Elvis Blog Archives — April 2009
Entry #56: Posted April 2, 2009 Through the past several years, as I’ve scanned through thousands of 1950s newspaper archives, I’ve gotten used to reading some pretty brutal comments about Elvis in various articles and columns. However, it’s still shocks me when I find a journalist who suggested parents use physical violence to deal with their teenage children who liked Elvis during those early years. For instance, I recently came across Herb Rau’s column in the Miami Daily News edition of August 4, 1956. The writer had attended one of Elvis’s shows at Miami’s Olympia Theatre the day before. Rau, who, from his photo at the top of his column, appeared to be in his fifties, blasted Elvis from the top of his column to the bottom. Here’s just a sample of his vitriol directed toward Presley and his fans. “Elvis can’t sing, can’t play the guitar, and can’t dance. Yet two thousand idiots per show yelp every time he opens his mouth, plucks a guitar string, or shakes his pelvis like any striptease babe in town.” Actually, when you consider the legendary career Elvis subsequently built, such comments directed at him at the start of his career are now quite amusing to read. They reveal just how out of touch these aging journalists were at the time. However, though I could smile at Rau’s comments above, I could only shake my head when I got to the end of his column and read his recommendation to parents whose children enjoyed Elvis’s show in Miami. “We’re no prude,” he self-righteously declared, “but we might suggest a gift for these fourteen thousand Miami girls who, as if it were a fetish, are vocally and mentally genuflecting to Elvis Presley. Now, we all know that corporal punishment of children, both in the home and in schools, was widely accepted in the 1950s. Still, as a father of two daughters who have already passed through their teen years, the mere thought of a parent slapping a teenage daughter over something as trivial as a difference in musical taste makes me cringe. Rau wasn’t the only who advocated such adult overreaction to Elvis in the 1950s. Following are several other examples of journalists who suggested physical remedies against young Elvis fans in the 1950s. The first example is actually not from a journalist, but rather from a parent whose letter-to-the-editor was printed in the Houston Chronicle on October 8, 1956, just five days before Elvis appeared at the Houston Coliseum. Mrs. N.J. Aubin wrote the following: “I can’t keep still any longer. It’s the raving teen-agers themselves, who will sound the death-knell for Elvis. They, with their antics, make people sick, so the people lash out at Elvis. If I had a daughter who said everybody was stupid who didn’t like Elvis, I’d take her to the woodshed. When I got through she would understand other people have a right to their opinion, also.” We all know what happened in the “woodshed” back then. Comments like Mrs. Aubin’s reveal the real danger adults saw in Elvis’s growing popularity with teenagers. He was a threat to parents who desperately sought to make their children conform to the strict, conservative values of the post-war era in the U.S. Speaking of the proverbial “woodshed,” another, more brutal, call for parental reaction against their Elvis-loving daughters appeared in the Vancouver Sun on August 31, 1957. The Sun had sent reporter Mac Reynolds to view Elvis’s show in Spokane, Washington, the previous evening, and Vancouver, B.C., Presley fans woke up on the morning of Elvis’s appearance in their town to see the following headline on the front page of the Sun: “Daughter Wants to See Elvis?—‘Kick Her in the Teeth!’” “It is a frightening thing for a man to watch his women debase themselves,” Reynolds wrote of the young girls who “screamed, and quivered, and shut their eyes and reached out their hands to him as for salvation” at Memorial Stadium in Spokane. “It’s hardly original,” he pronounced, “but if any daughter of mine broke out of the woodshed tonight to see Elvis Presley in Empire Stadium, I’d kick her teeth in.” Apparently, Reynolds’ violent suggestion to Vancouver parents had little effect. A crowd of about 16,500 showed up at the stadium that evening. It was the second largest crowd to see Elvis perform in the 1950s, topped only by the crowd at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in October 1956. Another example of journalistic physical ire against Elvis appeared in Paul Coates’ “Confidential File” column in the Los Angeles Mirror News on October 31, 1957. That was just three days after Elvis’s appearance at the Pan Pacific Auditorium, after which Mirror drama critic Dick Williams accused Elvis of committing lewd acts on stage with a statue of Nipper, the RCA dog. Coates admitted he hadn’t seen Elvis’s show that night, but he still felt the need to weigh in on the issue. Instead of suggesting what parents should do to children who like Elvis, Coates explained what he would do to Elvis himself. “Let me admit at the outset that I don’t like Elvis Presley,” he wrote. “He’s the kind of a child that other children are traditionally ‘not allowed to play with.’ He’s a sullen, ill-kempt-looking youth. If he was my kid (and I was a helluva lot better shape than I am), I’d smack that sneer off his face and send him out for a haircut. In all, I consider him a very distasteful individual.” Of course, Elvis was almost 23 at the time, and I doubt that even in 1957 many fathers would seriously have considered slapping a son of that age, especially one like Elvis, who had demonstrated an inclination to start throwing punches when angered. As distasteful as they are to read, journalists’ comments such as those above make we wonder what kind of father Elvis would have been to his own daughter, had he lived to see her teenage years. It’s known that Lisa Marie put her mother through the ringer during her adolescence. Perhaps Elvis’s love could have helped ease his daughter’s passage through that troubled period. We’ll never know for sure. Still, I can’t imagine Elvis would ever have struck his daughter, as dictatorial journalists like Rau, Reynolds, and Coates suggested parents do to their Elvis-adoring daughters in the 1950s. — Alan Hanson
Entry #57: Posted April 9, 2009 “I’m sure of one thing. He will build no more fires in L.A.” So concluded Los Angeles Mirror News Entertainment Editor Dick Williams a month after Elvis Presley’s two-night stand at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in 1957. After Elvis’s first show on October 28, during which he rolled across with stage with a plaster statue of Nipper, the RCA dog, Williams called Elvis a “sexhibitionist” in his column and labeled Presley’s act a “corruption of the innocent on a scale such as I have never witnessed before.” The column caused the L.A. police to film Elvis’s act the next night, and the rock ’n’ roller tamed down his stage antics as a result. I tell the complete story of Elvis’s 1957 Los Angeles shows in my book, Elvis ’57: The Final Fifties Tours. To Elvis the uproar was just another episode in his controversial career, but long after he had left town, Williams continued in his column to savor the notoriety he received for running the vulgar Presley out of town forever, as he obviously believed he had done. And events conspired for many years to make it appear Williams was right. Elvis was in the Army within months after his October 1957 appearance in Los Angeles. Coming out two years later, he embarked on a film career throughout the 1960s. Many years would pass before Elvis would bring his stage show back to L.A. When Elvis made his Los Angeles “comeback” with two shows on November 14, 1970, many things had changed since his legendary appearances there 13 years earlier. The venue was different. With a capacity of 9,000, the Pan Pacific was then way undersized for Presley’s show. He instead appeared at the Los Angles Forum, where a total of 37,396 fans were on hand for his matinee and evening shows combined. That was over twice the total who saw his two shows in 1957. According to Variety’s review of the 1970 shows, the crowd “did not look very different from those who were his fans back in the beginning … Their dress had a few concessions to the new mod styles, but there were as many crewcut men in suits as there were long haired, funky hippies, but not many of either … The fact is that the crowd was not that old. There were as many teenagers as there were those in their late 30s and early 40s. They may be the ‘silent majority,’ but they screamed as loudly and shrilly as any Mick Jagger crowd when Presley came on.” Unlike during his 1957 L.A. shows, however, the screaming of the 1970 crowds did not overwhelm Presley’s voice. In the intervening years, technological advances had tremendously improved concert sound systems. In 1970 the speakers at the Forum drowned out the crowd instead of the other way around at the Pan Pacific in 1957. Although Elvis seemed as physically fit for the 1970 shows as he was in 1957, his stage attire reflected the flashiness of the later era. In 1957 he wore his gold lamé jacket over a black shirt and pants for his first show in L.A. and a conservative suit for his second one. Variety described Elvis’s sartorial splendor on the Forum stage in 1970: “Presley came on in a ice cream white jump suit with high-back collar, bell bottoms, gold embroidery, and cape wings with floor length fringes.” The tassels caused what might today be called a “wardrobe malfunction.” They kept getting tangled up with the microphone cord and Elvis’s guitar. “Damn fringes,” Elvis said, “seemed like a good idea at the time.” Of course, Elvis’s stage gyrations, which had earned him the ire of critics like Dick Williams back in ’57, had evolved over the years. “Presley does a lot of posing, wirling and wide-stanced dramatic posturing on stage,” noted Variety’s reviewer of Elvis’s act at the Forum. “He has studied karate, and he consciously employs the powerful striking stances, that are also the essence of Kabuki drama—thrusting out with his guitar like Torshiro Mufune in a samurai duel—The crowd loves it.” As for the music, there were obviously changes in the playlist from 1957 to 1970, but not that much, according to Variety. “He sang some newer songs, but not many. It was more of a retrospective of his career, and it is surprising how well Presley’s old songs and his delivery have stood the test of time. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is a great wailing blues and ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ still great rock, both of which would probably hit the charts if originally introduced today.” In 1957 Elvis’s vocal delivery in Los Angeles was ignored by critics, who thought it of little consequence compared to the danger posed by his stage gyrations. In 1970, however, Variety praised Presley’s mature voice. “At its best, it is better than ever—a deep, powerful and stirring welding of back bay Memphis blues and hillbilly … On contemporary ballads like “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” … with two back groups, the Imperials and Sweet Inspirations, both behind him with a soaring power and emotion, nobody can touch him.” While Variety’s review of Elvis’s 1970 “comeback” show in Los Angeles was generally positive, it did contain some criticism. All of it was compacted into the following paragraph at the end of the article. “Saturday night there was too much of a tendency to stay in the past musically and an old timer’s habit of reminiscing, of immodestly pointing out to the audience not once but several times that he had ‘outsold the Beatles, Tom Jones, all of them.’ It undermined the entire performance, defusing any explosive excitement he might have created. Presley is a young man, with an honest masculine power and virility that few other contemporary singers possess, but he has to concentrate on where it’s at, and now where he’s been.” In the end, though, Elvis’s return to Los Angeles on November 14, 1970, was every bit a triumphant one. This time no one in the press or community suggested that he never come back. In fact, he returned to the L.A. area for sold out concerts in 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1976. I wonder if Dick Williams was still around L.A. in the 1970s and if he still stood by his 1957 assertions that Elvis wouldn’t last and that he had done permanent damage to the moral fiber of impressionable young girls. — Alan Hanson
Entry #58: Posted April 16, 2009 For most of my 45 years as an Elvis Presley fan, I pretty much ignored his two-year army stint from 1958-1960. Since he didn’t perform in public or make any movies during that period, I really had no interest in what he was doing during that time, most of which he spent in Germany. He was “out of sight, out of mind” as far as I was concerned. However, a couple of years ago I read two books about Elvis’s army life: Private Presley by Andreas Schröer and Elvis the Soldier by Rex and Elisabeth Mansfield. Reading those two volumes gave me a greater respect for the importance of Elvis’s army experience. The Elvis who came out of the service in 1960 was quite different from the one who went in two years earlier. The changes he underwent, some good and some bad, had a profound effect on his personal and professional life during the 1960s. This week I’d like to speculate on how Elvis’s military experience might have played out differently. It is generally believed that Elvis willingly accepted his obligation to serve his country and that he wanted no favorable treatment if he were drafted. A closer look at his statements made at press conferences and to friends during 1956-57 reveal that he hoped to avoid the draft. (At an August 1956 press conference in St. Petersburg, Florida, Elvis said, “I’ll vote … for anyone who’ll stop the draft.”) When his draft notice finally came in December 1957, however, while disappointed, he nevertheless accepted it and went on to serve honorably. Another common misconception about Elvis’s military duty is that he worked in tanks. In fact, he was a jeep driver. In 1957, as Elvis’s chances of being drafted increased, questions arose about how the army would use Elvis. His stock answer was that, if drafted, he would accept any job the army assigned him. Behind the scenes, however, Colonel Parker was working to keep Elvis out of Special Services, the section to which drafted entertainers were usually assigned so that they could travel around and entertain military audiences. Parker concluded that it would be harmful to Presley’s post-army career if he were paraded around and forced to give essentially free concerts for two years. How the Colonel was able to convince the army to treat Elvis like any other common soldier is unknown. But once Elvis was inducted, the army could have assigned him to any work it wished. What if the brass had decided that Elvis would have best served the army in Special Services? They had to treat him like a celebrity anyway. In a November 5, 1958, Variety article headlined, “Elvis ‘Bigger Than the Generals Who Watch Over Him’,” a case was made for making Elvis an army entertainer. First, the article outlined the hassles the army experienced in dealing with a celebrity the stature of Elvis. In October 1958, when Private Presley arrived in Germany, the army tried to keep his embarkation low key. Still, photographers dominated the scene and a hundred German teenage girls jammed the train platform to get a look at Elvis as his military train left the station. In November, about 150 members of the international press—newsreel cameramen, news service reps, German newspaper reporters—packed into an army press conference at the Enlisted Men’s Club at Elvis’s assigned base. The event caused a backup along the main roads to the base, as the credentials of every press representative had to be checked at the gate. While Elvis was in Germany, his superiors were under orders from the Pentagon to limit his access to the press. This caused the German press, who generally treated Elvis well, to heap criticism on the army for its policy of alternately putting Elvis on display and then hiding him away, and for keeping him out of its entertainment division, where many less talented draftees were assigned. Perhaps the best case for the army to use Elvis’s entertainment ability appeared at the time in The American Weekend, a commercial newspaper aimed at the American military in Europe. It outlined why and how Elvis’s army stint could have been quite different than it was. “The Army is apparently torn between a desire to keep Elvis locked out of sight and a half-concealed wish that he had enlisted in the Navy or Air Force in the first place. Everywhere Elvis has gone, the Army has been forced to make battle plans well in advance to keep the peace. Presley is far bigger than his company commander, bigger than the generals who watch over him, and the sooner the Army gives in to this truth, the sooner the furor will die down and everybody can get back to work. “Put him in an entertainment outfit and fly him around Europe and let him bring pleasure to his fellow soldiers. Send him down to Lebanon and Turkey and to France and all those places where our troops are bored to death and hard up for entertainment. Let him sing before Europeans. He will make millions of friends for America. When the time comes to fight, Elvis will fight just as well as the soldier-typists, radio announcers, golf pros, club managers and sedan chauffeurs who are performing Army jobs in keeping with their previous training and experience.” What would have changed had Elvis spent his two years in the army entertaining fellow troops and European crowds? First of all, thousands of his European fans would now have the memory of seeing Elvis perform, something they never got during the rest of his life. Second, Elvis’s act would certainly have had to evolve during those two years. His gyrating stage show of 1956-57 wouldn’t have played well to military audiences. I suspect the gradual transition into the musical mainstream that began when Elvis left the army in 1960 would have started early if he had been an entertainer in the army. Third, as a military entertainer, Elvis would probably been allowed to record music during his army stint. The question is, then, would the army, Elvis, and his fans all have been better served had he been assigned the role of entertainer instead of jeep driver during his two years in the army? Certainly, elements of the press would have cried “favoritism” if that had happened. Still, I can’t help but feel that the entertainment world was deprived when Elvis Presley was hidden away by the army during those two years. I’ve always thought it was an incredible loss that Elvis, who was certainly the greatest entertainer on earth at the time, did not record a single song or perform in public during the entire year of 1959. — Alan Hanson
Entry #59: Posted April 23, 2009 In the politically polarized environment that is the United States these days, it’s quite common for well-known entertainers to make known their political views. Bruce Springsteen and The Dixie Chicks are two singing acts who occasionally step from the concert stage to the political soap box to voice their opinions. Was Elvis politically aware during his long run at the top of the entertainment industry? And, if so, was he concerned enough to voice his opinions in the public arena? Most Elvis fans probably agree that the answer to the second question is “no,” but let’s go back and take a closer look at his life and see if we can find an “activist Elvis” anywhere along the way. Of course, back in the 1950s, when Elvis first came on the scene, entertainers didn’t take strong stands on public issues like many do today. The specter of the McCarthy hearings, which led to some Hollywood figures being blackballed from the industry in the early fifties, may still have left some entertainers of Elvis’s era a bit fearful about criticizing the government. Some did speak out, though. One of them was actor Yul Brynner, who defended Elvis after the Los Angeles police filmed Presley’s show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium on September 29, 1957. An angry Brynner declared, “I hold no brief for Presley; I’ve never seen him. But when police are allowed to set up cameras and be judge, that’s an invasion of an artist’s rights and should be looked into mighty carefully by every artist and actors’ agency in our business.” Elvis not only made no statement of protest about the police cameras, he actually toned down his act because of their presence. As a young man then in the whirlwind of an exploding career, Elvis was simply too overwhelmed to keep up with the political events of the day. He was “In a World of His Own.” That was the headline over reporter Barton Hickman’s article in the Miami Herald on August 5, 1956. Hickman had attended Elvis’s Miami press conference the day before. The reporter came prepared with a series of questions to test the singer’s knowledge of current events. His conclusion: “Don’t think Elvis Presley is just putting on an act. He really is that ‘stupid’ about what’s going on in the world.” Here’s a sampling of Hickman’s questions and Elvis’s responses: Hickman: “What do you think of Egypt’s Premier Nasser grabbing the Suez Canal last week?” Elvis: “Suez? Man, you’re talking French to me now.” Hickman: “Do you think Stevenson is sure to be nominated at the upcoming Democratic National Convention?” Elvis: “Well … maybe. I keep pretty busy. I don’t hardly ever get a chance to read the newspapers anymore.” Hickman: “What do you think about the Stockholm-Andrea Doria sea disaster?” Elvis: “Well, all I heard was there was a boat wreck … ” Hickman: “Do you know which boat went down?” Elvis: “No sir.” A 12-year-old Elvis fan, Luther Voltz, was also at the press conference. “Golly, Presley doesn’t know anything about the news,” he said. “He doesn’t keep up on things. I just thought he was kind of dumb.” Of course, a disinterest in following national and world news reflects … well … disinterest, and not stupidity, as Luther and Hickman concluded. Elvis’s lack of awareness was common to many young adults in the late fifties. It wasn’t until the sixties that the Vietnam War made current events relevant to young people. That takes us to our next question: Where did Elvis stand on the Vietnam War? In 2007, when my book Elvis ’57: The Final Fifties Tours, was going through the pre-publication process, it underwent what the publisher called a “manuscript editorial evaluation.” A one point, the evaluator took issue with a statement I made in the book, namely that Elvis “changed not only music, but also the values of America’s youth for decades to come.” He wrote in the evaluation, “Many observers, by the way, will disagree with this, accusing Presley of being a fervent supporter of the Vietnam War.” Say what? I have been a Presley follower for 45 years and know of not a single public statement he ever made about the Vietnam War, either for or against it! Elvis may well have supported the war, but if so, he did it privately and certainly not in a “fervent” way. I say Elvis may have supported the Vietnam War because of statement in a letter he wrote to President Nixon in December 1970. Elvis wrote the rambling letter hoping to convince the president to issue him a Federal Agent’s badge, which had been denied him through normal channels. Early in the letter, Elvis wrote the following: “I talked to Vice-President Agnew in Palm Springs 3 weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. … ” “SDS” refers to the “Students for a Democratic Society,” who had organized on college campuses across the nation in opposition to the Vietnam War. So Elvis’s “concern” about SDS could be viewed as implied support for the war, U.S. involvement in which Nixon had recently escalated. On the other hand, Elvis may have just been stroking the president here, since … ya know … Elvis really wanted that badge! In fact, 18 months later, on June 9, 1972, Elvis was asked a question concerning the Vietnam War at the press conference preceding his famous Madison Square Garden concerts. Question: “You were in the Army and were drafted. What is your opinion of war protesters? And would you today refuse to be drafted?” Elvis: “Honey, I’d just soon to keep my own personal opinions about that to myself? Cause I’m just an entertainer and I’d rather not say.” I think it’s safe to say that were Elvis alive today, he wouldn’t be stopping his concerts to rant about the stimulus package or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a performer who changed the entertainment world. He had no illusions about or interest in changing the country’s political direction. Songs like “If I Can Dream” and “In the Ghetto” are classic Presley recordings. But the messages were not his; he didn’t write the lyrics. As an entertainer, he was arguably the best ever. Any attempt to diminish his legacy because he didn’t speak out against war and other social concerns is useless an unfair. — Alan Hanson
Entry #60: Posted April 30, 2009 The other day I was cruising around in my minivan listening to Elvis music on my iPod, as I often do. When “Teddy Bear” started playing, I turned the volume way up and started to beat along with the rhythm on the steering wheel. When I stopped at a red light, I could see the people in the vehicle next to mine glance over in amusement. For some reason, the episode started me thinking about how technology has changed the way I’ve listened to Elvis’s music over the years. It’s not just the obvious changes in format, from vinyl records to cassette tapes to compact disks to iPods. Certainly, all of those advances have affected the sound of Elvis’s recordings. On the positive side, each new format has provided an opportunity to improve the clarity and depth of Elvis’s recorded music. Technological advances, however, often have negative side effects. One is expense. Every one of those Elvis LPs I purchased had to be replaced with more expensive CDs, and I’ve had to purchase a second iPod to store my Elvis music after my first one died. And some Elvis fans are disappointed with the sound of some “digitally remastered” Elvis recordings on CD. They seem to have lost the hard edge sound that we became used to hearing on the original vinyl issues. But it’s not just the sound of Elvis’s music and how I listen to it that have changed through the years. Technology has affected which Elvis songs I listen to. Starting when I first became an Elvis fan in 1963, I purchased nearly every one of his LP releases from then on. During the sixties, vinyl was the only available format (disregarding such fads as reel-to-reel tapes and 8-tracks). In those days, when I put an Elvis album on the record player, I had to listen to every track on the LP. That meant that if I played the “Speedway” soundtrack album because I wanted to hear “Let Yourself Go” and “Your Time Hasn’t Come Yet, Baby,” I also had to listen to such clunkers as “He’s Your Uncle Not Your Dad” and Nancy Sinatra singing “Your Groovy Self.” Then, in the early seventies, cassette tapes became widely available. For the first time it became possible to transfer individual Elvis recordings from vinyl to a cassette tape and create collections of favorite Presley tunes. I remember going through all my Elvis soundtrack LPs and recording the good tunes on one cassette, so I never again would have to listen to the nonsense songs that made up the bulk of the material on those albums. Of course, digital recordings and personal computers have taken us a giant step forward. Using programs like “iTunes,” we can create playlists, which allow us to add, delete, and sort Elvis songs, and then play them on a hand held device. And that brings me back to cruising around in my minivan listening to wall-to-wall Elvis music. Back in the fifties and early sixties, if you wanted to hear an Elvis song in your car, you had to turn the radio on and wait for the disk jockey to play a Presley tune. So how has all this affected which Elvis songs I listen to in 2009? Well, for starters, there are hundreds of Elvis tunes that I used to listen to often but that I never listen to anymore. There’re the ones I decided not to put on my iPod. There are still hundreds of other Elvis songs that are on my iPod, however. These I’ve arranged into playlists, which I listen to according to mood. For instance, as I write this I have my “Elvis 60s Ballads” list playing in the background. When I’m in my car, I like to listen to my “Elvis 50s Mix” playlist. Some of the Elvis playlists I have on my iPod include “Elvis 60s Mix,” “Elvis 70s Mix,” “Elvis Gospel Music,” “Elvis Rhythm Songs,” “Elvis Vegas,” and “My Elvis Favorites.” Like most long-time Elvis fans, I suppose, the list of songs that qualify as “My Elvis Favorites” has changed somewhat over the years. Through my 46 years as an Elvis fan, I’ve found that some Elvis recordings that I used to love, I no longer find as appealing as I once did, and some others, that I initially didn’t like, I now enjoy listening to more often. My current “Elvis Favorites” playlist contains the following 15 songs. Of course, this list is subject to change according to my whims and will certainly differ from that of every other Elvis fan. There are five songs from the fifties included in my current Elvis favorites list. They include “Don’t Be Cruel,” my first favorite Elvis song when I was a kid, and “All Shook Up,” the simplicity and beat of which make it, in my opinion, one of the best rock ’n’ roll recordings ever made. Other fifties recordings on my list are “Teddy Bear,” “A Fool Such As I,” and “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.” I can still remember the first time I heard that last tune. I still love its rhythm, Elvis’s sedate delivery, and Scotty’s classy guitar work. Seven of my 15 favorite Elvis tunes are from the 1960s. They include “The Girl of My Best Friend” and “Such a Night” from the “Elvis Is Back” LP. “Starting Today” and “They Remind Me to Much of You” are my favorites among the many beautiful ballads he recorded during the decade. “Follow That Dream” and “His Latest Flame” are the two early sixties rhythm numbers that I never tire of listening to. Finally, “Who Am I?” is my favorite Elvis gospel recording from the sixties. The seventies is my least favorite Elvis era, and so only three of his recordings from that period are among my top 15 Elvis tunes. Two of them are Chuck Berry rockers, “Promised Land” and “Johnny B. Goode.” Finally, I never tire of listening to Elvis’s mournful delivery of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain.” So, it’s the versatility, vitality, and beauty of the voice on display in those 15 recordings that remind me of why I’ve continued to listen to Elvis Presley’s music for nearly five decades. — Alan Hanson Go to Elvis Blog Archives 2009
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