Flashback, June 1961: Elvis Flops on Film, Flies in Studio

As June 1961 moved towards its conclusion, Elvis Presley and manager “Colonel” Tom Parker tried to recover from a rare career misstep by the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Earlier in the month, the latest Elvis movie, Wild in the Country, had divided critics while leaving loyal fans in little to no doubt about its lack of value. 

Not only was it his only film to lose money during its initial release, but the title song, rushed out to boost its prospects, only peaked at #26 on the US Billboard Hot 100—hardly up to his lofty commercial standards.

It all turned around on a long session at RCA Studio B in Nashville. True Elvis fans might enjoy “Kiss Me Quick,” “That’s Someone You Never Forget,” and “I’m Yours,” but the two that scored solidly with the public were “(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame” and “Little Sister,” which were released as a double single.

Both tunes came from the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. The duo, who managed to get hold of his attention in 1959 by sending a demo for “A Mess of Blues” while still on his Army stint in Germany, went on to write 16 songs for The King. Amazingly, though, they never met the singer who turned their compositions into hits.

Elvis tweaked “Little Sister” slightly, cutting the tempo in half and slowing it down, according to Paul Simpson’s The Rough Guide to Elvis. By the third take, he liked the groove so much that he told his backup musicians to “burn” on the next take. 

That was the one that turned out to be a keeper, confirming Pomus’ hunch that, while Bobby Darin had decided it wasn’t for him, it would be the kind of nasty blues that Elvis did so well.

“His Latest Flame” proved a harder nut to crack. Elvis and his musicians were floundering in the studio, uncertain how to proceed. 

None of the attempts to start it on different instruments seemed to click, until someone called Pomus to see what he would play the piano portion. The songwriter was surprised to hear that his intro was three bars long rather than four.

From that realization sprang the eventual solution: a Latin flavor with a Bo Diddley beat. Tom Petty, asked by Rolling Stone Magazine for the Elvis tunes that most influenced him, described how this one came together from what originally had been “kind of a mess”:

“An acoustic guitar and a snare drum played with brushes carry the rhythm, but when the six-string bass comes in and the piano goes up to the high register, the whole thing jumps out of the speaker.”

I don’t have the technical knowledge to explain this process remotely as well as Petty did. All I know is that I never grow tired of hearing this, and it is easily among my half-dozen favorite songs by The King.

(Five of those musicians, by the way, were participating at the same time and in the same RCA studio in another recording session of a classic: Roy Orbison’s “Cryin’.” Talk about catching lightning in a bottle!)

Technically, Presley’s was a cover version of this Pomus-Shuman composition: Del Shannon had already released it as a single and cut from his debut album, Runaway With Del Shannon. 

But Presley’s interpretation is the one that, more likely than not, you’ll hear on your favorite oldies station, because once the “His Latest Flame/Little Sister” double single was released in August, it shot into the top 5 in the Billboard charts and all the way up to #1 in the UK.

The following year, Elvis lured his fans back to the movies with Blue Hawaii, another formulaic profit-maker that generated additional soundtrack sales. By now, he was tiring of plots that sidetracked him from his ambition to become another James Dean.

But he felt no such ambivalence about “His Latest Flame.” Even while making it, he noted, “It’s a good song. I like it even if it takes us 32 hours.” He had no reason to revise that opinion in the years to come.

Quote of the Day (Tom Petty, on Cowboys, Elvis and Guitars)

“I had always thought guitars were cool because of cowboys. Cowboys played guitars. And Elvis [Presley] played guitar, so I just thought, ‘Hell, I'm gonna need one of those.’ It wouldn't be until a few years later, I guess with the Beatles coming, [that] I really got serious about learning.”—American rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter Tom Petty (1950-2017), on what he thought when his parents got him his first guitar, quoted in Melinda Newman, “Tom Petty: A Portrait Of the Artist,” Billboard, December 3, 2005

Quote of the Day (Bob Dylan, on Elvis Presley’s Top Lip)

“wonder why elvis presley only smiles with his top lip? think about it kid, but dont ask your surgeon.”—American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, Tarantula (1971)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Honeymoon in Vegas,' in Tribute to The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll)

Roy (played by Burton Gilliam): “We're the Flying Elvises. Utah chapter.”— Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), written and directed by Andrew Bergman

Happy birthday to Elvis Presley, who would have been 80 today.

Some of my readers, however, are saying, “What do you  mean, ‘Would have been’?” They refuse to believe Elvis ever died.

It’s a little like those ancient Welsh, Cornish and Breton traditions that held that King Arthur never really perished—he was simply healing from wounds in battle against the villainous Mordred, safely carried off to the island of Avalon, waiting to lead his people again at the right moment.

Similarly, his more enthusiastic fans might claim that The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, knowing that nobody could ever really take his place,  has been taking his own sweet time before reclaiming his crown. For my money, however, Avalon strikes me as far more hospitable to royalty than the local Kmart,  Piggly Wiggly, or wherever Elvis has been sighted.

Whatever the case may be, everybody still wants to pay tribute to Elvis. The most affectionate homage I can think of came in the form of Honeymoon in Vegas, with the hilarious climax of skydiving Elvises from which today’s “Movie Quote of the Day” is derived.  I can’t imagine how the upcoming Broadway musical starring Tony Lanza could possibly top it.

But then again, who would have guessed that a poor boy from Mississippi would take the music world by storm and remake the cultural landscape, too?

Song Lyric of the Day (Marc Cohn, on the ‘Ghost of Elvis’)

“I saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue

Followed him up to the gates of Graceland

Then I watched him walk right through.”—Marc Cohn, “Walking in Memphis,” from his CD Marc Cohn (1991)

Today marks the 55^th birthday of Cleveland-born singer-songwriter Marc Cohn, whose Best New Artist Grammy win in 1991 derived in no small part from the smash hit "Walking in Memphis." He has never had such a powerful single since, but for those who’ve heard the song, it really doesn’t matter.

The song is about more than The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and his influence, whether alive or dead. It’s about the transcendent power of music to sustain, even transform, a human life when it needs it most.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Commitments,’ on Elvis)

Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr. (played by Robert Arkins): “Elvis is not soul.”

Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. (played by Colm Meaney): [defensively] “Elvis is God!”

Jimmy Jr.: “I never pictured God with a fat gut and corset singing ‘My Way’ at Caesar's Palace.”—The Commitments (1991), screenplay by Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, and Roddy Doyle, adapted from Doyle’s novel, directed by Alan Parker

The Commitments is, at least in my opinion, the funniest movie ever made about rock ‘n’ roll. Even in the film’s most incongruous, hilarious line—Jimmy Jr.’s exhortation to his fellow (white) Irish rockers, “Say it loud—I’m black and I’m proud”—it touches on how the genre exemplified by a country boy from the Deep South crossed a musical color line.

In Indianapolis, on this date in 1977, the man that Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr. identified as God—and that others, only slightly less reverently, termed “the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll”—played his last concert. Unfortunately, I have to admit, with the greatest reluctance, that by this point Elvis Presley was closer to the hideous image summoned by Jimmy Jr. His last song was, in fact, "My Way."

In August 1977, less than two months after the Indianapolis concert, Elvis--by this time, weighing more than 300 pounds--was found dead in his bathroom in his mansion, Graceland. In time, the public would learn just how much drugs had become a part of his daily existence.

The figure burlesqued by Jimmy Jr. would shortly become a worldwide symbol not just of the corruption of the body, but also of the corruption of the American Dream—a man who had achieved everything he could desire, only to expire in a gaudy mansion under the sorriest of circumstances.

Jimmy Sr. is having none of it. Neither did the American people two decades ago, when, given the choice by the U.S. Postal Service if they preferred the “young” or the “old” Elvis, chose the former.

John Lennon once said of the performer he got to meet, “Before Elvis there was nothing.” I don’t think he meant it literally any more than Ernest Hemingway believed literally what he wrote about Huckleberry Finn: “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." These two were simply testifying to the catalytic influences of two forebears.

The essence of Elvis is of the artist live. I wish there was more of him on YouTube in his early days rather than from the Seventies, but there’s a reasonable approximation: the songs from his 1968 “Comeback Special.”

Check out, for instance, the black leather-clad Elvis of “Heartbreak Hotel” from that landmark TV appearance: funny, loose, spontaneous, sexy. If you want to see someone where the musical DNA of The King runs the strongest, try Bruce Springsteen, especially in this performance of “Fire” fromYouTube. In inducting Bob Dylan into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, The Boss observed that Dylan "freed the mind the way Elvis freed the body." 

In "Fire," you can see the results of liberation of the body on an exultant audience.

Song Lyric of the Day (Elvis Presley, Pleading “Love Me Tender”)

“Love me tender,
Love me true,
All my dreams fulfilled.”—“Love Me Tender,” words and music credited to Vera Matson and Elvis Presley, actually written by Ken Darby, performed by Presley (1956)

Fifty-five years ago on this date, Elvis Presley's Love Me Tender premiered at New York’s Paramount Theater, where thousands of fans lined up to see the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in his first movie appearance. This was originally supposed to be a nonsinging role, but the film’s producers decided, given the King’s popularity, to add four songs.

Here was the moment when the mold was cast for Presley’s movie career. He wanted to be the next James Dean, and to that end had even seen Rebel Without a Cause 44 times.

But it was not to be. Hollywood, with its studio system entering decline, and the star’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, decided to play it safe. They were thrilled to death by the immediate results--the movie made back its costs within days--and ignored the long-term cost to The King.

Presley’s screen test for producer Hal Wallis was actually pretty good, and his co-stars, then and later, testified to his professionalism. Yet even Elvis--make that especially Elvis--understood what had happened on his introduction to Hollywood. “That first one almost finished me off in the business…They rushed me in the thing to get my name, you know, on the marquee. And the picture wasn’t all that good."

Before long, he was stuck in one formulaic movie after another. He invariably played a highly self-confident but not too brash guy, whose principal preoccupation was reflected in one Sixties film title: Girls! Girls! Girls! Critics guffawed about his lack of range (he could play everything from a singing motorcycle driver to a singing doctor, they joked).

If you’re like me, you gnash your teeth at the lack of foresight--the sheet stupidity--shown by Parker when he rejected an offer for his client to star in the 1961 film adaptation of the Bernstein-Sondheim Broadway musical, West Side Story.

One of my favorite DJs, Vin Scelsa of WFUV, has noted that West Side Story, though not the first rock ‘n’ roll musical, is the first musical with a rock ‘n’ roll attitude. It’s all about sex, danger, and the sense that everything is riding on this moment. Who better to play its male lead, Tony, than Presley himself? His early TV appearances had certainly threatened the adult establishment, but he also could play tender--and unlike the actor eventually cast in the role, Richard Beymer, his voice wouldn’t require dubbing. And unlike the bland Beymer, he radiated charisma.

Yet Parker, more comfortable with tame fare that reflected the films that he liked to see, rejected the offer out of hand. A juvenile delinquent was not the type of role his client would play, he announced.

Lost was not only the chance for Elvis to appear in that year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, but also redirect his career after his Army stint. We can only rue the squandered opportunity.

What we are left with is a title song seeking a film to match its greatness. It’s simple but enduring, as you might expect from a melody harking back to the Civil War ballad “Aura Lee.” Adding new lyrics was probably just another job for Ken Darby, who gave his wife partial credit on the tune.

Elvis got his only songwriting credit on the song, even though, as with virtually all his other songs, he had little if any involvement with composing it. It was all part of the price of dealing with The Colonel.

Still, I suppose you can say, borrowing a concept from film critics, that Elvis was the song’s auteur--adding a style so indelible that other artists could cover the song, but never hope to match his version.

By the way, you can read an informative and entertaining account of the creation and reception of the film and its song here, in a post from the "Elvis-History" blog.

Quote of the Day (John Wayne, on Ann-Margret)

“When I die, I want Ann-Margret to dance on my coffin. If you don't see me in five minutes, you'll know I'm dead for sure."—John Wayne, three weeks before his death, on former co-star Ann-Margret, quoted in Paul Rosenfield, “Ann-Margret A-Go-Go,” Vanity Fair, October 1991

In his characteristically gruff (if, in this case, ghoulish) way, The Duke voiced what many American males felt about Ann-Margret in her heyday in the 1960s and 1970s. Not surprising in Rosenfield’s article from nearly 20 years ago is one anonymous actress’ contention (denied by A-M) that she was the only woman to have slept with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and JFK. That has to be some kind of trifecta...

(Do you really need to be told that she’s with The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the image accompanying this post, from Viva Las Vegas? This YouTube clip makes us sorry not only that Elvis never had another female co-star to match his charisma onscreen--one reason why his films made a ton of money but little lasting impression--but that the two never made another film together.)

It comes as a shock, then, to realize that the former “Kitten With a Whip” (a title in her own series of mostly forgettable ‘60s films) turns 70 years old today.

But it’s equally a surprise to recall that she first burst upon the nation’s consciousness 50 years ago with an attention-getting performance at the Oscars and a supporting role as Bette Davis‘ innocent daughter in Frank Capra’s last film, Pocketful of Miracles…or that it was 40 years ago that she finally began to earn recognition as an actress, in Carnal Knowledge…or that I was in high school when she scored another Oscar nomination in Tommy.

Many people would be astonished to find out that this woman with the over-the-top screen persona is, in private life, a homebody, or that she’s so sensitive that her co-workers have always been deeply protective of her. (She, in turn, returns that loyalty, as seen in this portion of a 1994 interview by Charlie Rose in which she refuses to say anything that might detract from the memory of Elvis.)

That sensitivity informs what I think of as her best, and bravest, performance: her 1984 TV appearance as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. In this scene, she invests Blanche with emotional fragility over the loss of would-be savior Mitch--and the realization of her fading looks--along with mounting terror over menacing in-law Stanley.

This Day in Rock History (Sgt. Elvis Back in Studio)

March 20, 1960—A little more than a month after receiving his sergeant’s stripes and three weeks after completing military service, Elvis Presley entered a Nashville recording studio to reclaim his position atop popular music’s throne.

For Elvis Is Back!, his first LP after returning to civilian life, he wanted to show he could do more than just rock ‘n’ roll, that he had a voice versatile enough to match his widely varying tastes in genres. He wanted to prove, for a new generation that was already showing an alarmingly fickle interest in their musical heroes, that he had staying power.

Only to some extent, The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll succeeded.

The first single from the sessions at RCA Studio B, “Stuck on You,” was rushed out within 48 hours after he ambled in with buddies/backup musicians Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana. It debuted at #84 on the charts but, to the relief of Elvis and manager Col. Tom Parker, it didn’t stay there long, rising to #1 within three weeks.

I never heard “Stuck on You” until about 10 years ago, but I immediately loved it. With a comfortable groove and sly, insouciant lyrics (“Gonna run my fingers thru your long black hair/ Squeeze you tighter than a grizzly bear”), Presley could sing it in his sleep.

But that wasn’t necessarily the music that Elvis wanted to play anymore. And maybe that’s why he reportedly was not that high on the song (supposedly referring to it as “Stuck in You”).

A musician has to be careful about changing musical direction. Too jarring a shift and you get booed by your original audience (Dylan at Newport), or suffer such a catastrophic fall that you never really get over it (Phil Ochs, dressing in a gold lame jacket a la Elvis late in his career).

I remember that, about 20 years ago, Bruce Springsteen said he wanted to be a professional musician into his sixties. That kind of wish means that if you change with age, your audience will go along with you. Had his own appetites and demons—and Col. Parker’s deeply flawed career management--not interfered, Elvis might have been able to achieve something similar.

It certainly started that way with Elvis Is Back! It’s not a radical change in direction, but it showed all the styles in which he could excel: not just rock ‘n’ roll but blues (“Reconsider Baby”), R&B (“Such a Night”), doo-wop (“Soldier Boy”), pop (“The Girl of My Best Friend”), and a cover of “Fever” that, in its quietly incendiary way, makes you ask, “Peggy Who???”.

Elvis set the tone in these sessions, not just as singer but as producer. Chet Atkins, manager of operations for Nashville at RCA, rounded up the various musicians, and for awhile he tried to steer the proceedings.

But the latter task became hard when Elvis showed up an hour late for his 6 pm slot, then ordered out Krystal burgers, then loosened up with gospel music. Then, and only then—several hours later—were Elvis and the boys ready to get down to the task at hand. After manfully trying to match this pace, Atkins shortly gave up, bid the boys goodnight, and waited for the results the next day.

"Colonel" Parker had already scheduled Elvis while he was still in the armed forces for a high-profile TV appearance within a week of the studio engagement: on the variety show headlined by Frank Sinatra. The Chairman of the Board wasn’t the Rat Packer that Presley liked the best musically—that honor belonged to Dean Martin—and, given comments that Sinatra made about rock ‘n’ roll three years before (a “rancid aphrodisiac…sung played and written for the most part by cretinous goons”), you’d expect the matinee idols of two generations to approach each other warily.

But each man had something the other wanted, and so they approached the “Welcome Back, Elvis” edition of Sinatra’s ABC-TV series with a professionalism that grew into mutual respect and, eventually, cordiality.

Sinatra, anxious to succeed on TV, was willing to pay Elvis $125,000—a record amount for a performer up to that time for appearing on a variety show—plus the cost of tuxes for Elvis and his band.

For his part, Elvis wanted to prove he could perform more mature fare. Many believed he could never again achieved the roaring success he had before his induction. If he couldn't prove them wrong, he certainly wanted to generate significant momentum toward a long-term career.

Sinatra provided a role model for reinvention. At the beginning of the Fifties, he was considered a washed-up teenybopper idol. Yet, in a few short years, in what still ranks as one of the great show-business comebacks, he had reached undreamed-of (for him, anyway) levels of esteem as a serious actor—and had managed to turn what seemed like a liability at the time—coarsening voice chords—into an asset that allowed him to project different textures of world-weariness and jauntiness into the Great American Songbook.

From the perspective of today, Elvis’ work at this time—which also included “It’s Now or Never” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”—ranks as among his best in the Sixties. Unfortunately, the soundtracks for the dreck into which Col. Parker was steering him—interchangeable Elvis-music-and-chicks flicks—outsold this better stuff.

Elvis was now in a time not just of personal, but professional uncertainty. (He still was not over the death of his mother, which had occurred when he’d been inducted into the army—and many observers of the King think he never did get over it.) Just as Sinatra had been, to an extent, eclipsed by rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis would soon be overshadowed by the British Invasion.

Yet by decade's end he would prove, as Ol’ Blue Eyes did, that he had more big comeback in him.

This Day in Rock History (Birth of Elvis, The King)

January 8, 1935—The two-room house in Tupelo, Miss., where Elvis Presley was born was a far cry from his later mansion Graceland, but there was an element of “Heartbreak Hotel” in how he came into the world: His twin, Jesse Garon, was stillborn, leaving Elvis in later years to wonder how he came to survive—and how he could console his beloved mother for her lost child.

Let’s get this straight right now, okay? When it comes to music, there is only one king—the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis.

Pharmacological abuse and Lisa aside, Michael Jackson had nothing in common with the man who stunned a nation with his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. “The King of Pop” was a title self-administered and, therefore, illegitimate.

Just as there’s only one King, there’s only one Elvis (sorry, Mr. Costello—you can go back to being Declan McManus), even though you might have heard over the years about the “French Elvis” (the recently ailing Johnny Hallyday), the “Welsh Elvis” (Tom Jones, in his younger, pelvis-swinging days), and the “Jewish Elvis” (Neil Diamond).

(The Irish, with our creative, charming audacity, have done all these groups one better—or, at least, one female of Irish descent has. “Elvis could have been Irish, yes, he could,” wrote Mary Ellen Sweeney a couple of years ago on the blog BellaOnline. “With his blue-black hair and bedroom eyes, he could have passed for ‘Black Irish’ any day of the week.”)

(By the way, kudos to Bruce Springsteen for his appellation, “The Boss.” That nickname, be it noted, enjoys two advantages over Michael Jackson’s: a) it echoes the earlier title—pays tribute to it, even—but strikes out in another direction, as Springsteen did with his music; and b) it derived from other people—his E Street “Band of Brothers,” asking him in their younger days when they’d get paid—rather than his own hype.)

Look, I could repeat for you all kinds of facts about Elvis (his gold records, his sexual conquests, his clothing, his wonderful ’68 comeback special, his strange strange strange Oval Office meeting with Richard Nixon), but why bother? You should know this by now. If you don’t, ask yourself: what rock you’ve been living under all these years?

Instead, for a minute, I thought I’d consider a somewhat more obscure aspect of the Elvis legend: his appearance on U.S. postal stamps.

I was interested in stamps when I was a kid for about a year or so. I’m not sure why I didn't become a fanatical philatelist, because as hobbies go, this one is pretty benign. It doesn’t encourage dreams of being a master of the universe, the way that, say, numismatics does. You actually have a chance to learn a great deal about U.S. and world history, art and geography.

On this date 17 years ago, on what would have been his 58th birthday, a special ceremony was held in Graceland, marking the issuance of a 29-cent stamp honoring The King—the inaugural issue in its Legends of American Music series, which would later include the likes of Hank Williams, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong.

In an unusual move—an uncharacteristic stroke of vision, or at least marketing genius, anyway—the U.S. Postal Service asked the public to vote on which image they wanted: Elvis ca. 1956—a.k.a. “the young Elvis”—vs. Elvis in a 1970s, Vegas-style jumpsuit—the “old” Elvis.

Even Bill Clinton, a fan so avid that his Secret Service code name was Elvis, weighed in. I am not a fan of his Oval Office misbehavior, but I would be the last to gainsay the Man From Hope’s sense of public opinion. He—like myself—sided with the 75% of the vote that went for the young Elvis.

That image is okay, so far as it goes, showing Elvis with a tie and collar open, along with a yellow jacket.

But another Elvis image appeals to me more. I’m thinking of The King in a black leather jacket—the kind he wore on his Comeback Special (see the accompanying photo). Take a look at the image accompanying this post and see what I mean. Sleek, dangerous even, right?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Far more than Brando in The Wild One, this is the American Rebel, the one who turned the music business upside down in the Fifties.

John Lennon probably had the best way with words of any of the Beatles, and I think he summed up the seismic impact of the King better than anyone: “Before Elvis there was nothing.”