I’ve just been singing “Blue Christmas” Hawaiian style accompanied by a climate scientist on ukulele somewhere in the wilds of California by video link. And miscellaneous other Elvis songs: “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “It’s Now or Never,” “Teddy Bear,” “Always on My Mind.” Paradise Hawaiian Style. So I am in Elvis overdrive. I may get my speakers out and treat the neighbours to a full concert. I’m not complaining or anything. But I would have loved to have heard “Wooden Heart.”
I have a rather meagre collection of Elvis singles and EPs. I bought all the albums on vinyl. And then bought them all again, and more, on CD. I also acquired, one way or another, hundreds and hundreds of alternate takes.
I didn’t feel the need to buy all the singles. The ones I do have are personal favourites. I need more from the fifties. You’ll hear no songs better than Don’t Be Cruel, A Fool Such as I, Treat Me Nice etc. But I was brought up on Elvis the ballad singer of the seventies, and that’s what I always gravitate to. I bought albums rather than singles generally, save for exceptional cases with regard to favourite songs, singers, and bands. The first ever Elvis record I owned was Separate Ways, which had the title track plus Always on My Mind, which was the recent single release. Both tracks are favourites, but I never acquired the single. You can’t buy them all, and have no need to when you have them all in one form or another.
I thought it might be of interest to examine my Elvis singles collection, identifying the reasons as to why I acquired these select few discs out of the hundred plus I could have bought.
She’s Not You
This song was a big favourite of my mum’s. It was a UK#1 and US#5 in 1962, signalling a switch from rock to pop and ballads. Or Elvis selling out to the girls, as Lennon and many others put it. And why not? The Beatles covered a number of tracks by US girl groups in the early sixties. Musical taste doesn’t correlate with sex. My favourite female singer by far, Françoise Hardy, based her trademark sad simple balladry on the Elvis of the early sixties. My mother was a girl (she would have been twenty two when this song was released). It was through my mother than I became an Elvis fan. True enough, the song represented a softening of sound. But having innovated a new form of pop-rock music through his synthesis of blues/country/pop/gospel, Elvis had nowhere else to go. The act of synthesis done, Elvis could innovate no more, and had to develop and refine his pop sound as best he could. Songs like this were soon to be eclipsed by the British beat boom. But it was the slickest, smoothest, brightest, and breeziest pop around in the early sixties, and for all of its sad message always uplifts the spirit.
Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello
I always loved the flip-side, too, Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello, and rate it as a classic that got away. The song combines R&B with a Latin rhythm, in the manner of The Drifters’ tracks of the early sixties. Elvis is crooning rather than rocking, but this was early sixties pop at its best. The song stands up well to this day. The track boasts a very loud and insistent triangle. But let’s be honest, if you did ever have the good fortune to get a gig playing the triangle on an Elvis record, I’d expect you’d become a little over-excited and bang your instrument a lot louder than usual, too. Lots of people hated it when Elvis switched to this crooning style in the early sixties. It suits me fine. Listen how the voice soars!
It Hurts Me
This is an absolutely stellar track, a powerfully sung dramatic ballad from 1964, one of the best songs in Elvis’ career. I have an eye for the underdog, the outsider, the quality that goes under the radar. I remember Roy Orbison in a 1964 interview being asked to comment on Elvis’ plight as he faded from view in the aftermath of The Beatles. Roy leapt to the defence of Elvis, saying that he was singing better than he had ever done, citing It Hurts Me as evidence. The problem, however, was that this great recording was buried on the back of a single promoting his latest movie, Kissin’ Cousins, and so lost from view. It’s one of his greatest tracks. I have the Italian release on the Elvis in Demand album, which removes the backing vocals to put the focus just on Elvis’ voice and the piano. A dramatic ballad, it is easy to appreciate why Roy Orbison loved it.
If I Can Dream
Way back when, when I was thirteen years of age, I drew up a list of my favourite songs. I named If I Can Dream as my number one song. An essential single.
In the Ghetto and Any Day Now
A big US and UK hit, so an obvious choice. As good as In the Ghetto is, mind, I always preferred the B-side, Any Day Now. Soaring soul, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Don’t Cry Daddy
And I loved Don’t Cry Daddy from the moment I heard it, despite lyrics that make me squirm should I ever bother to focus on them. I developed a capacity very early on to make up my own meanings to songs in response to sounds, moods, and atmospheres. That faculty probably had more to do with not actually understanding the lyrics and their true meaning rather than consciously objecting to them. I look for the reality that lies behind or beyond words. I loved the sad sorrowful sound of this song. I was brought up on Elvis the ballad singer and discovered the rocker later on. Old Shep was on the first album I ever owned, so what chance did I have?
Kentucky Rain
This is another song that really should be much better known, and recognised as an Elvis classic. Recorded at the same session at Suspicious Minds and In the Ghetto, it was kept back for single release, in anticipation of another huge hit. It peaked at a modest US#16. Musically complex and vocally demanding, it’s in the same category of those great Jimmy Webb songs recorded by Glen Campbell. It is every bit as good as Suspicious Minds and In the Ghetto and I shall continue praising its virtues in hope of it coming to be more popularly known and loved.
Clean Up Your Own Back Yard
I had always argued that there are a number of lost classics buried in the Elvis soundtracks, and was proven right when the world finally discovered A Little Less Conversation and made it a global #1 smash in 2002. I could list a dozen or more tracks that are even better. My eyes were always on this Clean Up Your Own Back Yard, dead cool blue eyed soul/country/whatever. It also has a super cool performance in the movie The Trouble with Girls (and how to get into it). I remember feeling vindicated when I read in a book of chart hits that the single hit US #3, thinking that high placing appropriate. I later found out that the book had made a mistake and its true placing was US#35 and UK#21. So the song is another of my classics waiting to be discovered. My collection is full of them. I think I acquired them to build a collection of treasures all of my own.
The Fair’s Moving On
This is not a particular great song (it savours a little of Tom Jones’ Funny Familiar Forgotten Feeling) but allows me to amaze people by saying it was written by Doug Flett, who was the father of journalist Barbara Flett. He also wrote Just Pretend, which Elvis recorded in 1970 and made sound like deep gospel soul. Just Pretend is a big favourite, always was, another song I long identified as a classic awaiting discovery.
The Wonder of You
Of course! Doesn’t everybody love this one? This one is unusual for me, in being a massive hit that everyone knows and loves. I tended to go for the less obvious songs and less popular singles. The opportunity to acquire it cropped up, so I took it. And there is a very strong possibility that I was attracted by the flip-side, Mama Liked the Roses, a sentimental song my mum loved, which the cool folk among us could never admit to liking. It’s rather over-wrought and cliché-ridden, full of reminiscences about the old family Bible people claimed to have, but could never locate when asked. All of which makes this a single that conjures up some very familiar experiences. My mum was most pleased when I bought the Elvis Lost Performances video in 1997, and would play it often. She enjoyed the performance of The Wonder of You very much. She had never seen it before. No one had. It was like having Elvis back. In 2005 she bought me a very tasteful Elvis birthday card, proclaiming ‘The Wonder of You’, with the song being sung when you opened it up. It was the last birthday card she would give me and the last birthday we would celebrate together.
Follow that Dream EP
Soundtrack to the movie of the same name. Follow that Dream is my favourite Elvis movie. It is genuinely funny, and never fails to lift the spirits. Angel is a very pretty song. What a Wonderful Life and I’m Not the Marrying Kind are the other two tracks on the EP. The story of my life. A bit of a croon, a bit of a twist, what’s not to like?
Kid Galahad EP
Kid Galahad is the greatest boxing musical ever. Elvis wins all his fights and sings some cracking songs along the way. The lead track King of the Whole Wide World should have been the single smash (the intro is the spitting image of ABBA’s Waterloo, and Benny Ulvaeus is on record saying it was an Elvis song that got him into music (Treat Me Nice)). Home is where the Heart is is a wonderfully warm ballad written by Burt Bacharach’s writing partner Hal David. And the gentle twister I Got Lucky is beauty. The songs were recorded October 1961 and issued in August 1962. Elvis’ chart fortunes were starting to wane a little by this point, and there were no big hits here. I still think King of the Whole Wide World has a chart potential much greater than the US#30 it hit. I have a soft spot for this EP, and for Kid Galahad the movie, which was shot in Idyllwild, California, which I visited some time in 2015-2016.
It’s Now or Never
Of course! A million selling single, it is perhaps inevitable that I would acquire this one. Elvis crooning to a rocking beat, that sounds good to me. It may be an obvious choice, but this always struck me as a great song, it made a huge impression on me when I heard it. And it allows me to recount the time we blew the lights out in the mountains in California singing this one. It wasn’t my fault. I was just improvising on drums. The singer went for the big notes at the end and out went the lights. True pro, he carried on singing to the end in the pitch black.
A Mess of Blues
Flip side of It’s Now or Never, A Mess of Blues is a classic in its own right, which Elvis sings and swings with great verve. It’s a song I would have bought in its own right.
Surrender
More operatics! It is worth pointing out that my dad had a little opera collection, Gigli and such like, and that my mum went as far as striking a compromise with Mario Lanza. ‘He’s not as bad as his critics say,’ my dad recalled an army friend as saying, ‘but not as good as his fans say.’ We had a Mario Lanza album. So Elvis combining rock and operatics made perfect sense in our house.
Lonely Man
B-side to Surrender, this is a soft, introspective ballad, not dissimilar to Wild in the Country. I like the solo version that wasn’t released, with Elvis accompanying himself with rudimentary guitar, the accent being placed on the peerless vocal. Just like when he first entered Sun studios in 1953. The song also compares to songs like In My Way and Forget Me Never, recorded for Wild in the Country, and issued on the Separate Ways album, which was my introduction to Elvis.
Heart of Rome
Not many people know this one. It seems that in 1970 Elvis was attempting what he had done in 1960 and taking the charts by storm with a bit of high-powered Latin balladry. It didn’t happen, but it grabbed me the moment I heard it. I’m a sucker for the operatics. My dad would occasionally burst out singing a bit of opera, all big-voiced enthusiasm for the melody compensating for the fact he had zero grasp of the words. It’s one of those songs that critics say is of a kind, but which has nothing in common with where popular music was at or was heading, a throwback to a time that is gone. I rather liked that time. I would class this with Rags to Riches, a song I am surprised to see I never got round to acquiring. I thought Rags to Riches an obvious smash the first time I heard it, Elvis coming in at a peak, and then soaring ever higher. Big-voiced barnstorming turbo-charged emotional power. I liked it anyway.
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
Françoise Hardy named this as one her top ten most favourite songs in August 20th 1965, just eleven days before I was born: ‘I have always loved Elvis. But I prefer his slow songs to the rockers. This one makes me feel sad’ (New Musical Express). The critics complained that Elvis sold out to girls. Françoise built her trademark sad, simple, sentimental style on the Elvis ballads of the early sixties. I would have loved the song anyway. But the fact that my favourite female singer by a million trillion miles (or trillion million, whichever is the larger amount) helps immensely.
I Gotta Know
The B-side of Are You Lonesome Tonight? and the song that won Françoise Hardy a recording contract at Vogue Records, Paris, in 1961, after failed auditions at EMI’s Studio Pathé Marconi and Philips, where she was sent away with the advice to take singing lessons. Instead, she sang Je T’Aime Trop, a French language version of I Gotta Know, which had been a recent hit by the inestimable Eddy Mitchell & Les Chaussettes Noires. And Vogue snapped her up immediately. Irresistible.
Can’t Help Falling in Love
It’s an obvious choice, being a big hit that remains well-loved to this day. I like the ballads. I still say this savours of Plaisir d’Amour.
(Marie’s the Name) His Latest FlameThis forms a high quality double A side with Little Sister. It was a huge hit in 1961 and deservedly so. The song is structured around the Bo Diddley, which is more apparent in the demo, and is utterly transformed in Elvis’ version. Johnny Marr took the riff and turned it into Rusholme Ruffians in 1986, with The Smiths segueing from one to the other in concert. This is such a cool track. When my young self first heard it, I thought Elvis was singing ‘my reason aims’ rather than ‘Marie’s the name’, trying to work out how the ‘latest flame’ ensued. I thought the song an arsonist’s confession.
Little Sister
This is a cracking bit of R&B, with the fantastic Hank Garland on guitar. The response record Hey Memphis by Lavern Baker is also essential. What to say? Latest Flame and Little Sister reveal the R&B pop side to Elvis that, arguably, should have been developed much more than it was in the early sixties, with Elvis making something substantial out of his fifties blues/country/pop synthesis. Instead, he seemed to put more effort into becoming a ballad singer, and, to be fair, succeeded.
Suspicion
This is glorious! Just listen to how effortlessly the vocal soars high and swoops low in the same line. The voice flows like electric honey. Recorded in 1962, this was released as a single in December 1976, hitting UK#9, spending three weeks in the top ten and nine weeks in the top twenty. I remember first seeing it being performed on Top of the Pops by dance troupe Legs & Co, who start off in big white fedora hats and long white trench coats only to discard both to dance under the moonlight in scarlet coloured velvet leotards, with a titillating flash of legs. I had no idea what to make of it when I saw it. I watched intently in search of some connection with Elvis. My mother started to get nervous when the striptease started and the writhing around the lampposts began. But since it was Elvis I had licence to look. In terms of purity of voice, Elvis was at his peak in 1961-63, and this song showcases it.
It’s a Long Lonely Highway
Although recorded in 1963, this was the B-side of the Suspicion single of 1976. It’s a funky country rocker in the Devil in Disguise category, which indicates where Elvis could have gone had Hollywood not come to loom so large in his schedule. The Guitar Man sound of 1967 and 1968 with Jerry Reed stand in line of descent from this track. I think it is very much a ‘lost highway’ in Elvis’ career. It sounds like Dylan’s Mixed Up Confusion Blues, which in turn sounds like a continuation of Mystery Train. It’s a tale of what could have been, of what there should have been more of. It should have been more high profile than it was, and should be better known. Elvis always worked with great musicians. I’d have liked to have heard them tear it up a bit more, and at a higher volume and quicker pace. Elvis’ pop of the early sixties was supreme, but at risk of sophistication becoming slick.
Crying in the Chapel
Recorded in 1960, it hit UK#1 in 1965. Elvis voice is tempered down to a sparse and gentle tone (as I remember reading somewhere – I have a formidable memory, and sometimes worry that in writing so quickly, I’m regurgitating the words of a million others). I have a mind that works by associations, tangents, and connections. I like Crying in the Chapel, but I prefer Known Only to Him, also from the His Hand in Mine sessions of 1960, and included on the album. We had Known Only to Him played at my mother’s funeral service. It was never a single. Crying in the Chapel is a close relation, though.
Tonight is So Right for Love
Many would consider this to be an odd choice as a favourite song and single. It’s rock’n’roll but not as we know it. Which is to say, rhythmic. The melody for this is the barcarolle composed by Jacques Offenbach, which we sang in the school choir. Hence I have a very soft spot for it. Buy me a Guinness, and I’ll promise to sing it for you. It’s Elvis in crooning mode again. I like a croon. There’s no point in wasting a good voice. It comes from the movie G.I.Blues, in which Elvis sings the song to Juliet Prowse. My Nin loathed Juliet Prowse.
Wooden Heart
Now you’re talking! I told some woman on social media that I sing a good Wooden Heart. She asked me if I sang Far Far Away. I said it wasn’t an Elvis song.
It depends on what you think about songs sang to puppets. I’m agnostic: it depends on the puppet. I once counted this as a guilty pleasure, then I heard Nanci Griffith sing an irresistible version and realised that there’s no guilt in pleasure. Listen without prejudice and sing what you like. It’s from an old German folk song, which we sang in music class at junior school.
Wild in the Country
I remember reading in The Beatles Encyclopaedia that The Beatles used to sing this song in concert around 1961-62 time. I read elsewhere that Pete Best was the one who sang it. That’s as much as I know. It’s a soft, delicate ballad with – to my ears - faint strains of Yesterday. It’s a very interesting movie, unlike anything else in Elvis’ career. It’s a pleasant song, very gentle, and not obvious single material. It’s the kind of song from Elvis that Françoise Hardy liked, and what’s good enough for Françoise is good enough for me (although I heard it and loved it years before I had heard of Françoise). It’s essentially Elvis’ ethereal vocals and acoustic guitar, and quite beautiful.
I Feel So Bad
R&B powerhouse, written and first recorded by Chuck Willis, with a corking sax solo from Boots Randolph. Double A-side single in the UK (c/w Wild in the Country), this reached No.4 on the UK singles chart in 1961, and No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Elvis was in fine form early sixties, but needed more of this kind of thing. Slick pop, beautiful ballads, and Hollywood took over, and The Beatles made it all sound somewhat sedate and dated. That said, the song itself is actually a throwback to the fifties, Chuck Willis’ original recording dating from 1954. It makes the point that once Elvis had performed the act of synthesis with respect to country/blues/pop/gospel, he couldn’t do it again – he either had to create a new sound or keep unfolding that synthesis, or move into other areas or risk repeating himself. He needed new and original but wasn’t a writer, and was entering an era in which writers were more keen to protect their publishing rights. There are many reasons why Elvis’ career became erratic as the sixties progressed, and this is one of them. This track is like having the fifties Elvis back.
I Just Can’t Help Believin’
The concert performance is ultra-cool, Elvis performing a karate move in the middle of a romantic ballad. I’m not quite sure how, where, and why I acquired this single. I love the song, of course, but not especially so. I think it must have been available at some place or other, or my mother picked it up somewhere.
How the Web was Woven
Ah, I see now …. I absolutely love this sumptuous ballad, which is the B-side of Believin’. The song is written by Wales’ own Clive Westlake. Westlake wrote a lot of super songs, including All I See is You for Dusty Springfield. I can see the special appeal of this single now. How the Web Was Woven is one of the ballads on That’s the Way It Is – Just Pretend, The Next Step is Love – which are a large reason why that album is my most favourite Elvis album of all. And that’s why I have this single (just as I would have Just Pretend had RCA ever had the wisdom to release it as a single).
There Goes my Everything
Country and Western ballad. UK#6 and top ten US country. I always preferred the live version, but warmed to this studio cut in time. Elvis was in fine voice in 1970. Country soul.
I Really Don’t Want to Know
B-side of Everything, this is another soulful country ballad, written by the great Don Robertson. Elvis sang this kind of song superbly well, especially around this time. Going back home for a family funeral a couple of years ago, I nearly fell off my chair when my cousin’s son’s girlfriend casually announced at the dinner table that her all-time favourite song is Elvis’ Make the World Go Away. I Really Don’t Want to Know is very similar, and was recorded at the same session. That kind of thing gives me hope for the future.
Until it’s Time for you to Go
Written by Buffy Sainte-Marie, this is the saddest of all sad songs. Everyone has had a go at it, including Barbara McNair, who stared with Elvis in Change of Habit. Buffy Sainte-Marie’s biographer Andrea Warner writes this: ‘McNair's smouldering torch-singer take on the song burns with intensity and loss, and it's chillingly beautiful.’ She then goes on to say this about Elvis’ version: ‘Presley's interpretation amps up the song's sentimental side. His drawl tucks the words inside his mouth, like one of those enveloping hugs that makes you feel safe until you start to feel smothered. But his emotional treatment is effective — if you can listen to it in full with dry eyes, email me the secrets of your robot heart — and it's Presley's version that most people associate with the song.’ That the song had already been recorded so many times before Elvis decided to record it in 1971 made it an unwise choice for a single. It seems that Elvis felt that the song’s huge hit potential had yet to be realised, so gave it a go. Even fans were unimpressed, complaining about another ballad and demanding more rock. It peaked at US#40, which was at least 13 places higher than Neil Diamond’s version. But not the smash hit Elvis thought it could be. No matter. I always liked it, even when I was very young. Even though there was no way at all that my youthful self could have had any idea of the emotional depth of the lyrics, I felt it.
My Boy
UK#5 in the first week of January 1975. I remember it well. I remember seeing it performed to a film on Top of the Pops at a friends’ house. He screwed his face up, said it wasn’t any good, and that we should go outside and play some football. Although I jumped at the chance at some football, I thought his view of the song completely wrong. I may have been a tiny tot, and the themes of this song may have been mature, but I’ll take it over Hound Dog any day of the week. The emotional charge is on another level. I love the live version, too. As I have said, I was brought up on Elvis the ballad singer. Critics were saying that Elvis was too old to rock’n’roll, and it worried me not one jot. I thought the ballads better.
Loving Arms
B-side of My Boy and even better (if such a thing is at all possible). More of that soulful country balladry that Elvis did so well in the seventies. Another one that my mum liked. We played the Good Times album often.
Promised Land
I remember this being released, thinking it an absolute cert for the top slot. Recorded in December 1973, it hit a creditable UK#9 in 1975, but that position didn’t remotely seem to do it justice. The song still sounds like a #1 smash to me. It’s a cover of the Chuck Berry classic, which Berry wrote to the tune of the folk country tune Wabash Cannonball. Country, blues, rock, black, white, it’s all music. It was a US#14, which is a decent sized hit.
I’m Leavin’
This song is counted among my top twelve Elvis tracks. Why twelve and not the usual top ten? It took me an eternity to select my Elvis top forty from a shortlist of two hundred plus. Having got the tracks down to twelve, I couldn’t omit another one, let alone two. I’m Leavin’ was Elvis’ own choice for single release. He’s often criticised for being formulaic and conservative in his music, but it’s overlooked how often he did try to break out of the straightjacket of expectation. This song is a harrowing beauty, with its haunted vocal and haunting melody, Elvis singing of the emptiness inside. It was too much for the great public and made for a very modest hit at the time – US#36 and UK#23. It’s a world away from the glamour and glitter. How real do people want it? A top track indeed.
Moody Blue
A big favourite of my mum’s, and a big hit in the UK, charting at #6. I remember it being played on Liverpool’s Radio City a lot. An up-tempo piece of catchy country pop, it sounded so good. All was well in the world. And then Elvis went away. I remember the day well. We were in Llandudno the day after. So not all bad. Things always look better in Wales.
Way Down
Elvis country disco! It’s the future! At least it would have been had Elvis not gone and died. Jerry Dorset of Mungo Jerry had written a similar sounding Feels Like I’m in Love for Elvis at this time. He sent it to Elvis, only for Elvis to die. The song went to an unknown by the name of Kelly Marie, who promptly took it to the top of the charts. Such is life. We had to suffer the insufferable John Peel saying the song only hit the top because Elvis had died. Professional curmudgeon of no discernible musical ability, he said the same about Lennon etc. Like nothing else had anything to do with it. Elvis’ previous single Moody Blue had hit #6, so Elvis wasn’t too far from the top when he dropped off his perch.
Pledging My Love
Way Down is a cracking tune. But I had a particular – and possibly morbid - interest in the B-side, Pledging my Love. Pledging My Love is a fine R&B ballad, not dissimilar to Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night, which Elvis recorded at Sun right at the very beginning in 1954. I heard the legend that whoever sings this song dies. Which struck me as likely, eventually, short of the discovery of the secret of immortality. Except that, according to the myth, they die shortly after recording it. The man described by Paul Simon as ‘the late great Johnny Ace’ was killed playing Russian roulette backstage in 1954, with this as his current hit. Then I heard that Jackie Wilson was singing it when he collapsed onstage and went into a coma and never came out. I then saw Jackie Wilson recorded it in 1965 and lived happily and energetically long after. I saw, too, that many other artists recorded it with no adverse consequences. Tom Jones recorded it and he’s still singing loud at the age of 118. But, yes, Elvis recorded it and then died. His last song in the studio was He’ll Have to Go. He overdubbed his vocal over a track laid down by his band, who had all packed up and gone home by this stage. In the end, as in the beginning: Elvis singing on his own.