There’s a new one now, but the Letter to Elvis Presley From His Hound Dog and the Memo to the Sultans of Swing, From Their Booking Agent are both way better.
Tag Archives: Elvis Presley
Good to Kind of Be The King
Good to Kind of Be The King – Interview with a more creative Elvis impersonator.
Elvis in Concert
Elvis in Concert – includes photos, mp3s, and a jumpsuit index!
Elvis and Nixon: Crime Fighters!
In a truly fascinating online exhibit from the National Archives, the historic (and hilarious) meeting between Elvis and Nixon is documented with some surprising documents.
Here, a Nixon staffer suggests Elvis record a song “Get High on Life” and then recruit some of his rock and roll friends to write a musical of the same name to dissuade kids from dope.
Then, more shocking is the king’s claim that the Beatles were responsible for anti-American sentiment abroad!
How can anyone argue that Elvis was not high as hell when he wrote this?
Amazing…
Rock and Roll Can Never Die
Elvis means a lot of different things to a lot of people. To some zealous fans, he is a hero worthy of being impersonated. On the other hand, Public Enemy’s Chuck D considered him “straight up racist…simple and plain.” But before you motherfuck him and John Wayne, consider this: Elvis was just a kid who was moved by good music. Physically moved by it. He heard songs by Big Boy Crudup and by Bill Monroe and sang them with passion that shook up the world.
Elvis wasn’t the first honkey to imitate black musicians, not even close. Bill Haley beat him to it by several years, and let’s not even get into Stephen Foster and the weird, mean world of minstrelsy. Elvis wasn’t even the first to popularize the rebel attitude: Marlon Brando beat him to that punch in “The Wild One” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” But he mixed up country and western music with rhythm and blues, and he donned black men’s fashion with a respectful Southern drawl, and he shook those hips and snarled that lip and dabbed a dollop of Royal Crown hair dressing in his hair and pretty much defined “cool” for white guys from there on out.
He made a lot of bad decisions and allowed others to manipulate him, and he kept going on stage well after he should have stopped to take care of himself.
We’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about Elvis this week, leading up to today, the 25th anniversary of his death. And most of it is a bunch of crap, including this article. Just listen to his music. Bust out the Sun Sessions or the 1969 Memphis recordings and just listen. Rock and roll doesn’t get better than that.
Ozzy: That’s the Way It Wasn’t
You remember Winston Smith, don’t you? Sure, he’s the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984, but do you remember what he did for a living? He worked in the so-called “Ministry of Truth,” changing history by rewriting newspapers and books and any other media that needed updating to reflect the prevailing mindset of Oceana’s totalitarian regime.
Not unlike Ozzy and Elvis.
By now you’ve probably heard about the “reissue” of some of Ozzy Osbourne’s back catalog earlier this year. Problem is, they are not reissues at all. These new versions of the old albums have had the original Bob Daisley bass and Lee Kerslake drum tracks removed; the remastered songs now feature members of Ozzy’s current touring band. Apparently this was done because of ongoing legal disputes over royalties among these former bandmates.
Regardless of motive, this transgression of history is wrong, for reasons that shouldn’t need explaining.
As is what was done to the documentary, Elvis: That’s the Way It Is when it was re-edited and released on DVD about a year ago. While the Ozzy debacle is annoying and typical of the corporate entertainment industry, the new Elvis movie is even more disappointing because its ruination was carried out in the name of the fan. Yeah, you and me and every other music geek were catered to when they unearthed the extra thirty minutes of footage and remastered the sound to create this concert film. Only problem is, the original movie was a heck of a lot more than a concert.
That’s the Way It Is was a strange document of a strange time, something of a foil to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was a true documentary—of the entire process of putting post-Comeback Special Elvis Presley into the Las Vegas show scene, a fascinating idea for 1970, especially considering E’s only other appearance there, in the late-1950s, had bombed. (Remember too, this was long before a stint in the desert on the road to eternal life in Branson, Mo., was the natural washed-up pop star progression we think of now.) Sure, on outward appearances That’s the Way It Is was a concert flick, but there was a lot more to the goofy film and its oddball interviews with unnamed and frequently creepy fans and hangers-on. Most of this fell to the cutting room recycle bin for the digital release in favor of more concert footage, little of which adds much of anything to the film as a film. No, the new footage amounts to more rocks for the fan cum crackhead, while eliminating much of what worked in the original film—the reflections of Elvis in the eyes of all who beheld him. The effect leaves Elvis looking as two-dimensional as his postage stamp.
The most important legacy of my much-played VHS dub of That’s the Way It Is is that even the non-Elvis fanatics I’ve shown it to have come away with a better understanding of why this era of Elvis’ long and tumultuous career was perhaps his best. As the availability of the original version of the film wanes, as old videotapes get eaten by dirty players or thrown away after garage sales, this very real historical document will disappear. Sure, we’ll have many more copies of a fancy new DVD to replace it, but without the historical context of the original edit there will be little to learn from it.
Reissues, remastering, lost footage, unreleased tracks—they’re all worthy endeavors, but full-scale revision leads us down a dangerous path indeed. Remember Winston Smith?
The Short, Unhappy Life of Elvis Presley
Say I venerated Hemingway. Loved the man. Celebrated him. Honored him. Decided to grow a beard and mustache. Ate lots of food to gain plenty of weight to pack into hunting garb. Took to smiling like Teddy Roosevelt. Drank hard. Wrote short sentences. Or shorter. Became an over-all tough guy. Climbed Kilimanjaro. (Or at least a hill at a local park.) Kicked around Key West. Talked about Cuba back in the day. Generally became quite annoying. It could be done. Easily. And people would see me. And utter: “Asshole.”
Presumably, there are people who do all that. And there are probably people who do much more (e.g., have multiple divorces to keep up with Papa; watch Star 80 to view the offspring; etc.). But this isn’t about Hemingway. It is about Elvis.
“Elvis?” you wonder. “Did he know Hemingway?”
I don’t know the answer. He probably at least heard of the man. Maybe had to read a Nick Adams story in middle school.
But it is about Elvis in another sense. I looked at the official Elvis website. And wondered: “What the hell is that all about?”
Venerating Hemingway. Writing short sentences. Drinking from a flask. Knowing that the rich are different. Running with the bulls. All of this would be normal. That site. No.
I truly do love rock and roll
Okay, that’s it. I can no longer defend her. In a cleverly annotated transcript of a dial-an-interview with Britney Spears, Jim DeRogatis reveals that she doesn’t know where Elvis is from and doesn’t know who originally made “I Love Rock N’ Roll” famous. In case you’re wondering, the answers are Tupelo, Mississippi (although Memphis would be acceptable, and even preferred by some) and Joan fucking Jett and the fucking Blackhearts. I could’ve forgiven her thinking Elvis was from Las Vegas. Maybe she just misspoke, and who really cares anyway? I think it’s really cool that she’s dressed in a white bedazzled jumpsuit for her HBO special in Las Vegas. That’s fine. That’s clever. It’s cute. I like it.
But don’t fuck with Joan Jett.
If I were in charge, I would publicly execute anyone who thought that “I Love Rock N’ Roll” was a Pat Benatar song. I’m serious. That would be the Law, and the Law would be very strictly enforced. I might even make people answer that question before they could get their drivers license, vote, or open a bank account.
I realize that Ms. Jett did not write that song, but it’s her song as much as “Jailhouse Rock” or “Viva Las Vegas” belong to Elvis. And Pat Benatar sucks. If you’ve ever heard her cover of “Just Like Me” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, you know I’m 100% right about this. We’ve discussed this issue before, and it sickens me to have to acknowledge it myself. Oh Britney, my Britney, why hast thou forsaken me?
I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me
That’s all right
I don’t know how long this has been up, but Emusic.com has a great collection of Elvis photos from his 1954 Louisiana Hayride days. In my opinion, this is when Elvis looked his best. He’s so cool in these pictures, it hurts to look at them.
These were the days of the original Sun Sessions, when Elvis, Scotty and Bill — with a whole lotta help from Sam Phillips — were actually creating a whole new style of music, a combination of country and western with rhythm and blues that no one had heard before. Say what you want about Bill Haley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry — all great artists — but they didn’t come up with anything as new as our boy, Elvis.
Just listen to that very first single. “That’s All Right” is an obscure blues song by Big Boy Crudup, hopped up all hillbilly-style. The flip is “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” a famous Bill Monroe bluegrass hit, rocked out with no trace of bluegrass left in it. It’s not just a white boy trying to sing like a black guy. It’s way more than that. Al Jolsen tried to sing like a black guy. Bing Crosby did too. What Elvis did changed the world. And that’s the way it is.