1) Fun In Acapulco; 2) Vino, Dinero Y Amor; 3)
Mexico; 4) El Toro; 5) Marguerita; 6) The Bullfighter Was A Lady; 7) (Thereʼs)
No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car; 8) I Think Iʼm Gonna Like It Here; 9) Bossa
Nova Baby; 10) You Canʼt Say No In Acapulco; 11) Guadalajara; 12) Love Me
Tonight; 13) Slowly But Surely.
General verdict: One excellent song, a couple nice moments,
and an ocean of bland quasi-Mexican clichés from Elvis "El Toro"
Presley, the Mariachi of Memphis.
With the Hawaiʼian subject explored to the very
bottom, it was time to plunge Elvis into another, as of yet largely untapped
pool of clichés and stereotypes — and so, welcome to Mexico, the land of mariachis,
bullfighters, vino, dinero y amor. (Also rhumbas and bossa novas, though
neither of the two is Mexican, but who cares as long as itʼs all somewhere
south of Kansas?). The movie had Ursula Andress, the first and foremost Bond
girl, as Elvisʼ love interest, which makes it very watchable for fans of
Sixtiesʼ hotties. But the music, alas, features the exact same set of official
composers — Tepper and Bennett at the forefront, followed by Weisman and Wayne,
Bill Giant, Don Robertson, and precisely zero Latin American composers involved
in the process, with the exception, of course, of the original composer of
ʽGuadalajaraʼ, the only genuine Mexican song performed by Elvis in the movie.
Not that I am particularly offended by this
next round of «cultural appropriation», since I am no more a fan of traditional
Mexican music than of traditional Russian music, and from a purely aesthetic
point of view, I donʼt know which one would be worse — having Elvis cover a
bunch of authentic tunes or these cartoonish simulacra of the real thing, like
the emotionally puffed-up heartbreaking tale of ʽEl Toroʼ or the fluffy
moonlight serenade ʽYou Canʼt Say No In Acapulcoʼ. I guess this rendition of
ʽGuadalajaraʼ is barely passable, but it does not even have the intentional
comic value of the Beatles covering ʽBesame Muchoʼ — who really needs Elvis
trying to step into the shoes of a Mexican mariachi?
Anyway, instead of trying to sum up everything
that is wrong about the album (which is pretty much everything), let me instead
try to be much more brief and sum up the few good things about it. First,
ʽ(Thereʼs) No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Carʼ is one of the silliest
innuendo-based tunes in the Elvis catalog — an obvious sexual joke, but at
least it is a refreshing change of pace from all the other generic Latin
American tropes, so thank you, Fred Wise and Dick Manning, for this piece of
dirty clown action. Second, the two bonus tracks which were not part of the
album, but tacked to the end upon the Colonelʼs insistence, are okay: ʽLove Me
Tonightʼ is a decent piano ballad, not genius, but in the good old
stripped-down tradition of ʽLove Me Tenderʼ etc., and ʽSlowly But Surelyʼ
arguably marks the first appearance of fuzz guitar on an Elvis album — a
blues-rocker whose start almost could be mistaken for a cover of ʽSmokestack
Lightningʼ, though it does not truly progress anywhere beyond that.
Most importantly, of course, there is always
the question of «that one song» on an Elvis album, and while It Happened At The Worldʼs Fair missed
the mark, Fun In Acapulco does have
ʽBossa Nova Babyʼ — another Leiber & Stoller classic, this time nicked from
a year-old version by the Clovers. Stoller himself said he preferred the
Clovers version, but there can be no serious objections against Elvisʼ cover,
either. Itʼs fast, itʼs danceable, itʼs ironic and celebratory at the same time, itʼs got a pretty hot
instrumental break, and it finds just the right tongue-in-cheek approach to
tackle the clichés. It baffles me that no other songwriter here had managed to
find a similar approach, but then, why should they when all the soft, mushy,
cuddly, clichéd stuff was consistently found so acceptable by the industry
people? At this point, people were flocking to the movies not so much to hear
Elvis as to see him — the quality of
the material used for the movie was far less relevant than the quality of the
hairstyle.
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