Elvis Presley: Harum Scarum

ELVIS PRESLEY: HARUM SCARUM (1965)

1) Harem Holiday; 2) My Desert Serenade; 3) Go East, Young Man; 4) Mirage; 5) Kismet; 6) Shake That Tambourine; 7) Hey Little Girl; 8) Golden Coins; 9) So Close, Yet So Far; 10) Animal Instinct; 11) Wisdom Of The Ages.

General verdict: Elvis as the Thief of Bagdad? Going back to the 1920s for inspiration in 1965 probably wasnʼt the best possible idea.

Sometimes I am actually left stupefied when tracing Elvisʼ gradual degradation in the mid-Sixties. With pop culture in all of its forms and manifestations generally becoming more and more sophisticated in those years, one could have at least expected the King to try and retain the already established levels of mediocrity and corniness, even if he proved unable to adapt to the artistic requirements of the time. Instead, what we see should be inspiring conspiracy theorists all over the world — because movies and soundtracks such as Harum Scarum are pretty much unbelievable as «accidents», much more like somebodyʼs conscious attempts to bring a formerly respectable artist to the utmost depths of humiliation.

You need go no further than the movieʼs synopsis on Wikipedia to understand that the screenplay could, at best, be appreciated by 8-year olds, and that is even before we get around to discussing all the ridiculous Middle Eastern stereotypes which could only come from the mind of a screenwriter fully convinced that Lawrence Of Arabia was a movie about headscarves and camels. What is even worse, though, is that the soundtrack, this time, is in 100% agreement with the aesthetics of the movie — consisting largely of songs whose only purpose is to accumulate every single «Arabic» cliché known to Western society and convince us that, for some reason, this dude from Memphis would be an excellent medium for unleashing them upon our senses.

Remember these names: Bernie Baum, Bill Giant, Florence Kaye, Stanley J. Gelber, Sid Tepper, Roy C. Bennett — remember them, because when the Last Judgement comes and the Lord begins personally admonishing you for having led a life of sin, hedonism, and passive resistance, all you have to say is «Lord, Iʼve been a sinner, but do I really deserve the same treatment as all those people who wrote songs for Harum Scarum?», and the Lord will relent on you, just as he did with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All of their songs for this album are cringeworthy exercises in joining elements of country-western and vaudeville with «exotic» Eastern musical motives and truly abysmal lyrics. The song titles alone, starting with ʽHarem Holidayʼ, tell you all you need to know — but, trust me, the melodic and emotional content of all these ditties rarely strays away from the banality and corniness of the titles.

To try and prove that I really did listen to the album more than once (its only advantage, after all, is that, like all of Elvisʼ soundtracks, it is gracefully short), I will say that one particular songwriter here stands an actual chance of avoiding the flames of Hell, and this is Joy Byers, the same Joy Byers who had a highlight on Viva Las Vegas! with ʽCʼmon Everybodyʼ. Her two contributions are fairly inoffensive and even somewhat attractive: ʽHey Little Girlʼ is a simple, generic, energetic piece of twist with mildly amusing predatory notes and growling piano interludes re-borrowed from ʽWhatʼd I Sayʼ, while ʽSo Close, Yet So Farʼ is a simple, generic, unvarnished doo-wop ballad with arguably Elvisʼ best vocal performance on here — at least there is some sort of dynamics and build-up, though some of the melodic moves seem to have been copped directly from Phil Spectorʼs ʽTo Know Him Is To Love Himʼ. But at least if you are mining for your songwriting ideas elsewhere, it is so much better to be mining in the mines of Ray Charles and Phil Spector than in the mines of your local strip clubs with «Oriental» themes.

At least it is a bit of a relief to know that this was the only such experiment in Elvis history, and that the near-total critical and commercial failure of the entire enterprise made the gang come back to their senses and return to the tried and true — because even among the endless sea of boring, unimaginative, derivative, and stereotypical movies and soundtracks produced for Elvis in the Sixties, Harum Scarum proudly lives up to its title and scares hares up to this very day.