Elvis Presley: Pot Luck

ELVIS PRESLEY: POT LUCK (1962)

1) Kiss Me Quick; 2) Just For Old Time Sake; 3) Gonna Get Back Home Somehow; 4) (Such An) Easy Question; 5) Steppinʼ Out Of Line; 6) Iʼm Yours; 7) Something Blue; 8) Suspicion; 9) I Feel That Iʼve Known You Forever; 10) Night Rider; 11) Fountain Of Love; 12) Thatʼs Someone You Never Forget.

General verdict: Some really bright pop moments, interspersed with schlock as usual but still enough to make this LP into a relative highlight of Elvisʼ Nashville era.

ʽPot luckʼ: «a situation in which one must take a chance that whatever is available will prove to be good or acceptable». Whoever thought of this title for Elvisʼ third proper LP in the 1960s must have been a pretty acidic fellow, because at this point in the Kingʼs career, your chances of falling upon a minor pop gem or a boring piece of derivative schlock were split around, Iʼd say, 30-70 or something like that. Fortunately, despite the half-ironic, half-cringeworthy title, Pot Luck With Elvis was actually an improvement over Something For Everybody, let alone the increasingly corny soundtracks — and not just because his team had the good sense to abandon the «ballads on one side, pop-rockers on the other» principle, but also because they seem to have briefly forgotten the much more troubling «good stuff for singles, bad stuff for LPs» principle.

More precisely, Pot Luck happens to be dominated by the Doc Pomus / Mort Shuman creative duo (4 songs out of 12, with another one co-written by Doc with Alan Jeffreys), and with these guys in charge, you can be sure that not everything will consist of inferior retreads of older classics. Admittedly, even some of these songs are not entirely original: for instance, the bridge section of ʽGotta Get Back Home Somehowʼ sounds way too close to the bridge section of ʽHis Latest Flameʼ — but the main body of the song is closer to a grand-style country-western reimagining of ʽI Feel Badʼ, with martial drums and saxophones really kicking it up. ʽNight Riderʼ, whose main melody is a sax-driven variation on ʽWhatʼd I Sayʼ, is also a minor highlight, letting Elvis combine old school hip-gyrating magic with an insinuating drawn-out invocation fit for some jazz-pop diva like Peggy Lee.

Best of the bunch are two songs that were inexcusably passed over as singles until two years later, when Terry Staffordʼs own version of ʽSuspicionʼ began climbing the charts and the Elvis team belatedly understood what a chance theyʼd nearly missed. ʽSuspicionʼ is a classic of the early R&B genre, melodically similar to the likes of ʽStand By Meʼ but really gambling it all away on the tempo-shifting hook in the chorus — that closing "suspicion... why torture me?" bit with the downward-sliding bass line that plumps you back into the verse melody is one of this albumʼs two tastiest hooks. The second one, of course, being the triumphant upward climb and smooth landing of the chorus to ʽKiss Me Quickʼ, which, based on structural similarities, can be defined as an attempt to remake ʽItʼs Now Or Neverʼ in a more playful, less sentimental manner — same rhythm, same arpeggiated guitar, but a completely different resulting feel, and totally free of accusations of Nashville boys stealing the Italian manʼs music this time. Delightful.

The presence of all these good-to-excellent numbers on the record is enough to redeem its many continuing and predictable flaws — such as the presence of ʽJust For Old Time Sakeʼ, a bland and boring shadow of ʽAre You Lonesome Tonightʼ; ʽIʼm Yoursʼ, whose sugarized country waltzing is such a far cry from the tasteful musical understatements of ʽBlue Moonʼ, long gone by; and ʽFountain Of Loveʼ, a corny, generic Mexican-style serenade which only lacks a sombrero and a bad Spanish accent to be complete.

However, the difference between corny and touching is often very, very subtle, and while most of the ballads on this record are easily dismissable, one should definitely not miss a hint at real human feeling in the albumʼs closing number, ʽThatʼs Someone You Never Forgetʼ — even the songwriting credits here should be enough to raise some eyebrows, being split between Elvis himself and his bodyguard, Red West (one of the three that would be fired in 1976 for trying to shield the man from drug abuse). Allegedly dedicated to the memory of Elvisʼ mother, it is a quiet, echoey acoustic ballad whose vocal inflections are totally different from Elvisʼ common style at the time — listen to that voice almost thinning out and breaking up in the middle of each line, creating the impression of tearless crying without any show-off-ey over-emoting; clearly, this is the mark of a very special occasion, and the song might have, perhaps, been even more effective without its backing vocals and angelic chimes.

Interestingly, the concurrent single at the time was ʽSheʼs Not Youʼ, another Doc Pomus song (allegedly co-written with Leiber and Stoller) which is not at all superior to either ʽKiss Me Quickʼ or ʽSuspicionʼ — in fact, itʼs a fairly simplistic piece of slowed-down country-boogie with nowhere near the hook potential of those other two songs. Somehow, quality control was slipping in this respect, too, though the song still dutifully climbed up to #5 on the charts. Still, better this way for all of us LP fans — it is absolutely no fun, I tell you, to waste time on albums that are intentionally comprised of nothing but filler. At least this time around, we do have ourselves a bit of actual pot luck.