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.
Blue Moon of Kentucky is one of my favorite songs of all-time. Only Elvis could manage to sound so cool and tough one second, and so heartbroken and fragile the next. I had days when I listened to the song on an endless loop, Brian Wilson style.
ReplyDeleteDo you think the Sun Sessions is the best music of the '50s?
ReplyDeleteWell, AMONG the best music of the '50s, for sure. We certainly have to protect Elvis from revisionists, but that doesn't mean Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or Jerry Lee Lewis shouldn't get their fair share as well. Besides, "best music" (overall) is a little exaggerated when we still have the entire jazz, blues, and R&B scene of the decade to consider.
DeleteRevisionists, grrrrr. Even the normally reliable Malcolm Gladwell got into it recently, claiming that Elvis just stole Otis Blackwell's sound (!). I can't tell whether that specificity is better or worse than saying he stole all of black music. Anyway, thanks for being a corrective.
DeleteOtis Blackwell is an odd case because the demos he recorded for elvis and others were all just voice and piano. Later after elvis started covering his songs he started singing his demos in an "elvis-style" knowing elvis would be listening to them. Only in 1978 did blackwell release a full band album of himself singing his own songs but by this point the backing band was copying the arrangements created by elvis's band.
DeleteAll of which to say it's undeniable that blackwell's songwriting contributed to elvis's success but nearly impossible that elvis copied blackwell's "sound." (as an aside this isn't the first time I've seen gladwell sounding off on issues he knows nothing about)
I mean, what did he do with black music? Does Lisa Marie own it all now?
ReplyDeleteGreat album
ReplyDelete