I want everyone to know what I can really do
~Elvis Presley (to producer Bob Finkel)Elvis delivered an incredible performance throughout the television special. His vocal performances were loose and gutsy…
~John Bush (allmusic.com)
Medley: Heartbreak Hotel / Hound Dog / All Shook Up:
Continue reading “November 22: Elvis Presley released Elvis (NBC TV Special) in 1968”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]When I first heard Elvis’ voice I just knew that I wasn’t going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock & roll religion as it exists in today’s form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.
I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky”. I thank God for Elvis.
– Bob Dylan (24 August 1987 – US magazine feature on Elvis’ death anniversary)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
‘I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.’
– Bob Dylan (1997)
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977). Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as “the King of Rock and Roll”, or simply, “the King”.
Bob Dylan and Elvis clearly love/loved the same kind of music, blues, rock’n roll, country and gospel.
Elvis has done a few Bob Dylan songs.
RCA’s Studio B, Nashville – May 25, 1966
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]Yeah, Elvis Presley. I liked Elvis Presley… Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That’s the one recording I treasure the most… It was called Tomorrow Is A Long Time. I wrote it but never recorded it.
-Bob Dylan (Rolling Stone Magazine interview – November 1969)[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Continue reading “Elvis sings Bob Dylan songs”
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_message message_box_color=”mulled_wine” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left”]We’re caught in a trap
I can’t walk out
Because I love you too much baby
–
Recorded between four and seven in the morning, during the landmark Memphis session that helped return the King to his throne, “Suspicious Minds” — the final Number One single of his lifetime — is Presley’s masterpiece: He sings so intensely through the fade-out that his band returns for another minute of the tear-stained chorus.
~rollingstone.com[/vc_message][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Together with “Mystery Train” this is my favourite Elvis song.
Suspicious Minds:
Continue reading “August 26: Elvis Presley Released “Suspicious Minds” in 1969″
“In the Ghetto” (originally titled “The Vicious Circle“) is a song written by Mac Davis and made famous by Elvis Presley, who had a major comeback hit with it in 1969. It was recorded January 20th 1969 and released in April the same year as a 45 rpm single with “Any Day Now” as the flip side.
It is a narrative of generational poverty: a boy is born to a mother who already has more children than she can feed in the ghetto of Chicago. The boy grows up hungry, steals and fights, purchases a gun and steals a car, attempts to run, but is shot and killed just as his own child is born. The song implies that the newborn will meet the same fate, continuing the cycle of poverty and violence. The feeling of an inescapable circle is created by the structure of the song, with its simple, stark phrasing; by the repetition of the phrase “in the ghetto” as the close of every fourth line; and finally by the repetition of the first verse’s “and his mama cries” just before the beginning and as the close of the last verse. Continue reading “January 20: Elvis Presley recorded In The Ghetto in 1969”
The widely accepted Elvis narrative is that the Vegas period was the nadir of his career, but this film argues that Elvis reached his peak both as a singer and performer in the first few years of his Vegas period. He became, in those short years, the greatest performer on earth. The film tracks this five-year renaissance with some of his key musical and artistic collaborators of the period, including the creator of his most memorable jumpsuits, to celebrate the greatest pop reinvention of all time. (BBC) Continue reading “BBC documentary: Elvis the Rebirth of the King (2017)”
Recorded when Presley was 25, fresh off a two-year military stint and musically fit to burst, Elvis Is Back! might be the King’s greatest noncompilation LP: wildly varied material, revelatory singing, impeccable stereo sound.
~Will Hermes (rollingstone.com)
Continue reading “April 8: Elvis Presley released Elvis is Back! in 1960”