Return Of The King

Gillian G. Gaar

Description

Return Of The King tells the story of a tumultuous period in the life of Elvis Presley. By 1967, The King Of Rock’n’Roll was all but washed-up, thanks to a string of bland movie roles and lackluster records. But within a year he had roused himself, loosened the creative shackles imposed by his grasping manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, and reconnected with the rock audience through a riveting TV special. There followed a glorious but all too brief artistic flowering, in which he made some of his most enduring records, including ‘Suspicious Minds’ and ‘In The Ghetto.’

This meticulously researched and elegantly written book, based on a string of new interviews with colleagues, friends, fans, and observers of The King, sheds new light on the events of Elvis’s great comeback.

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Technique musicale
• Techniques musicales
• Individual Composer
• Musician
• Music

Informations

• Publié par: Jawbone Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781906002961
• Langue: English

Extrait

Return Of The King
Elvis Presley’s Great Comeback
Gillian G. Gaar
A Genuine Jawbone Book
First Edition 2010
Published in the UK and the USA by
Jawbone Press
2a Union Court,
20–22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP,
England
www.jawbonepress.com
ISBN: 978-1-908279-13-2
Editor: John Morrish
Volume copyright © 2010 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Gillian G. Gaar. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.
The photographs used in this book came from the following sources. Jacket: NBCU Photobank/Rex Features. Horse: Magma Agency/Wire Images. Live A Little : Alan Band/Keystone/Getty Images. Elvis TV special stills: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, except opening section: SNAP/Rex Features. Charro and Change Of Habit : GAB Archive/Getty Images. International exterior: Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Getty Images. International press conference (3): Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. International live: Archive Photos/Getty Images. That's The Way It Is : RB/Getty Images. Sammy Davis Jr. and Richard Nixon: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. Nixon note: Thomas S. England/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.

Contents
Copyright Page
Prologue: Follow That Dream
Chapter 1: Wild In The Country
Chapter 2: Let Yourself Go
Chapter 3: A Little Less Conversation
Chapter 4: Good Rockin’ Tonight
Photo Section
Chapter 5: Promised Land
Chapter 6: Long, Lonely Highway
Chapter 7: Today, Tomorrow, And Forever
Endnotes
Live Performances
Discography
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About The Author



“Do you believe in the afterlife? Do you believe that there’s more life coming? I know generally the Southern way to think is that our personalities survive. That we continue on. You don’t take your money and you don’t take your fame, but who you are, the essence of who you are, lives on. If he believed that, maybe he’ll get another chance to do something else. He lived his life and died his death just like he wanted to. He traded a normal life for 42 years of being Elvis, and I think he kinda knew what he was doing. And I think he loved being Elvis. Wouldn’t you?”
Wayne Jackson (The Memphis Horns)



Prologue: Follow That Dream
In January 1 1967, a new contract went into effect between manager ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, and his sole client, Elvis Presley. Parker (whose honorary title was bestowed on him in 1948 by Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis) was already receiving a 25 per cent commission on Presley’s income from record and film deals; now, once the “basic payments” of those contracts had been satisfied, Parker would receive an additional 50 per cent cut of the royalties and profits, as well as 50 per cent on all side deals he could set up. It was an unashamed grab for a bigger piece of a profitable pie. But in truth, that pie had been steadily shrinking for some time.
Elvis’s rise in the entertainment industry had been unprecedented. After a year and a half as a local, then regional, sensation in the American South (recording for Memphis-based Sun Records), he’d signed with RCA Records, releasing his first single for the label, ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ in January 1956; by April, it had become his first million seller. Astounding success – and controversy – had followed, but Elvis’s career had been put on hold when he was drafted and entered the army on March 24 1958. He wasn’t completely forgotten during his two-year hitch – RCA continued issuing records, and King Creole , generally considered his best film, was released – but Elvis was understandably nervous about his career prospects when he was finally discharged from the service on March 5 1960. “When he came out of the army, he wasn’t really sure that the public was going to take him back full with their arms wide open,” says Gordon Stoker, a member of The Jordanaires, Elvis’s longtime backing vocalists. “He was very leery.”
But initially at least, all had gone well. Elvis’s first post-army single, ‘Stuck On You,’ had been another million seller, and a string of successful singles followed; the next year and a half saw the release of hits like ‘It’s Now Or Never,’ ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?,’ ‘(Marie’s The Name) His Latest Flame,’ and ‘Little Sister.’ But there had also been a gradual career shift from music to movies as the decade progressed. Elvis had been anxious to establish himself as an actor, and his four pre-army films had laid the groundwork for what could have been a highly successful career. “He was good in the beginning,” Julie Parrish, one of Elvis’s co-stars in Paradise, Hawaiian Style , observed. “I think that he could’ve been a major star – the James Dean or Marlon Brando type.”
He certainly exhibited the surliness – and the underlying vulnerability – of Dean and Brando in Jailhouse Rock and King Creole , the last two films he made before entering the service. But his first post-army film, the light comedy G.I. Blues , was a good deal more anodyne, casting Elvis as a soldier who bets his fellow GIs that he can ‘score’ with a nightclub dancer (played by Juliet Prowse). One scene features a limp re-recording of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’; in another, Elvis is stuck babysitting a squalling infant. Truly, the one-time rebel had been tamed.
But the film was a success, and the soundtrack not only topped the charts, it sold twice as well as Elvis’s first post-army album, Elvis Is Back , which was an excellent record that showcased both his versatility and his growing maturity as a vocalist. It was an ominous sign of the direction his career was about to take. Elvis’s next two films gave him more dramatic roles, with minimal singing involved. In Flaming Star , he played the mixed-race son of a white father and Native American mother in the old West, at a time when friction between the two races is escalating, though the film’s slow pace undercuts any sense of tension. Wild In The Country is a potboiler in the tradition of Peyton Place , with Elvis as a troubled young man trying to escape his small town environment, and romantic complications provided by a Good Girl (Millie Perkins), a Bad Girl (Tuesday Weld), and an Older Woman (Hope Lange).
Neither film did as well as G.I. Blues , and the success of Elvis’s next movie, 1961’s Blue Hawaii , his most successful film, set the template for the bulk of his cinematic career, its soundtrack staying at Number One for 20 weeks (all chart placings refer to the US charts, unless otherwise stated). His character is an ambitious young man, initially stymied in both his job prospects and his attempts to win the favors of his designated love interest – the kind of obstacles that are invariably overcome by the final reel. In Blue Hawaii his character’s profession – an aspiring travel agent – was atypically genteel; in the future, he would generally be given a more ‘manly’ occupation, such as a boxer, race car driver, or pilot, who, naturally if somewhat improbably, also sings. Best of all, to Parker’s way of thinking, the accompanying soundtracks provided the perfect cross-promotion; the films promoted the records, while the soundtracks promoted the films. By this logic, there was no need to release non-soundtrack recordings at all.
Unfortunately, it also put Elvis in a creative straitjacket. Though he’d been a movie fan since childhood, he was not especially enamored of musicals, tending to prefer action films or comedies (particularly the films of Peter Sellers, one of his favorite performers). Even on the set of Blue Hawaii , before the ‘Elvis movie formula’ had become formulaic, his unhappiness was obvious, as Anne Fulchino, an RCA publicist who’d first met Elvis when he signed to the label, recalled. “He was obviously uncomfortable with what he was doing, he was frustrated and disgusted – it was all in his face,” she said. “The emotion that I respected most was that he was ashamed of it, which meant that he knew better – but you could see that he was trapped.”
A major source of Elvis’s dissatisfaction came from the poor quality of many of the film songs. Though not a complete musical wasteland – ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love,’ from Blue Hawaii , became one of Elvis’s signature songs, and ‘Return To Sender,’ from Girls! Girls! Girls! was a solid pop hit – most of the film songs were decidedly lackluster, their inanity readily seen in their titles: ‘Song Of The Shrimp,’ ‘The Walls Have Ears,’ ‘(There’s) No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car,’ ‘Shake That Tambourine.’
“He hated most of the movie songs,” confirms Gordon Stoker. “He’d say, ‘What can you do with a piece of crap like this?’ Except he would talk a little plainer than that! And he’d be told, ‘Well, you’ve got to do it.’ And he always did the best job he could do.” Tellingly, 21 of the 22 songs on the bootleg Elvis’ Greatest Shit!! (released in 1980 on ‘Dog Vomit Records’) are film songs – “The Very Best Of The Very Worst,” as the album’s cover put it. Complicating the choice of material was that songwriters were expected to surrender part of their publishing to Hill & Range, the firm that administered Presley’s own publishing companies, Elvis Presley Music, and Gladys Music (named after Elvis’s mother, who died in 1958). It was not an uncommon demand, and in the 50s, when Elvis’s records were big sellers, songwriters were more willing to make such a deal. But the Presley name on a record no longer carried a guarantee of commercial success.
The back-to-back shooting schedule for the movies – generally three a year – also ended up curtailing his live appearances. When he’d