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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