that was still to be found in the films better than their being ‘lost’ on soundtracks only diehard fans were buying.
Appropriate tracks that fit the blues and ballads approach of 1966 would be ‘Spinout,’ ‘All That I Am,’ ‘Am I Ready,’ ‘City By Night,’ ‘Could I Fall In Love,’ ‘Easy Come, Easy Go,’ and ‘Sing You Children.’ Add these seven to the other nine and we have a substantial album of sixteen tracks. But seeing as the point is to produce an album that would fit the profile of an Elvis album in 1966, this is inadmissible. There is room for twelve tracks only.
I am sure that it would be possible to make three selections from the film material above that would blend easily into the nine tracks from ’66. For a rocker, I’d choose ‘Spinout,’ for a ballad I’d choose ‘Could I Fall in Love,’ and for a bluesy number I’d take ‘City by Night.’
Adding material only serves to make a confusing picture even more confusing, although I do think those three tracks above would fit (just as adding ‘Frankie and Johnny’ from 1965 would fit with ‘Come What May’ and ‘Fools Fall in Love.’ Better, though, is to give a true representation of Elvis as a singer who embodied the holy and the profane in his musical persona. This had come out clearly in 1957 when Elvis recorded blues, R&B, gospel and Christmas songs side by side. A decade later and he was still doing it. In 1957 Elvis’ projects were clearly defined, allowing the material to be issued appropriately. By the mid-sixties Elvis’ career as an album artist had collapsed. Poor sales relative to the soundtracks was followed up with the non-issue of material recorded specifically for album release (the ‘lost’ album of 1964).
So here I feel entitled to issue the secular material of 1966 and add appropriate selections from the films and gospel albums to create a musically cogent and coherent album. The studio material is a mix of blues and ballads, so it makes sense to select around that profile. Of course, if I use all nine tracks of secular material that leaves only the three spaces to fill. There is a legitimate solution. Elvis for Everyone, the album release from the previous year, gathered up a lot of waifs and strays in one place, in the absence of studio recordings. That album included three tracks from the 1950s. They were issued with no great fanfare, their historical significance (and by implication the importance of Elvis as an artist) was of no concern to the company. I could issue those three tracks here, although they are of another age. One track, however, does legitimately belong in this company. In 1954, in his first Sun recordings, Elvis left the old Lonnie Johnson blues ballad unfinished. In 1965 Chet Atkins updated and finished it in accordance with the contemporary Nashville sound. An abomination say critics and purists. I prefer the original. Even unfinished, I can see where Elvis is going and let my musical imagination do the rest. That said, I do like Atkins’ remake, and think it is of historic importance.
Remarkably, these were Elvis’ first non-soundtrack recordings since January 1964. Felton Jarvis replaced Chet Atkins in overseeing the session, but it was Elvis who was in charge. Elvis obviously relished returning to the studio to record non-film material. His passion for the music comes across clearly. Of course, he was in the studio – dare we say allowed back? – with the ostensible purpose to record a gospel album. Elvis took the opportunity to record secular material. The songs were his choice.
Down In The Alley
Fantastic blues, showing that Elvis can still rock hard. This raw and raucous number originally recorded by The Clovers makes for a storming opening to the album. It was wasted as a ‘bonus’ track on the California Holiday soundtrack.
Love Letters
Classy ballad which receives a sensitive reading from Elvis. It had been a hit for Ketty Lester four years earlier, so the commercial possibilities of the song would have been limited. Elvis evidently felt he could make a significant recording, and chose it as single release. It was a top ten hit in the UK. It’s a quality recording. It sold solidly in the US at 450,000 copies. It later came out on Elvis’ Gold Records volume 4 in 1968.
Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Written by Bob Dylan, this is the recording that Dylan singled out as the one he treasures the most of all of his songs recorded by others. Elvis’ delivers this folk ballad so perfectly that you are left wondering why he didn’t do a whole lot more in this area. This track was thrown away on the California Holiday soundtrack album. That’s not so much a waste as an insult and a travesty.
Come What May
Elvis revisits his old R&B favourites, originally recorded by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. I never cared for this the first time I heard it, but it really has grown on me over the years. I love it now. It must have sounded incredibly out of date at the time. In fact, it was. Which just goes to show that Elvis recorded blues and R&B out of sheer love of the music. There was no prospect of making money on tracks like this in 1966. It remains an incredibly catchy number for all that. If you didn’t buy the Love Letters single you will have struggled to find this track.
Run On
A gospel track from How Great Thou Art. This is a hot gospeller and fits the blues theme of this selection perfectly.
Indescribably Blue
This is a powerful dramatic ballad which, for some reason, has come to fall into neglect as the years have passed. It may be considered somewhat stiff and old-fashioned. It’s a bit earnest, a kind of It’s Now or Never without the rock rhythm and tempo. I always liked it. It is ‘proper’ singing. It shows further developments in Elvis’ ambitions to become recognized as a ballad singer. The mature ballad performances of 1970 did not appear from nowhere. It was a single release and, like Love Letters, was backed with an R&B number, Fools Fall in Love.
Fools Fall in Love
This was originally recorded by The Drifters in 1957. Again, the song is ten years out of date and would have sounded so at the height of The Beatles’ power. Elvis evidently recorded it because he loved it. He chose it to back another ballad released as a single. What impresses is Elvis’ determination to regain some kind of control over his music and impose his musical vision on his recording activity. If you didn’t buy the Indescribably Blue single, you would have to wait until the ‘budget’ album I Got Lucky in the early seventies to track this down.
Tomorrow Night
The Chet Atkins production of the blues ballad that Elvis had left unfinished at Sun in 1954. Critics and purists loathe the new instrumentation and backing vocals. By such means the spare and haunting ballad is made to fit the Nashville sound of the sixties. For that reason it fits the material here incredibly well, seeing as it was recorded by Elvis over ten years earlier at the beginning of his career.
I'll Remember You
This is a gentle Hawaiian ballad beautifully rendered by Elvis. It became an Elvis classic, much loved by the fans, and was sung by Elvis in the 1973 Aloha from Hawaii concert. Wasted on the California Holiday soundtrack.
If Every Day Was Like Christmas
An exemplary sentiment with which Elvis obviously agreed, and so do I. This was Elvis’ Christmas single for 1966. It sold poorly in the US but did make the US top ten. I see it as a gentle counterpart to If I Can Dream, in that it expresses a view with which Elvis clearly sympathized. It’s an earnest ballad, of a piece with Indescribably Blue. That makes the three singles releases from these sessions all ballads, all Elvis’ own choices. The King of Rock’n’Roll? Elvis was so much more than that.
Beyond the Reef
This was really a session warm up, with Elvis blending his voice in with others so much that he is one of a vocal group rather than the lead. It was not intended to be released and does not count as a proper session recording. That said, it is very nice and is exquisitely sung.
Where No One Stands Alone
A grandstanding ending, one of the (many) highlights from the How Great Thou Art album.
I am cheating by adding two gospel numbers, of course. (I did consider the slow and bluesy Where Could I Go But to the Lord? but opted for the remake of Tomorrow Night instead. This is inadmissible and would not have been done at the time. Nor would film material been added as the ‘bonus’ approach in reverse. With nine songs, including three singles, there would not have been enough for an album. There wasn’t and no album was issued. It’s just a little experiment on my part, designed to show that had Elvis been allowed to return to the studio for a session of non-film, non-gospel material he could have produced gold. As it is, the sparse nine tracks he recorded were of sufficient quality to yield three hit singles.
1967
When it comes to 1967 the selection is actually rather easy, unless one chooses to complicate matters by adding appropriate material from the film, and even from the ’68 TV Special. The film material, of course, would be issued on appropriate EP’s, and the 68 Special too had an album of its own.
The main body of this material was produced in a wonderfully creative session involving guitarist Jerry Reed. The intention of this Nashville session was to produce both singles material and filler tracks for the forthcoming Clambake soundtrack album. Elvis showed that he had far greater artistic ability than that, and that he was itching to go to serious work. Clambake was a fairly dire soundtrack. It may reveal something about the cretins who were running/ruining Elvis’ career that the best songs were actually cut from the film, The Girl I Never Loved and How Can You Lose What You Never Had? I shall resist the temptation to include both tracks, considering the former to be better covered by other material and the latter a little out of place (but nevertheless worth a shout, as a fun bluesy number, in the manner of Dean Martin).
It is tempting to describe these recordings as the ‘Guitar Man Sessions,’ given the extent to which Jerry Reed’s guitar sound dominates proceedings. That would, however, be misleading since Elvis also records a number of exceptional ballads at these sessions, with the piano being the dominant instrument. In fact, one of the standout tracks from these sessions is Elvis accompanying himself at the piano delivering a powerhouse gospel infused rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. Elvis isn’t so much the guitar man here as the piano man.
Guitar Man
Elvis heard Jerry Reed’s Guitar Man on the radio and was immediately impressed. He set about recording it but the musicians found it impossible to recreate Reed’s edgy, idiosyncratically propelled acoustic sound. It was decided to bring Reed himself into the studio, and it is Reed who drives the sound on this recording and others at these sessions.
Big Boss Man
Big Boss Man is one of bluesman Jimmy Reed’s key numbers. Elvis’ version is a cracking blend of blues and modern funky country, in large part owing to the creative involvement of the unique country singer-songwriter and guitarist Jerry Reed, the recording of whose Guitar Man formed the centrepiece of the recording session. Reed plays the propulsive guitar lead here and on several other numbers, creating the distinctive ‘Guitar Man’ sound that defines these sessions. The percussive drive of the song is increased by Chip Young drumming on the body of his acoustic guitar throughout.
You Don't Know Me
You Don’t Know Me is a country ballad that was probably most associated with Ray Charles, although it is an Eddy Arnold classic. It’s a song, then, that spans the worlds of country, blues, and soul, a middle ground where those who draw upon several strands of music can meet. The ballad allows Elvis to show all the keening qualities of his vocal, very much the trademark of his ballad recordings in the early ’60s.
Too Much Monkey Business
Elvis’ delivers a very nifty version of this Chuck Berry track, ably assisted by the propulsive guitar of Jerry Reed. This song should be much better known. With no album from these sessions, it was leftover and added to a ‘budget’ album.
You'll Never Walk Alone
This is one of Elvis’ most outstanding performances. Elvis took a moment out in the studio to be by himself, with his own thoughts and emotions. There had been no plans to record the song, and there were no arrangements. Elvis sang the song over and again, accompanying himself at the piano to deliver a heart-rending, gospel drenched version of the old show tune. Its spiritual qualities were evident. Backed with a gospel song recorded at the sessions, the song was issued as an Easter single (March 26 1968). Although its sales and chart performance were poor (US #90), the qualities of Elvis’ performance were recognized and earned a Grammy nomination.
Suppose
This delicate understated ballad shows the soft and tender side of these sessions, also represented by Mine and You Don’t Know Me. It is a song that Elvis had intended to record for some time.
U.S. Male
There had been an ugly disagreement in the studio at the time that Guitar Man was recorded, with an attempt to bully writer Jerry Reed out of his publishing. Reed was having none of it and walked out. He returned in January to deliver another cracking guitar performance on another song of his, U.S. Male. The fact is that Elvis was desperate for material, and his a&r man Felton Jarvis practically begged Reed to return. Elvis put in an inspired performance on this tongue-in-cheek (I think) braggadocious talking blues. It was a song very much in the spirit of Guitar Man and Too Much Monkey Business and kept that creative vibe going.
Hi-Heel Sneakers
Elvis delivers a raw voice, slightly menacing version of Tommy Tucker’s driving blues, helped along by the great harmonica playing of Charlie McCoy throughout. Elvis drives this uptempo twelve-bar blues on with a very strong vocal performance. It was issued as the B-side to Guitar Man to make one of Elvis’ strongest single releases for years. Elvis was clearly determined to make a strong musical statement.
Just Call Me Lonesome
A country song which was first recorded by Eddy Arnold in 1955 (note how often Elvis records Eddy Arnold material, as with You Don’t Know Me at these sessions). The song was familiar from several versions by the time Elvis recorded it. (Jim Reeves, Slim Whitman, Ernest Tubb, Billy Walker, Ray Price, and Don Gibson). Elvis delivers a creditable version. To me, it anticipates Elvis’ later investigation of country music at American Sound and Stax, although it is more explicitly country than is usual for Elvis. Elvis sings in the higher register, very much in the manner of Slim Whitman.
Singing Tree
Earnest country ballad which receives an involved and earnest delivery from an Elvis harmonizing with himself. It was used as a ‘bonus’ track on the Clambake soundtrack album. That was the album that made it crystal clear to one and all but Elvis’ management that Elvis needed to be working seriously in the studio on material of substance, not film fluff. The bonus songs on this album towered above the film songs and effectively are the album. I love the steel guitar on this.
Mine
Earnest piano ballad which receives a heartfelt and sincere vocal from Elvis.
We Call On Him
A beautiful gospel song that has been scandalously overlooked, no doubt as a result of being recorded after the How Great Thou Art sessions. Had it been placed on that album, it would have been remembered as a classic. This was later re-made as a duet between Elvis and Glen Campbell, the latter having demoed the song for Elvis prior to its being recorded by him. Beautiful sentiment, too. The song was issued as a B-side to You’ll Never Walk Alone.
In sum, the ’67-’68 sessions issued in just enough material to fill an album. The story of these sessions is not a good one. Elvis was plainly involved in a fight over musical control and direction, and it is far from clear he won it. Despite Elvis’ artistic intent, there was a dearth of material. Even when material was found and recorded, there was conflict that threatened to abort the sessions. This happened specifically when there was open conflict over publishing in the studio with Jerry Reed. The recording was saved, but the creative atmosphere had been killed. It was this that led to Elvis pouring his wounded heart out on You’ll Never Walk Alone. Commerce trumped creativity for Elvis’ mediocre, mercenary, miscreant mismanager Tom Parker. He and his team intervened here to kill the mood and let Elvis know he was a mere proletarian of song hired to deliver ‘product.’
There were other songs recorded at these sessions which were issued on the Tomorrow is a Long Time CD of 1999. One is Goin’ Home, a song originally intended for the film Stay Away, Joe, but not used. Elvis laboured on this over some 30 takes, and still didn’t seem satisfied: “I don’t know what I can do to improve this except go home.” It doesn’t catch fire for me. I do like Stay Away, which was included in both the film and the CD. I just don’t think it fits quite as well as the selected twelve.
These were important sessions. The material had a different tone and indicated a new approach from Elvis. He was returning to country and blues with a rougher, more abrasive, more confident edge. There was also, of course, Jerry Reed’s songs and their witty lyrics, but also his dextrous guitar picking, evident on a number of tracks. This sounded like a new Elvis or, at least, the beginning of a new Elvis. There is no question that Elvis was chomping at the musical bit, raring to get stuck into some serious material outside of the films. He had shown what he could do the previous year with his gospel work. His performance was substantial and earned him a Grammy Award. He was clearly better than the film fluff was showing him to be, and he was evidently determined to show it.
Unfortunately, Elvis was involved in a battle not with the artists who had eclipsed him in the sixties but with his own manager and recording company. He was locked into a business driven model that could have been designed to undermine creative musical sensibility at every point. The strategy was based on commerce but was actually bad business, systematically and progressively undermining the quality of artistic performance to such an extent that it was inevitable there would be no art – or even artist – left at the end of it. The focus was on the immediate, with no thought at all given to the long run. Run a career like that and in no time you have no long run. The remarkable thing is that Elvis made it as far as he did. The strategy inflicted first artistic and then finally commercial ruination. Many of the tracks recorded here were thrown away as ‘bonus’ tracks on the Clambake album. It was a desperate attempt to prop up film music that had now become a public joke. Good material was thrown after bad.
The character and quality of the material marked a definite turning point in Elvis’ career, and the fans could not have helped but notice it. The tracks here issued a promise that the dark days were about to end and the creative lights put back on. Instead of fleecing the old generation of Elvis fans with endless movie soundtracks, a new generation of potential Elvis fans was being created. The Boston Phoenix belonged to the wave of underground weeklies that were starting to emerge. It wrote: “In the past six months Elvis has put out three singles which in their vitality rival anything in pop music today…Perhaps Elvis’ [musical] reconversion is an indication that there is more than one standard of success, after all, and that all the bland emulsifiers were only the products of ad men out of touch with our America.”
Elvis was fighting to impose his musical vision on those who had been calling the shots in his career for far too long. The only thing his manager and recording company were in touch with were the pockets of Elvis fans who were prepared to buy anything with Elvis’ name and voice on it. It’s as cynical as that. They didn’t give a damn about the music, nor the films, nor quality. Put Elvis on it and get it out was their attitude.
The Guitar Man single, with its flipside Hi Heel Sneakers, should have led the charge. It was a decent sized hit, showing an improvement in sales and chart position. US Male was issued, only this time coupled with Stay Away. Good studio recordings were being tagged on to the musical dead ends that were the movies.
The struggle over Guitar Man indicates the extent to which the predominance of ‘business’ over art was killing Elvis’ career. Guitar Man, one of the songs most associated with Elvis, very nearly didn’t get released at all. There was an almighty bust-up in the studio when Jerry Reed, having contributed his fantastic guitar work on Guitar Man and Big Boss Man, was corned by Parker’s henchmen and pressured into giving up the publishing on his song. “You don’t need the money, and Elvis don’t need the money,” he told Freddy Bienstock, “and I’m making more money than I can spend right now – so why don’t we just forget we ever recorded this damn song?” The song was released, but there was no victory for Elvis here. Reed agreed to a cut-in solely on Elvis’ version of the song. The song came out but the forces destructive of artistic and musical sensibility remained firmly in place. The very same thing happened at American Sound studios in 1969, with Elvis very nearly losing Suspicious Minds. Producer Chips Moman told one and all to clear out of his studio and never to return. Suspicious Minds was released and became one of Elvis’ biggest and best tunes. But it was nearly lost through the mercenary approach of Elvis’ manager. The thing to contemplate is how many great songs were lost to Elvis as a result of the onerous business terms that Tom Parker and Hill and Range imposed on writers. Given that Elvis was no longer charting as high and as hard as he had once done, writers didn’t need to compromise and were less and less likely to succumb to bullying. Immoral in the first place, the strategy had also long since had its day. It was the era of the singer-songwriter and bands that wrote their own material. Elvis needed to adapt or die.
The approach of his management and recording company was so blinkered it would be comic if it wasn’t so tragic. Elvis was doing his damnedest to carve out a new, relevant, musical profile. In the middle of all of this came Speedway. Again, studio material was being thrown away as ‘bonus’ material. It happened with the material of 1963 and, no lessons learned, it continued. Just as a new public was showing an interest in what appeared to be a new Elvis, there was a reversion to the strategy that had sent Elvis’ career down the tube in the first place. Elvis’ management and record company were so slow in catching on that the only conclusion to be drawn is that they had no intentions of catching themselves on. They had the perfect strategy for easy money, just milking a safe Elvis audience with material produced by hacks. What they didn’t see was that that strategy was now on its last legs. The sales of the soundtracks were plummeting, people had heard enough and had had enough. Instead of a new musical direction, there was an attempt to exploit Elvis’ new approach and material to support the insupportable. Elvis’ studio work was thus needlessly and scandalously sacrificed in the vain hope of reviving an increasingly moribund movie career, money up front for the film and a soundtrack to boot. That strategy had been ridden into the ground and was now threatening to take Elvis down with it.
So why was management so reluctant to follow Elvis’ lead? Good artistic sense was also good business sense in this instance. Clearly, it wasn’t just money that was involved in the calculations of managements. It was money and control. The sight of Elvis taking control of his music presaged an Elvis taking control of his career. How long before Elvis was calling the shots? And how strange a situation this really is when the artist has been reduced to working for his manager instead of vice versa. This was an issue not just of commerce but of control. And Elvis didn’t win it. It took all that he had to fight for his music. He had been hog tied to the movies from the first, and it drained the life out of his musical soul. Elvis’ instincts were right on the music, and he began to carve out a new direction. But the extent to which his efforts would be undermined by his own management were made crystal clear here in 1967 and 1968. Elvis won a victory on the ’68 TV Special, but he never worked with producer Steve Binder again; he won a victory on the American Sound recordings of 1969, but he never worked with Chips Moman again.
It’s a bad business and no positive gloss can be put on it. Tom Parker was a wretched mediocrity, a two-bit carny man whose business acumen has been wildly overpraised. Where was he before Elvis? If he was such a genius businessman, then how much money had he made before he got his fangs into Elvis? We know he made a fortune for himself after Elvis. But without Elvis? Parker was cheap and nasty and he brought precisely those qualities into the career of Elvis Presley. Elvis bears a lot of responsibility too. Most of all Elvis should have done what Eddy Arnold had the wisdom to do many years early – give Tom Parker the boot.
I shall end by quoting passages from this article:
Colonel of Lies by Jonathan Yardley (June 28, 2001), a review of The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager by James L. Dickerson
‘In the course of his legendary career Tom Parker bilked Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow, two of the most popular (and best) country singers of the 1950s. When he had drained as much out of them as he could, he fastened his attention on a young singer and guitarist from Memphis named Elvis Presley.’
It’s so obvious what Tom Parker that the only question is what the hell was Elvis playing at having him anywhere near his career, let alone determining its direction. There was supposed to be a clear division of labour in which Elvis looked after music and Parker looked after business. The problem is that ‘business’ entailed complete control by Parker, setting the direction of Elvis’ career and the parameters of his recording. This was clear exploitative control. The question is why Elvis, who must have been aware of the damage to his music, let it carry on.
‘What he most emphatically fails to do,’ Yardley writes with respect to Dickerson and his book on Parker, ‘is answer the two big questions: What did Parker really do to enhance Presley's career, and why did Presley stick with him long after it surely had become clear that he was being exploited and cheated?’
To the first question I will answer clearly and bluntly, Parker had nothing to do with Elvis’ rise, he merely caught a hold and rode to the top with Elvis, took credit for the rise and then took Elvis over. As to why Elvis stuck with him, my conclusion is that Elvis was utterly incapable of taking control and running his career. He settled very easily into the role of proletarian in his own career, letting others make the tough decisions. Even so, that answer still begs the question: why let Parker run his career, when it was evident he was not merely a crook but an incompetent one? Why not hire different management?
‘Parker is often cited as the eminence grise behind Presley -- a "marketing genius," in Dickerson's words -- who made a crude kid from Memphis into an international star, but in truth there's little evidence to support that. There's much more evidence that Parker's only interest in Presley was as a cash cow to finance his own addiction to Las Vegas gambling, that his determination to make Presley a movie star had calamitous effects on Presley's music, and that -- as a lawyer put it after Presley's death -- he was "guilty of self-dealing and over-reaching and . . . violated his duty both to Presley, when Presley was alive, and to the estate."’
Precisely. The miracle is that Elvis continued to make music at all, let alone so much great music. When people debate who the greatest singers and artists are and Elvis’ name crops up, I tell them that they are measuring their favourites up against an artist who realized maybe only a quarter of what he was capable of. That’s how great Elvis was, and that’s also how much his talent was wasted as a result of exploitation.
‘The hold he had on Presley is an enduring mystery. Presley was poorly educated, naive and uncouth, but he was not stupid and he felt passionately about his music. If early in his career he trusted and depended on Parker, it did not take long for him to get a fairly clear sense of how Parker was using him; both Guralnik and Dickerson provide plenty of proof on that count. Yet Parker seems to have terrified him as much as the law terrified Parker, so he clung to his "manager" far past any hope of benefit to himself. If Parker was the perfect con man, Presley seems to have been the perfect mark.’
I hear producer Steve Binder being interviewed, recalling how Parker spoke to Elvis like an adult reprimanding a child, a teacher scolding a pupil, and Elvis would stand there silent, passive, mumbling his consent in response. It’s a mystery. Crooks in entertainment are hardly new. We’ve seen the so-called contract Elvis had with Parker. It isn’t a contract at all. It’s all about what Elvis owes Parker. It would have been laughed out of court. Elvis could have hired showbusiness lawyers and had the crook cut out in short order. He didn’t. It cost him his music and it cost him his life.