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Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Elvis Presley: Double Trouble


ELVIS PRESLEY: DOUBLE TROUBLE (1967)

1) Double Trouble; 2) Baby, If Youʼll Give Me All Your Love; 3) Could I Fall In Love; 4) Long Legged Girl; 5) City By Night; 6) Old MacDonald; 7) I Love Only One Girl; 8) There Is So Much World To See; 9) It Wonʼt Be Long; 10) Never Ending; 11) Blue River; 12) What Now, What Next, Where To.

General verdict: Passable glitzy pop-rock entertainment with a few serious lows — almost a masterpiece compared to the depths plumbed a couple of years before.

Although this and the next few soundtracks art not so great by any means, I believe that any honest evaluation of them as proper LPs should admit that they are nowhere near as bad as that entire stretch from 1965 to early 1966, pre-Spinout. Want it or not, times had forced the Elvis team to adapt at least a little, and much of this material sounds relatively passable for the early rock music era. With a new haircut, lightly foreshadowing the «comeback Elvis» style; a new producer (Jeff Alexander, who had previously composed the instrumental score to a few of his better movies, including Jailhouse Rock); and a slightly higher rate of solid songwriters than usual, Double Trouble is... well, still a disappointment, but not nearly as much of a disappointment as it could have been under different circumstances.

I do believe that the many one-star ratings for the LP generally have to do with the presence of ʽOld MacDonaldʼ. Rather arrogantly credited to the infamous «songwriting dentist» Randy Starr because some of the old lyrics have been changed to make the song more «edgy», it is, once again, something perfectly acceptable if it were spontaneously delivered during some drunken binge with Elvisʼ friends, but certainly not in the context of an album promising healthy, whole­some entertainment, whatever that might mean. The song proudly takes its place next to ʽPetunia, The Gardenerʼs Daughterʼ, ʽQueenie Wahineʼs Papayaʼ, and other similar mega-embarrassments of the Kingʼs career — and not, of course, due to the fact that Elvis chose to perform a generic nursery rhyme, but precisely because he chose to perform it as a pseudo-humorous «adult take» on a generic nursery rhyme, one of those vaudeville travesties for which many, many grown-up persons have already been condemned to eternal flames of Hell.

But that is just one song, and although the soundtrack has a few other moments of blatant corn (Tepper and Bennettʼs ʽI Love Only One Girlʼ, a new and stupid English translation of the French chanson-cum-military-march ʽLe Prisonnier De Hollandeʼ, is the second worst offender), on the whole it turns out to be surprisingly listenable, and in a few places even unpredictable. The title track, written by Pomus and Shuman, is harmless cocky Tom Jones-y jazz-pop; the ever-reliable Joy Byers comes up with the predictably derivative ʽBaby, If Youʼll Give Me All Of Your Loveʼ, a fast, driving song that is melodically reminiscent of ʽWear My Ring Around Your Neckʼ; and John Leslie McFarlandʼs ʽLong Legged Girlʼ is as good a Little Richard pastiche as probably was physically possible at the time, though the frantic rocker could have benefited from removing its horns and throwing on some electric guitar licks instead — after all, the song does begin with a few gruff, distorted guitar chords, though they strangely never appear again after the opening five seconds. At least, it wasnʼt the worst possible choice for a single.

The real surprise of the entire project, though, is ʽCity By Nightʼ, a rather unusual creation from the very usual songwriting team of Baum, Giant, and Kaye. It is essentially a jazz serenade, a bit Duke Ellington-style, perhaps, with some nifty trombone parts and a smoky midnight vibe — a cliché in itself, perhaps, but still cooler and edgier than the usual corny vaudeville stuff they typically served to Elvis. The fact that this tune, clearly the winner of the entire game on here, is immediately followed by ʽOld MacDonaldʼ, only goes to show how much of a roulette wheel Elvisʼ career was at this point — nobody really gave a damn, which is really the main reason why it is a bit fascinating to be checking all those soundtracks in retrospect: you never know when exactly you are going to fall upon that single pearl amidst all the manure, but even if the pearl never comes, the manure in question comes in so many different forms and flavors that you cannot deny the element of a very perverse intrigue in here.

Another good thing is that the soundtrack was so short they had to, once again, pad it out with some oldies scooped up from past sessions — including, among a few lesser selections, ʽBlue Riverʼ, an old and nearly lost B-side from 1963 which, along with ʽLittle Sisterʼ, is probably Elvisʼ most rocking and fun early Sixties song. Fast, sharp, fully guitar-based, with a couple kick-ass solo breaks (from Hank Garland, probably), its two minutes kick the ass of each single «rocker» on here by reminding you that there used to be a time when Elvisʼ rockʼnʼroll was not coated over with production glitz, and that bits and pieces of that time did survive well into the early Sixties. Sure, the song really has no business being on here, but at least this gives me a good pretext to mention it — without having to dig up compilations.

Oh, and, obviously, Double Trouble was the soundtrack to an actual movie, but this time around, I forgot to look up the plot. Allegedly, itʼs a «comedy-thriller» with a slightly unusual plot for Elvis (the original script was written with Julie Christie rather than Elvis in mind!), so it might be worth a look for, I dunno, fans of the classic James Bond stylistics or something. Me, Iʼm just paying attention to that haircut.

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