Elvis' comeback to live performance in 1969 had been a resounding success. He was on a high. The marathon recording session in Nashville in 1970 yielded enough material to fill three albums. By 1971, however, Elvis' successful run was stalling and his singles were falling back outside the top twenty. That was understandable with the ambitious and wordy 'philosophical' song “Life,” which got no further than number 53 in the US Hot 100. But “I'm Leavin'” was a folk-inflected orchestrated ballad that was one of Elvis' best ever songs. With its complex dynamics and rhythm changes, the single deserved a much better fate than stalling at 36. The follow up, the mid-tempo “It's Only Love,” fared even worse, reaching on 51.
The songs showed the direction in which Elvis' musical tastes were moving at this moment, a folk influenced rock balladry. A cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s folk ballad “Until It’s Time For You To Go” not only fitted this direction, it was in perfect keeping with Elvis' growing penchant for melancholic, sorrowful balladry. It might not seem a recipe for chart success, but that was where Elvis' interests lay. Indeed, Elvis intended to issue a full album of folk material in the Elvis style of rock balladry. As it was ill-health intervened and the recording sessions were cut short. Four tracks were recorded, Ewan McColl's “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Gordon Lightfoot's “Early Mornin' Rain” and “(That's What You Get) For Lovin' Me”, and Buffy Sainte-Marie's “Until It’s Time For You To Go.” None of these were obvious chart singles, but Elvis clearly “Until It's Time For You To Go” clearly moved Elvis to the core of his being, and he delivered a vocal of real emotional weight. Whilst the single sold few more copies than the previous singles, and reached on 40 on the Hot 100, I rate it as among Elvis' finest recordings. (OK, I have more than a hundred in that selection, but that's just a measure of how truly great Elvis really was. The public always knew, it's the critics who are slow in catching on, sticking as they do to their misplaced notions of purity, seeking to break the whole up into single neat and acceptable categories.)
Although the song is rarely, if ever, played on radio, I'm not alone in that high estimation. I've read it described as a woman's song, and of course that's what it is. It is Buffy Sainte-Marie's song, and I would always recommend that people start with her version and return to it. The lyrics are very personal and mean something slightly, but significantly, different when sung by a woman or a man. So I have no trouble at all in accepting that this, in terms of strict authenticity, is a woman's song rather than a man's. The difference is subtle, so those who just appreciate a good voice, may not care. But I make a point here to quote a woman, Andrea Warner, who discusses various covers of the song, concluding that Elvis' version of this most emotional of songs is the most emotional of all:
“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.” ("From Elvis to Barbra Streisand, a brief history of one of Buffy Sainte-Marie's most covered songs" by Andrea Warner.)
I knew the song first from Elvis' version. For Christmas 1977 I received Elvis' “Hits of the Seventies” album as a present. I loved the album, it was packed with with heavyweight tracks like “Always on My Mind,” “Kentucky Rain,” “You Don't Have to Say You Love Me,” and “An American Trilogy.” Plus tracks we didn't hear much of, like “Rags to Riches” and “I've Lost You,” as well as tracks that received regular play on the radio like “I Just Can't Help Believin.'” It had the immense “I'm Leaving'” too. Even at the young age of twelve, I knew that this material was substantial. Elvis sounded like the image he portrayed – big. I loved the dramatics on tracks like “An American Trilogy,” I loved the sheer rocking force of “Burning Love.” But it was the low-key sadness and resignation of “Until It's Time for You To Go,” a song which Elvis speaks as much as he sings, that always managed to stay with me. Then again, with “Separate Ways” and its collection of sad and melancholic songs as my first ever Elvis album, I had been brought up to appreciate Elvis' songs of love, loss, and regret.
I've been reading “Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography” by Andrea Warner, and it becomes clear that Buffy herself was a mad keen Elvis fan in her youth, and retained something of a soft spot for Elvis even as their careers developed in very different worlds. Elvis was a natural talent that came to be corrupted, Buffy Sainte-Marie stayed true to herself, her values, and her music. The easiest thing to say – which is why so many say it – is that Elvis was fake, plastic, and pop, and that folkies like Buffy Sainte-Marie are genuine and true. The truth is far more nuanced. Elvis was the real deal, but he was also self-consciously and deliberately pop, an identity that comes with its compromises and dangers.
Andrea Warner describes “Until It's Time for You To Go” as a feminist anthem. “There's something radically empowering about it,” she writes. “It's sung from the perspective of a woman who has total agency, who is actively resisting gendered stereotypes and the coding of forever-love as a girlish dream. She has a shared vision for what this partnership will – or could – look like. 'Don't ask why, don't ask how/Don't ask forever of me/Love me now,' she demands.
I find it interesting the way that Andrea Warner proceeds to list Elvis with the female artists who sang this song 'most significantly of all':
“The song wasn't a hit for the songwriter herself, but it was for Bobby Darin, the Four Pennies, Neil Diamond, Andy Williams, and, most significantly, Elvis Presley, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Roberta Flack, Francoise Hardy, Bette Davis ...”
Sainte-Marie seemed fairly impressed with the hit covers of the song, seeing it as a love song that was personal to her: “The first person who covered it was Bobby Darin. His musical director either felt that I had made an intentional mistake or he totally missed the very cool melody that came to work against what's going on in the chords. He turned it into a very vanilla thing.”
For a while, it seems that there was a tendency to associate the song with anyone but the actual writer, and Buffy Sainte-Marie had to contest these claims. There was a rumour that the song had been written by Rod McKuen. Warner speculates that racism, sexism, and classism were all factors at work here: “What was a young, Indigenous protest singer doing penning a pop standard and breaking through, at least partly, into the mainstream?” So Elvis' subsequent cover of the song could have been construed as an extension of the attempts at appropriation, especially given the attempts by Elvis' management (Parker and his loathsome crew) to bully Sainte-Marie into giving them a cut on her publishing. Sainte-Marie resisted the many attempts to bully her into handing over her publishing, which occurred not only when Elvis recorded the song, but when he sang it in live performance. But both Sainte-Marie and Andrea Warner give a favourable view of Elvis and his version of the song, distinguishing Elvis the artist from the reprehensible way in which he was managed and exploited, (and the way that this involved the exploitation of others). Warner writes:
“The song was shot into another stratosphere of recognition thanks to Elvis Presley. By 1971, Presley had already mounted one comeback and a lengthy Las Vegas residency was moving into a new phase of his career.” By coincidence, Sainte-Marie was in Nashville recording her album Moonshot, released in 1972, with musician and producer Norbert Putnam, an integral part of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and bass player in Elvis' band. He was working with Elvis at this time (hear Elvis call out his name during the blues jam “Merry Christmas Baby” in 1971). Sainte-Marie was at the time recording an Elvis classic from 1956, Arthur Crudup's great blues “My Baby Left Me.” It turns out that Buffy Sainte-Marie had been an Elvis fanatic in her youth. “I memorized all of Elvis Presley's first few albums, and I loved that song,” she says. “We finished the take and the phone rang and it was one of Elvis's associates ...” Said associate told her that Elvis had just recorded “Until It's Time for You To Go.” “By this time I was pretty much over Elvis; he was singing mostly formula stuff.” Even so, Buffy could barely conceal her glee at the news: “It was Elvis Presley, come on!” She laughs at the memory, and scowls at what Elvis' management had done to all that he had represented: “Don't think of Tom Parker Elvis; think of Elvis before that horror got hold of him. When I was thirteen, Elvis was fresh. He was young. He was healthy and beautiful, and he was sexy and a natural musician. He was everything. He was just everything.”
There's no expression of love that's more pure or more intense than first love, comments Andrea Warner as she notes the way that that early devotion still stirred up a giddy, amazed feeling for Buffy. “It was just a total surprise.” But this was no longer an Elvis who was “everything.” He'd achieved fame and fortune on a scale that exceeded the wildest of dreams and most extravagant of ambitions, but he had lost something, in fact he had lost a lot, along the way. He was no longer young and fresh, and he was no longer so natural – he was showbiz, a performer, compromised by his own identity. “Elvis had already gone into a different style,” Sainte-Marie says. “He no longer had that young rebel thing going for him. And the army and church – you know, he was a pretty conservative guy. But when he recorded 'Until It's Time for You To Go,' it was just amazing. It was as if Santa Claus had said yes to coming to your birthday party.”
That's a touching tribute from the great folk artist. I like the way that Buffy finds it possible to still praise Elvis whilst recognizing that he and her had clearly parted company and gone into different worlds. It's sad to have to sully that tribute by having to record that those working in Elvis' management then attempted to persuade Buffy to hand over some of her publishing rights to them. Here's the thinking: Elvis being a major recording artist, a writer will earn more money by having Elvis recording one of their songs, so it is fair that Elvis (his exploitative management) have a cut. That reasoning was put in place at the very beginning in 1956. But it was now 1971, and the age of singers and bands writing their own material, and keeping their publishing, was long underway. It was an exploitative strategy that was simply out of time. Elvis also wanted to record Dolly Parton's “I Will Always Love You,” but Dolly likewise refused to hand over a cut of her publishing. Good on her! Years later, she earned a fortune as writer through Whitney Houston's multi-million selling version. We have to remember here the abomination of the Elvis publishing deal – not only did a writer have to give over a cut of the publishing on the Elvis recording, but also on all subsequent recordings. That approach lost Elvis connection with quality songwriters and left him endlessly short of good material. It was artistic suicide born of monetary greed. And still people wonder went to an early grave, a creatively frustrated and desperately disappointed man.
“It's not right for the lawyers to come along and ask for a cut of a song that they had nothing to do with. Elvis hadn't written it .. So it was a very easy decision. I said 'No, I can't do that, too bad.' So I let it go and figured, well, he's not going to record it.”
I like this from Buffy, and had Elvis had his own personal “yes” and “no,” a set of standards he was prepared to stand up for and stand by, regardless of what his manager Tom Parker called “business,” then he would have been healthier, happier, more fulfilled as a person and an artist, and I'll venture to say a whole lot wealthier too.
But all was not lost. Publishing be damned, Elvis clearly loved the song so much he not only decided to record it, “he recorded it at least nine times, including live versions, and put it in movies. It quickly became one of his signature songs” (Andrea Warner).
I don't quite remember Elvis' version getting quite this recognition. Maybe at the time of his divorce (1972, finalized in 1973). I can honestly say that I had never heard the song until 1977 on the “Hits of the Seventies” album. Among the big, brash sounds of that album – which I loved - “Until It's Time For You To Go” stood out for being so low-key and so sad. Elvis' version pulled at the heart strings from the first time I heard it, and I always returned to it after indulging myself thoroughly with the pomp and circumstance of the other numbers on that album.
“Despite Presley's obvious affection for her song, the two artists never met, though she says she would have loved to. 'But I'm sure we would not have become friends,' she says with a laugh. The sad thing about Elvis is that the man was without prejudice and was a generous spirit, but was a clear sociopath who made few friends. That made it easier for his manager Tom Parker to isolate him from outside influences who could have steered him away from the exploitative approach to his music. I would have liked Elvis and Buffy Sainte-Marie to have become friends, drawing out that side of Elvis that the outside world seldom saw, but which was implicit in the mix of his music (Steve Binder was concerned to make that implicit statement in the '68 Special). But there it is. I find it sad. And I think there are reasons why Elvis always sounded so lost and haunted, from the very first with 1954's “Blue Moon,” when he was indeed young and fresh, a natural talent, and naturally sad.
Sainte-Marie concludes on a sage note:
“The way I look at it now is, you can't kill a good song. That's one of the beautiful things about music.”
We found out that it is perfectly possible to kill a good singer. But you can't kill the memory of that singer when he or she records a good song. Elvis Presley was a good singer. In fact, he was a very good singer. And he was at his best on “Until It's Time For You To Go,” a very good song indeed.
Buffy's friend Randy Bachman (of “The Guess Who” and “Bachman-Turner Overdrive”) is impressed by her versatility as a songwriter. “When your songs get recorded by Elvis and Bobby Darin, really big heavyweight dudes, that is an absolute testament to how great your songwriting is,” Bachman declares. “She's very much like The Beatles or the Rolling Stones or like Neil Young, and I try to be like that too, but her next song or record is not at all like any previous ones. There's a changing songwriting format, even though the themes are usually peace, love, and rebellion against the evils in the world.”
I'm all for rebellion against the evils in the world and for the reign of peace and love, and I'll stand by those ideals.
And Elvis? He's long gone. But he did leave us with memories of songs like this:
“We’ll make a space in the lives that we had planned
And here we’ll stay until it’s time for you to go."