Elvis Presley - "Fire"

This is probably one of my more frivolous exercises on this blog (and that's saying something) – determining a track list for an album that Elvis Presley might have released if he hadn’t died in 1977.

In January 1977, a recording session was scheduled in Nashville, but Elvis either didn’t show up or left soon after arriving and didn’t record any tracks. This left producer Felton Jarvis to scramble and forage for enough songs to fill out an LP. The result was Moody Blue. A few months ago, I made an attempt to do a better version of that album.

For this blog post, I looked at the six to seven tracks that had been expected to be recorded, and other songs that could have completed a follow-up to Moody Blue, which I'm titling Fire.

SIDE A

1. Fire Down Below

2. That’s What You Do to Me

3. Whatever’s Left

4. Let Me On

5. By Day By Day

SIDE B

1. Energy

2. Rainy Night in Georgia

3. Mustang Wine

4. Who’s Loving You

5. Miss Misunderstood

In 2007, a CD called A Cold Night in Nashville was released with six of the demo tracks that were expected to be rerecorded by Elvis. The songs included:

      ·   “Rainy Night in Georgia” – written by Tony Joe White and a big hit for Brook Benton in 1970.

      ·   “Energy” – written by Bob Morrison and recorded by Tommy Roe in 1976.

      ·   “By Day By Day” written and recorded by Dennis Linde in 1977, and a big hit for Tanya Tucker in 1979.

      ·   “Let Me On” – written by Layng Martine Jr. and recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis in 1980.

      ·   “That’s What You Do to Me” – written by Bob Morrison and a big hit by Charly McClain in 1978.

      ·   “Yes I Do” – written by Alan Rush, and if this has been recorded by anyone other than Rush for the demo, I haven’t found it.

Another song that was considered, but is not on the CD, was “Fire Down Below,” written by Elvis’ longtime bass player Jerry Scheff. Elvis’ TCB Band even recorded the backing track. Also, I’ve read on music blogs that “Miss Misunderstood,” written by David Bellamy and recorded by the Bellamy Brothers in 1979 was seriously considered.

A Cold Night in Nashville is apparently out of print, and copies go for more than I want to spend. I couldn’t find it as a download online, so without the track “Yes I Do,” I needed three more songs to create a 10-track album (almost all Elvis studio albums in the '70s had 10 tracks).

There’s a lot of speculation regarding what other songs Elvis might have considered, including tunes by Dolly Parton, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and even Bruce Springsteen. It’s all speculation, of course. Even if a song was on a list, it doesn’t mean Elvis would have recorded it. He had a long history of passing on tunes submitted to him.

A contribution from Mark James seems suspiciously absent from the list. James wrote Elvis’ hits “Suspicious Minds,” “Always on My Mind” “Raised on Rock” and “Moody Blue.” According to one account, a song James co-wrote titled “Disco Rider” was considered. But somehow I have difficulty believing Elvis would have recorded such a song (even if disco was king at the time). However, in 1978, James recorded a ballad he wrote titled “Who’s Loving You” and this seems much more up Elvis’ alley.

Another songwriter who regularly wrote tunes for Elvis was Jerry Chesnut. Two of his songs appeared on the 1976 album From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee. So, one of Chesnut’s songs would seem a likely candidate. His song “Whatever’s Left” was recorded by Faron Young in 1972 and Hank Thompson in 1974. It’s a country tune in waltz time and seems like something Elvis might have liked.

Finally, there is evidence that the song “Mustang Wine” written by a very young Steve Earle might have been in serious contention. In fact, it was included on Carl Perkins’ 1982 album Presenting Carl Perkins and produced by none other than Felton Jarvis. However, Elvis, a noted teetotaler, tended to shy away from songs about alcohol. While doing a search, I found that the only song Elvis recorded that mentioned alcohol (at least that I could find) was “Early Morning Rain,” so I don’t know if he would have recorded it. But in the end, I included it as well.

I've linked the songs above to other artists' performances of the songs so you can get a basic idea of how the album would have sounded. 

For a cover, I tried to create something that looked similar to past Elvis album covers and would look like it came out in 1978. Not really happy with it, but I got tired of fooling around in Photoshop and went with what I had.