With Elvis Presley's birthday coming up this week, we dive into his 1960s output and see if we can bring some semblance of order to his messy discography.
There were a number of problems with
Elvis’ discography, especially beginning in the early to mid-1960s.
One issue was a reduction in the quality of the material. Elvis’ management had set
up publishing companies to bring in additional revenue, and most of the songs
Elvis recorded were from writers contracted to the companies. Also, much of the
material was written to coincide with (bad) movie scripts and was more focused
on a scene in a film rather than simply being a good song. Finally, there was
the sheer amount of songs (Elvis was making two to three movies with
soundtracks every year) being recorded that led to over-saturation.
In hindsight, all of these problems
could have been avoided with better direction and planning by Elvis, his
managers and RCA Records. Here, I look at the years 1964-68. These are the years
Elvis didn’t record any studio albums (except one gospel LP), only releasing soundtracks and singles. All told, RCA released 28 singles, 11 soundtrack albums, three soundtrack EPs and one gospel album during those five years. It was simply overload. And
if you can believe it, Elvis starred in 15 movies during those five years. Fifteen! I wanted to look at each of
these years to see what could have been released and what should have remained in
the vaults and on the screen.
1964
Three Elvis movies were released in
1964: Kissin’ Cousins, Viva Las Vegas and Roustabout. Viva Las Vegas, with co-star Ann-Margret, had the
strongest music of the three, but crazy enough is the only one that didn’t have
a soundtrack album. I rectified that here and would argue that that should
have been the only one of the three full soundtracks released. The other two films could have been
promoted with singles at the time, and then the best songs of both movies used
to make one album at the end of the year.
You can almost
always find some lost song on an Elvis album that you wonder why it wasn’t a
big hit. For me, “Catchin’ on Fast” could have been a really good pop song if
it had better production and had Elvis put more energy into his vocals (he
reportedly was fighting a cold during recording). I used this song for the album's title. Included in this collection
is “I’m a Roustabout,” a song written for the film, but not used and not even
released until 2003.
It should be noted that although the song “Do the Clam”
from Roustabout was released as a
single, it’s such a stupid song (and did so poorly on the charts) that I saw no
reason to include it for this album. Neither the covers for Roustabout nor Kissin' Cousins seemed a good fit for this collection, so I created a new one using a portrait of Elvis taken about 1964 and added titles and a record company logo.
SIDE A
1. Roustabout
2. Poison Ivy League
3. Little Egypt (Ying Yang)
4. There's a New Day on the Horizon
5. Hard Knocks
6. I'm a Roustabout
SIDE B
1. Kissin' Cousins
2. One Boy, Two Little Girls
3. Once is Enough
4. Anyone (Could Fall in Love with
You)
5. Catchin’ on Fast
6. Tender Feeling
1965
Elvis again had three films released
in 1965, but one of the films, Tickle Me,
used songs recorded much earlier (apparently in a money-saving move). For the
other two films, Girl Happy and Harum Scarum, we again create a
compilation of the “best” songs. The song “Hey Little Girl” would seem to be
the lost gem of this mix, until you see how the song is used in the film where
Elvis sings to a pre-teen girl and then it just seems creepy. For an album cover, I didn't think any of the song titles made a good album title. So I ended up using a fairly generic title, A New Day, and redid the Girl Happy cover.
SIDE A
1. Harem Holiday
2. Hey Little Girl
3. Golden Coins
4. So Close Yet So Far (from
Paradise)
5. Animal Instinct
6. Wisdom of the Ages
SIDE B
1. Girl Happy
2. Wolf Call
3. Do Not Disturb
4. The Meanest Girl in
Town
5. Puppet on a String
6. I've Got to Find My Baby
1966
In 1966, Elvis released yet again three movies (are you seeing a pattern?): Frankie and Johnny, Paradise, Hawaiian Style, and Spinout. It’s fairly obvious that Team Elvis hoped that Paradise, Hawaiian Style would duplicate the success of Blue Hawaii from five years earlier. Given the island/beach-themed material, it seems best to keep that soundtrack album as is (it was also the best-selling of the three).
That leaves us with the other two soundtracks to
make one decent album. The album kicks off with the rocking "Stop, Look and Listen," which seems to borrow heavily from Ray Charles' "What'd I Say." And I decided to use that song as the title of this album. Outside the U.S., the Spinout album (and movie) was called California Holiday (I guess "spinout" doesn't translate well). I considered using that title, but it didn't really do much for me (and this coming from a Californian). For the cover, I used the one for Spinout and changed the words.
SIDE A
1. Stop, Look and Listen
2. All That I Am
3. Never Say Yes
4. Am I Ready
5. Spinout
6. I'll be Back
SIDE B
1. Frankie and Johnny
2. What Every Woman Lives For
3. Down by the Riverside / When the
Saints Go Marchin' In
4. Shout It Out
5. Hard Luck
6. Please Don't Stop Loving Me
1967
The obligatory three Elvis films of
1967 were Easy Come, Easy Go, Double Trouble and Clambake. Elvis also released a gospel album titled How Great Thou Art. This album can stand
on its own, so I went about condensing the three soundtracks into one album. But even with two soundtrack albums and one EP, finding enough decent songs to fill this compilation wasn't easy. They were really scraping the barrel at this point. Plus they filled out the soundtracks with "bonus songs" that we used on the Guitar Man album (see below).
Since we're combining three albums into one, finding a good cover wasn't easy. I decided to use this publicity photo of Elvis (an alternate shot was used for the Clambake album cover), and came up with a new title: Night and Day, influenced by the song "City by Night"
SIDE A
1. Easy Come, Easy Go
2. You Gotta Stop
3. I'll Take Love
4. Double Trouble
5.
Baby, If You'll Give Me All of Your Love
6. Could I Fall in
Love
SIDE B
1. Long Legged Girl (With the Short Dress On)
2.
City by Night
3. There
Is So Much World to See
4.
A House That Has Everything
5.
Hey, Hey, Hey
6.
You Don't Know Me
7. The Girl I Never Loved
1968
In late 1967/early 1968 there
actually seems to have been an attempt to record a regular studio album for the
first time in five years. I tackled that here, calling it Guitar Man, and I still think it should have been released at the
time. Also, the soundtrack to Elvis’ TV comeback special came out in December
of 1968, and that too we should assume would still have been released. In between,
there were again three Elvis movies (Speedway,
Stay Away Joe and Live a Little, Love a Little) that we’ll
use to squeeze the best songs onto one album.
1967 and 1968 (before the comeback special)
were the worst years of Elvis’ career sales-wise. From 1956 through 1966, new
Elvis albums had always made it to at least the Top 20 of the charts. But
sales steadily deteriorated until the Speedway
soundtrack went no higher than 82. However, in my opinion, there are actually better song choices from 1968 than there were from the previous year, including "A Little Less Conversation" and the pseudo-psychedelic "Edge of Reality," which I used for the title of this album. I used a publicity photo to create a new cover and enhanced the color to make it a little bit "trippy."
SIDE A
1. A Little Less Conversation
2. Almost in Love
3. Stay Away
4. All I Needed was the Rain
5. Goin' Home
6. Edge of Reality
SIDE B
1. Speedway
2. There Ain't Nothing Like a Song
3. Your Time Hasn't Come Yet, Baby
4. Who Are You? (Who Am I?)
5. Let Yourself Go
6. Wonderful World
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So in the end, we’ve taken 10 soundtrack albums and three
soundtrack EPs and and condensed them down and produced five stronger soundtrack compilation albums, added a new soundtrack (Viva Las Vegas) and left one intact (Paradise, Hawaiian Style). We also leave two other albums intact (How Great Thou Art and Elvis NBC TV Special) and create one new LP, Guitar Man. And I would have severely curtailed the number of singles released as well. Had this plan been followed, Elvis' discography could have looked like this:
1964
- SINGLE: "It Hurts Me" / "Kissin' Cousins" (February)
- ALBUM: Viva Las Vegas (May)
- SINGLE: "Viva Las Vegas" / "What'd I Say" (May)
- ALBUM: Catchin' on Fast (November)
- SINGLE: "Little Egypt (Ying Yang)" / "Roustabout" (November)
1965
- SINGLE: "Puppet on a String" / "Girl Happy" (March)
- SINGLE: "Crying in the Chapel" / "I Believe in the Man in the Sky" (April)
- SINGLE: "Hey Little Girl" / "Harem Holiday" (October)
- ALBUM: A New Day (November)
1966
- SINGLE: "Frankie and Johnny" / "Hard Luck" (March)
- ALBUM: Paradise, Hawaiian Style (June)
- SINGLE: "Love Letters" / "Come What May" (June)
- SINGLE: "All That I Am" / "Spinout" (September)
- ALBUM: Stop, Look and Listen (October)
- SINGLE: "If Everyday Was Like Christmas" / "How Would You Like to Be" (December)
1967
- ALBUM: How Great Thou Art (February)
- SINGLE: "You Gotta Stop" / "Easy Come, Easy Go" (March)
- SINGLE: "Long Legged Girl" / That's Someone You Never Forget" (May)
- ALBUM: Night and Day (October)
- SINGLE: "You Don't Know Me" / "Clambake" (October)
1968
- SINGLE: "Guitar Man" / "Hi Heeled Sneakers" (January)
- ALBUM: Guitar Man (February)
- SINGLE: "Let Yourself Go" / "Speedway" (May)
- SINGLE: "A Little Less Conversation" / "Edge of Reality" (September)
- ALBUM: Edge of Reality (October)
- SINGLE: "If I Can Dream" / "Almost in Love" (December)
- ALBUM: Elvis (NBC TV Special) (December)
Would
this have given Elvis’ career a more positive trajectory? Well, this exercise would do nothing to change the movies. But it certainly would have made his discography simpler and easier to follow and allowed better focus on the best musical material Elvis produced during this period.
