Searching for Elvis Presley in the Movies

Finding the gold in Elvis' early-sixties soundtrack recordings

Hello once again music lovers!

Since the last time I was in touch, there’s been an explosion in new subscribers here, mostly thanks to the very kind writers here on Substack who recommend my publication to their readers. The network effect of Substack’s recommendation engine remains powerful, both in terms of helping to build my subscriber base and, even more importantly through my recommendations, helping to build the subscriber base of many of the amazing music scribes that call Substack home.

If you’re new here, you’ve come at the right time for below is the kind of criticism and writing I particularly enjoy doing: going deep on music that often does not get the in-depth treatment.

It’s fair to say that the music that Elvis Presley recorded for his movies in the sixties is one of the main reasons his legacy remains uneven and tainted by the compromises he made during his career. That being said, his movie music from the early sixties, a real golden era for Elvis in my opinion, contains a lot of gems as well as recordings that come off way better than they have any right to be. The below essay is a counterpoint to a piece I wrote in the early days of my Substack (read it here) on Elvis’ recordings in Nashville from 1960 to 1964. I hope you enjoy it (if you’re not into Elvis, not to worry, I have upcoming essays this month for the jazz fans here as well as those who dig albums with a heavy Laura Nyro vibe) and will let me know your thoughts by dropping a comment.

Until next time I’m in touch, may good listening be with you all!

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Searching for Elvis Presley in the Movies
By: Robert C. Gilbert

If streaming numbers are anything to go by, the most popular recording by Elvis Presley is ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’ On Spotify alone, it has been played over a billion times. The song, written by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and George David Weiss and based on an older melody, as were several other of Elvis’ most popular records; in this case, Jean-Paul-Égide Martini’s ‘Plaisir d’Amour,’ is a definitive example of how his music had evolved after he returned to the States in March 1960 following a stint in the United States Army.

This change did not result simply from the recognition that rock and roll had been slowly usurped by tamer, often-sugary pop while Elvis was in the employ of Uncle Sam. It was primarily his attempt to combine all the elements of the potent cross-section of American music for which had a deep feel and fuse them into a cohesive whole.

The first three albums he recorded in RCA’s Studio B in Nashville in the sixties: Elvis is Back!, His Hand in Mine and Something for Everybody reveal how Elvis Presley embraced becoming an Elvis for everyone. He was as mesmerizing singing ‘Fever’ with minimal accompaniment as he was digging into every moment of ‘Such a Night’ powered by the best of Music City’s A Team. He could make time stand still when in the spotlight. He could just as easily recede into the background and sing gospel harmony as an auxiliary member of the Jordanaires. In other words, he could do it all.

These records not only sounded good (they were engineered in full stereo by studio whiz Bill Porter). They were, by any measure, good, if not great, recordings, making Elvis the ideal Nashville Sound artist, his versatility equaled by the versatility of those backing him, treating each musician and vocalist not as filigree but intrinsic to creating recordings that throbbed with a weighty, wide sound. The prettiness and polish that defined the recordings made in Nashville at that time became, when it was an Elvis session, an unstoppable force.

That descriptor also describes the sound of Elvis in the fifties, whether it was with Scotty Moore and Bill Black on something like ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ or with D.J. Fontana and the Jordanaires added on something like ‘Too Much’ or the runaway train of ‘A Big Hunk o’ Love.’

That was recorded on June 10, 1958, Elvis’ only session while he was in the Army. It is, to these ears, the singer’s finest session. In addition to ‘A Big Hunk o’ Love,’ he recorded ‘I Need Your Love Tonight,’ ‘I Got Stung,’ ‘(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such As I’ and ‘Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby.’ All are classics, burnished with intensity and with vocals by Elvis of swaggering ease and command that signified he had taken rock and roll to the absolute limit and that his growth would lie outside of it.

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The June 1958 record date is important in another respect. It marked the first time Elvis had recorded in the studio with three of the A Team’s elite: drummer Buddy Harman, bassist Bob Moore and guitarist Hank Garland. They, along with pianist Floyd Cramer, tenor saxophonist Boots Randolph, the Jordanaires plus, on occasion, Millie Kirkham, Scotty Moore and Fontana, and after Garland was involved in a serious car crash that ended his meteoric rise as Nashville’s premier axe man, guitarists Grady Martin, Jerry Kennedy and Harold Bradley, defined the Elvis Presley sound of the early sixties.

Actually, it was one side of his sound. ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ was part of the other side. Though Garland, Scotty Moore, Bob Moore, Cramer, Randolph and the Jordanaires were all on the session for it, though not every one appears on that recording, it was taped in Hollywood. Its intention was to advance a plot point in a movie. Its destiny was to propel the movie in which it appeared, Blue Hawaii, to box-office success and its soundtrack album to the top of the charts for months. The desire to replicate these triumphs soon took on such a ravenous desire that it hijacked Elvis’ career and, for a time at least, seem destined to doom him to permanent irrelevancy.

Of course, the desire to become not just an actor but an accomplished one was Elvis’. The twisting of that wish for profit was one of the many sins of Colonel Tom Parker but also a result of Elvis’ acquiescence to his manager, partly out of insecurity and partly out of the need to support family, staffers, friends and, let’s face it, sycophants. It is emblematic, certainly, of the compromises that led to Elvis’ uneven legacy. And I suppose that the spectre of his movies and the soundtrack albums that eventually became the focus of his recorded output in the sixties continue to cast a pall over this era of his career. It may explain why his non-soundtrack recordings in Nashville during that time continue to languish in neglect, passed over each year by Sony Music for another repackaging of his music from the Sun era or from between 1969 to 1976.

‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ would have fit well on Pot Luck with Elvis, his fourth and final collection of Nashville sides from the early sixties, its nods to the land of Aloha notwithstanding. In a sense, Blue Hawaii the soundtrack album was in the spirit of the thematic travelogue LPs about Hawaii that were all the rage in 1961. It’s a mix of standards: the title track, ‘Aloha Oe’ and ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song,’ specially written material for the movie about the state like ‘Hawaiian Sunset’ and other, let’s say, more tertiary material.

Three of the latter are ‘Rock-a-Hula Baby,’ ‘Slicin’ Sand’ and ‘Beach Boy Blues.’ None of them could be mistaken for sophisticated songs. The lyrics are simple and in the case of ‘Beach Boy Blues,’ quite frankly cringeworthy. And yet they have a spark. It is lit undoubtedly by Hank Garland’s presence and the sharp attack of his guitar. The sting of his lines also add to the antic energy of ‘Slicin’ Sand’ and, especially, ‘Rock-a-Hula Baby.’

It was the last song recorded before Elvis and crew headed to Hawaii for a benefit show two days later for the U.S.S. Arizona—the last time Elvis would perform live until the summer of 1969—and then, for Elvis, several weeks of filming on location for Blue Hawaii.

As the session tape begins, engineer Thorne Nogar slates the first take. Elvis protests, “no, don’t roll it” and then someone else says, “no one knows it yet.” Regardless, everyone decides to give ‘Rock-a-Hula Baby’ a go. On the first completed take, the third, everything feels like it could fall apart at any moment. As the band—11 men strong including three guitarists, three drummers/percussionists, two ukulele players and a steel guitarist—moves from the second chorus to Garland’s solo where he is answered by both the Jordanaires and Alvino Rey’s steel guitar, Elvis hollers a whoop. Garland weaves in and out of the cacophony, playing lines that aren’t really rock or jazz for that matter (Garland was a master at both) but suited to the almost polished, dare I say, punk of the take which ends with a strip-tease flourish. The master, the fifth take, is restrained by comparison.

No one would dare exalt ‘Rock-a-Hula Baby’ as an essential Elvis recording (well, maybe I would!), but the third take, with its sheer rambunctiousness, says a lot about his movie music in the early sixties. Even as songs like this diverted him away from being the consummate singer, there is no denying that the recording is fun, it’s well-made and everyone is engaged, even if it may be despite the material.

It is also charming, painting in sound the idea of Hawaii as escape, a place to let one’s hair down, a paradise where taste doesn’t necessarily have to be king and the nagging knowledge of where all this was leading Elvis can be happily ignored.

When Rolling Stone pulled together a list of 50 Genuinely Horrible Albums by Brilliant Artists, a roll call of “the most historic flops” in LP form, it was inevitable that one of Elvis’ soundtrack albums would be selected. Andy Greene, the author of the list, didn’t disappoint, selecting 1963’s Fun in Acapulco to come in at number eight, noting that “it is very tough to find a low point of Presley’s recording career since there were so many of them but many Elvis aficionados point to this album, and with good reason.”

Quibbling with Rolling Stone’s dubious best-ofs and other listicles could very well be a full-time job but as counterpoint to Greene is Ernst Jorgensen, as knowledgeable of Elvis’ music as anyone, who characterized Fun in Acapulco in Elvis Presley: A Life in Music as “a triumph of sound and atmosphere.”

Indeed, it is. The use of Mariachi horns and the extravagant harmonies of the vocal group the Amigos add a unique flavour that, as Jorgensen notes, was not much different from the recordings that were quickly making Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass into household names. The hit off the album was ‘Bossa Nova Baby,’ written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and initially recorded by the Clovers, fusing these elements with the gloss of Elvis’ brand of rock at the time.

It is a good recording but more interesting are the sections of the album that more fully try to approximate a Spanish type of music. There is a hint of the heated bravado of seventies-era Elvis on ‘El Toro,’ a playfulness to ‘Mexico,’ ‘Vino, Dinero Y Amor’ and the title song, and a strangeness to the novelty song ‘The Bullfighter Was a Lady’ that works unnervingly well—be careful, the chorus is quite an earworm.

‘Marguerita’ and ‘I Think I’m Going to Like It Here,’ both written by Don Robertson (the latter with Hal Blair), are the kind of Elvis recordings that make listening to his soundtrack albums, especially those recorded from 1960 to 1963, like hunting for hidden treasure, almost subversively so. It’s a way of connecting the broad appeal of what he was doing in Nashville with the more obligatory work undertaken in Hollywood. It helped that the writers who were writing his best music outside of the movies were also writing for them.

The top scribes were Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. The second song they got on an Elvis record was ‘Doin’ the Best I Can’ for G.I. Blues, as languid if not as bluesy as ‘A Mess of Blues,’ their first recorded by the singer. It was also Pomus and Shuman who wrote the title track to Viva Las Vegas as well as the saloon number ‘I Need Somebody to Lean On’ for it.

Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott were ace writers too. Their ‘Return to Sender’ is by far their most well-known contribution to Elvis’ movie music; in this case, for Girls! Girls! Girls! Tucked at the end of that soundtrack album, lasting all of 80 seconds, was ‘We’re Coming in Loaded.’ Distinguished by an opening, descending line on tic-tac guitar that shifts into a tom-heavy rhythm and blues beat, the song has Elvis gliding through several verses about heading back from a fishing trip loaded with the catches of the day. That’s the literal meaning but it’s actually a variation on a guy bursting with dough on Saturday night and ready to ball. It has such an emphatic groove that one wishes Blackwell and Scott could have built it into a song rather than just the idea of one.

But then, the soundtrack albums often relied on these quickie songs—to be sure, not as much on the early sixties LPs than on those released later in the decade but enough to obscure the fully developed songs next to them such as the silly ‘Ito Eats’ devouring the pleasures of the quite frankly exquisite ‘Ku-U-I-Po’ on Blue Hawaii or the lullaby plot device of ‘Big Boots’ (though, to be fair, Elvis' vocal on it is quite majestic) coming after the Scotty Moore-led ‘Shoppin’ Around’ on G.I. Blues.

A more pointed example is the soundtrack to It Happened at the World’s Fair. It contains ten songs with only half over two minutes. The album goes by in all of 21 minutes. For all its surface slightness, there is substance to savour. Really!

Robertson contributed two ballads (his true forté in his writing for Elvis): the criminally brief ‘I’m Falling in Love Tonight’ and the torchy ‘They Remind Me Too Much of You.’ Blackwell and Scott added the jaunty hit ‘One Broken Heart for Sale’—also criminally short.

These are notable things about the recording but there is something even more interesting about it: a carefree air in its lead-guitar parts. They are jazzy and fluid, so much so that I had long assumed that Barney Kessel—by 1962, he was more focused on playing pop sessions than exclusively playing jazz—played them as he was on the session for Girls! Girls! Girls! and several other soundtrack dates to follow. Reacquainting myself with the album, I was surprised to find that Kessel wasn’t on the date. It was actually Billy Strange who supplied the tasteful playing.

While he is well known for co-writing several songs with Mac Davis for Elvis including ‘Memories’ and ‘A Little Less Conversation,’ his contribution to It Happened at the World’s Fair is forgotten. Strange’s elegant comping and obligatos inspire a lightness and a soar in Elvis’ phrasing, such as on the verses of ‘Beyond the Bend’ and throughout ‘A World of Our Own,’ that he rarely employed elsewhere. Even on a trifle like ‘Cotton Candy Land,’ another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it piece, the elasticity of Strange’s approach makes a deep impression as does Dudley Brooks’ electric-piano stabs on the slinky ‘Relax.’ It makes It Happened at the World’s Fair the most unique yet unknown album in Elvis’ catalogue.

To argue in favour of albums like it, to lightly encourage the skeptical to give them a listen, is admittedly motivated by bias. The music of Elvis Presley—especially what he made in the sixties—was the first music to move me, forming a connection that goes beyond any merits that I, as a critic here, can elucidate. But still, I think I can muster enough objectivity to select those recordings from the early-sixties movies that are worthy of re-consideration.

Kissin’ Cousins, released in 1964, and shot and recorded in the fall of 1963, is the great divide, the point from which the movies became the lone focus of Elvis’ career. The flick was produced by Sam Katzman, known for making pictures on the cheap that turned a profit—Kissin’ Cousins was shot in four weeks and made $3 million at the box office. The soundtrack was recorded in Nashville with Elvis having to overdub his vocals later as he had a cold during the tracking session. Soon, he would skip them out of disinterest, the material he had to sing often uninspired or silly or both.

In Peter Guralnick’s indispensable Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires related Elvis’ growing frustration: “Sometimes, he’d walk over to us and say, “Man, what do we do with a piece of shit like this?”, he said. Sometimes he’d back up so far from the microphone that they would say, “Elvis, you’ve just go to get closer to the mike”; they’d put a soundboard around him just to pick him up.”

For Kissin’ Cousins, the need for material specific to the milieu of the movie—in this case, a kind of mountain music—yielded lower returns than in the past save for ‘There’s Gold in the Mountains’ with its spritely riff doubled by Boots Randolph and Jerry Kennedy. The ballad ‘Tender Feeling’ has intriguing harmonic changes artfully navigated by Elvis and the title track has hooks to burn.

The soundtrack album was padded out, as was the one for Fun in Acapulco, with some of the material Elvis recorded over a two-day Nashville session in May 1963. Over the next three years, save for a brief three-song date at the beginning of 1964, everything he recorded would be for his movies. As the music world began to rapidly move ahead, Elvis Presley began to accelerate in reverse.

It gets much harder to find the gold in what Elvis recorded for pictures like Harum Scarum and Frankie and Johnny. They shouldn’t be ignored completely yet their existence only reiterates that at the start of the sixties, there was a way to, at the very least, balance Elvis the artist with Elvis the actor who also sang. There are enough instances where his movie music reaches a level of quality that if not exactly equal to his non-movie sides is close enough for comfort.

Some instances have already been mentioned, but how about the Randolph-dominated ‘King of the Whole Wide World’ from the soundtrack to 1962’s Kid Galahad, the last time any real care went into making an Elvis movie that wasn’t just a cycle of songs. Preceding it in the early sixties were three other movies that only lightly used music and, beyond a few novelties, stand as some of his most listenable sides from the era.

From Flaming Star, there are the moody title track and Elvis showing off his range on ‘Summer Kisses, Winter Tears.’ Follow That Dream also included a winner of a title track. It bursts with rhythm. Bruce Springsteen covered it. There’s also the strut of ‘What a Wonderful Life,’ the last, great give-and-take between Elvis and Garland. The lush ‘Angel’ with gorgeous harmonies by the Jordanaires and Millie Kirkham pouring it on sweetly, stands among his best ballads and has a wonderful resolution in the lyric.

Rising above it all is ‘Lonely Man,’ meant for Wild in the Country but cut from the picture. It’s the plaintive version of the song, written by Bennie Benjamin and Sol Marcus, with just Elvis and a guitar part by Tiny Timbrell that has gained the most renown. But to me, it is the full group version, first released as the flipside to the chart-topping ‘Surrender,’ a Pomus-Shuman number set to the melody of ‘Come Back to Sorrento,’ that hits far more deeply. Amid an evocative accordion part by Jimmie Haskell, soon to be well known as an ace arranger, and a part by the Jordanaires anchored around the classic bass voice of Ray Walker, Elvis sings with all the promise that his post-Army goal to be a singer of all trades held.

The lyrics play on the myth of the Western hero, the man who can taste belonging but no more of it than that. In a sense, they are a confessional of the isolation and loneliness that would cloak Elvis: “searchin’, always searchin’ / for something he can’t find / hoping, always hoping / that someday fate will be kind.”

‘Lonely Man’ is nowhere near as popular as ‘Can't Help Falling in Love’ but it may be a more authentic artefact of the years during which Elvis made some worthy music for the movies while he progressively lost his way doing them.