Elvis Presley: A Date With Elvis

ELVIS PRESLEY: A DATE WITH ELVIS (1959)

1) Blue Moon Of Kentucky; 2) Young And Beautiful; 3) (Youʼre So Square) Baby I Donʼt Care; 4) Milkcow Blues Boogie; 5) Baby Letʼs Play House; 6) Good Rockinʼ Tonight; 7) Is It So Strange; 8) Weʼre Gonna Move; 9) I Want To Be Free; 10) I Forgot To Remember To Forget.

General verdict: Even more messy leftovers, but to have all that stuff from the original Sun sessions in the palm of your hand before the man «grew up» and pretty much renounced it — priceless.

If you really wanted to have a date with Elvis in mid-ʼ59, youʼd have to go to Germany and sneak inside a U.S. Army base. But if you were willing to settle for the next best thing, RCA Victor Records could placate you with even more stuff from the archives — five songs on this album go back to the Sun era, and five more are culled from various later sources. With this push, the Sun backlog was almost exhausted, but it cannot be said that they left the least for last: ʽBlue Moon Of Kentuckyʼ, ʽMilkcow Blues Boogieʼ, ʽBaby Letʼs Play Houseʼ and ʽGood Rockinʼ Tonightʼ are every bit as good as it gets with classic Elvis, and the only reason why I am leaving out ʽI Forgot To Remember To Forgetʼ is that it takes things more slowly and sentimentally, and is the kind of country-blues that could equally well be done by Carl Perkins.

The entire philosophy of rockʼnʼroll might just be condensed in that false opening of ʽMilkcow Blues Boogieʼ, which seems to amicably mock ye olde slow blues tradition — that "hold it fellas, that donʼt MOVE me, letʼs get real, real GONE for a change!" bit is just a wee bit slightly artificial recreation of the epochal moment that happened with ʽThatʼs Alright Mamaʼ, but not that much more artificial, really, than raising the flag on Iwo Jima: it all happened in a whirling flash more or less at the same time. Instead of moaning the blues, Elvis turns ʽMilkcow Blues Boogieʼ into the punkiest of all his early tunes — the level of aggression here would not be outdone until ʽHound Dogʼ — and sets the tone for countless cover versions to follow, from the Kinks to Aerosmith and beyond. Remember that itʼs really a murderous song, no flinching about it: "get out your little prayer book, get down on your knees and pray", "youʼre gonna be sorry you treated me this way" and the like are delivered by Elvis in exactly the same way theyʼd be delivered to Desdemona by a modern day Othello — and although he is inheriting rather than inventing that tradition, his gruff, lead-heavy vocal performance raises the stakes considerably, and the man clearly revels in this play with fire. This is the kind of material that makes it easy to understand the «danger» that American parents perceived in the young man — and you donʼt even have to watch any swiveling hips to understand it.

Same with ʽBaby Letʼs Play Houseʼ — let us not completely forget Arthur Gunterʼs fun-filled original, but with the increased tempo, the rumbling bass drive, and that hiccupy, echoey, I-want-it-now vocal performance, Elvis appropriates the song: not necessarily for white audiences, mind you, but, much more importantly, for young audiences, getting this stuff out in the open where it was formerly reserved for relatively reclusive and generally «mature» listeners. Heck, sometimes we tend to forget that before these Sun sessions, roughly speaking, music specifically targeted for the young did not even exist, much like childrenʼs literature did not exist before the likes of Lewis Carroll and Frank Baum; and much of that original magic, which literally blew the heads off millions of young people, can still be perceived in the reckless bass stomp of ʽBaby Letʼs Play Houseʼ, despite the antiquated sound, if you place it in its proper context.

In a similar way, Elvis took Wynonie Harrisʼ jump blues standard ʽGood Rockinʼ Tonightʼ, sped it up, took out the «respectable» saxophone arrangement, replaced it with stinging-scorching Scotty Moore guitar licks, and turned it from a nightclub standard into a school ball anthem, omitting all of the songʼs dated lyrical references to imaginary characters like Sweet Lorraine and adding the "weʼre gonna rock, weʼre gonna rock" bridge for emphasis. And that Scotty Moore solo, by the way, is one of my personal favourites: unlike many others, which Moore probably just made up on the spot from a (sometimes genially, sometimes not) randomized selection of stock country licks, this one is pre-meditated, simple, geometrically exquisite, perfectly shaped and making great use of microtones, a classic example of emotionally charged sonic greatness made with very limited means — in some ways, still unsurpassed to this very day.

Again, next to these early Sun classics all that later RCA material pales a bit, especially because they went heavy on the doo-wop ballads. Also, I have already discussed some of it above, since several of the songs were carried over from the Jailhouse Rock EP. Therefore, I would once again like to use this opportunity to mention the last couple of singles released during Elvisʼ army stint, stemming from the same 1958 Nashville session. Of these, ʽI Need Your Love Tonightʼ is a fun, catchy, hard-driving pop tune, but the real kicker, and one of my favourite Elvis recordings of all time, is ʽA Big Hunk Oʼ Loveʼ, notable not only for its ultra-tightness and humor, but also for giving a great chance to Floyd Cramer and Hank Garland, two major architects of the classic Nashville sound, to shine respectively on piano and lead guitar. (I was all but devastated when I originally learned that it was not our man Scotty to play the guitar here, but give Hank plenty of credit for deceiving me by incorporating some of Scottyʼs guitar-whipping aesthetics into his own style here for consistency). With this song, «Fiftiesʼ Elvis» goes out on the highest note possible, every bit as true to his image and original aesthetics as the last Beatles songs would be for the Beatles — «Sixtiesʼ Elvis» would be a significantly, if not completely, different animal that one is free to endorse or decline, but definitely not free to compare to the original beast who single­handedly did more for the empowerment of young people than the entire teen-pop scene of the past fifty years; and no, that is not an exaggeration.