THIS TIME THE QUESTION posed to me on Quora was somewhat nebulous and seemingly pointless: “What is something that needs to be said about Elvis Presley?” Nebulous in that almost anything can be said, and pointless because what hasn’t been said about the man? Of course, I had an answer, though probably not the kind that most fans want to read as it’s as nebulous as the question.
And of course I turned my answer for Quora into a blog post, except this post has an intro—you’re reading it now—and an outro.
With a few pictures and my clever captions!
If you want to read all the answers to the question “What is something that needs to be said about Elvis Presley?” go here.
If you just want to read my answer to the question and any comments that follow, go here.
My answer as posted on Quora can be read between the two pictures below with the subheading “Something that needs to be said” . . .
This incredibly unexciting jacket—the back cover is as boring as the front—contains one of the best album compilations assembled and released during Presley’s lifetime. Twelve killer tracks, all big hits in the US, from seven million-selling singles, each a testament to how good his records were in 1960–1962. The $2.99 price is accurate for the mid-’60s, although I regularly purchased mono LPs for less.
Something that needs to be said
Well, Joshua, something that needs to be said about Elvis Presley that most young fans or observers don’t know is that decades ago (in the 1970s or ’80s), a survey showed that more people around the world knew who Elvis Presley was simply by saying his first name (“Elvis”) than they knew anyone else by their first and last names!
Despite this extraordinary fame, he remains somewhat of an enigma and few people really knew him: he supposedly opened up more about his deepest beliefs with women he brought back to his hotel room than he did with members of the Memphis Mafia he had known for years.
Despite his fame and fortune, Elvis remains an enigma that few people really knew.
So people infer and read into him just about anything they want (good and bad). This has led some (supposedly) reasonably intelligent people to say some unbloodybelievably stupid things about him.
For some illuminating and entertaining reading on this subject, I recommend a series of posts on The Round Place In The Middle website grouped together as “Stupid Stuff People Say About Elvis.”
This inferring (which, alas, includes the stupid stuff) will probably go on for as long as Elvis Presley remains a topic of interest . . .
This fourth volume of Elvis’ Gold Records (arguably even less graphically dynamic than the third volume above) should have been titled “Elvis For Everyone Volume 2.” It contains twelve tracks of varying quality, each from a single—some of which were genuine hits, a few of which actually sold a million copies. The mono pressing of this album is exceedingly rare with NM copies fetching upwards of a thousand dollars and factory-sealed copies twice that.
A mere karaōke makeover
Since we are here on my blog, I wanted to expand a wee bit on the stupid stuff that people just keep right on a‑saying, despite the fact that just a few minutes research on the internet would show them the error or their ways. of course, when you’re busy being right all the time, who has time for research, right?
In one of his articles in The Round Place In The Middle, blogger Nondisposbalejohnny (NDJ) takes Ishmael Reed to task for making this staggeringly stupid claim:
“There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaōke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry.”
This is hardly the first time that I have read such unf*ckingbelieveably stupid and chronologically and historically factually inaccurate statements. Nor was it the first time for NDJ, who countered with this:
“Reed is, perhaps unwittingly, using a classic propaganda technique: criticizing fake narratives by utilizing a fake narrative. I say perhaps unwittingly, without putting any percentages on it, because, like most fake narratives, this one is rooted in ignorance born of emotion.
The stupid stuff that people say about Elvis is endlessly and even perversely entertaining!
Reed wants what he says to be true, therefore it is true. Or will be, if enough people just keep repeating it.
As to facts? Those stubborn things?
Sorry, but once in a while, we have to slog back through the actual record, tiresome though the march may be.
So-o-o-o‑o . . .
Of the five men he mentions, only two of them had made a record before Elvis made his first.”
Of course, NDJ has more to say, but I want you tantalized enough to click on over to that Round Place In The Middle and read the rest in the proper context. Regular readers of A Touch Of Gold (and I know who both of you are by now) already know that I have made reference to John’s before, and shall do so again.
But if enough of you go there, read his stuff, and leave comments asking for more, then maybe he’ll write some new stuff because, as we know, intelligent people to say some unbelievably stupid things about him and there is no reason to believe that they ‘re ever going to stop because they live by the credo, “Damn the facts! Full speed ahead!”
Despite his fame and fortune, Elvis remains an enigma that few people really knew. Click To Tweet
FEATURED IMAGE: During most of the 1960s, Elvis was packaged as a clean-cut, happy-go-lucky, handsome if likable doofus. The rock & roll rebel of 1958 was long gone, while the resurrected rock & roll deity of 1968 was all but undreamt of. If a young person with no knowledge of Presley but the brouhaha should have his first Elvis experience via a couple of the movies Presley made from this period, he could not be faulted for thinking something wrong with his elders.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
As always, thanks for the rec!...I don’t know about adding to the stupid stuff (ya never know)...I mostly wanted to collect a sampling. Going into much more detail would probably have me wanting to drive nails with my forehead.
But I WILL get back to some serious Elvis writing at some point...Still much to say about the fifties and the original plan was to carry on to the Sixties and Seventies....I ain’t forgot. Just wish the real world (work, health, finances) would quit butting in!
J
You are welcome!
N
Hi I think that the sleeves for gold records vol 3 and 4 are great and now almost iconic , volume 5 was the worst !
4 would have been a boost at the time if it contained Bossa nova,kissin cousins ‚viva las vegas,rock a hula etc, it was clearly just a way to get random 45s on to album.
PHILIP
Thanks for the comment!
Oh, my response to the cover art on those albums is subjective: I can understand you and others liking them. But I am not a fan of the cover photos and artwork on most American albums, especially while Elvis was alive.
Agreed, the fifth volume of the Gold Records series was ghastly!
Agreed, the fourth volume should have put the strongest collection forward. Most of the reviews of the album in 1968 discussed the “fact” that there was no more gold, ergo the weak selections. So while it was nice of Elvis/Colonel/RCA to give us twelve tracks we didn’t have on an LP, it didn’t do Elvis’s reputation any good at all.
Best,
NEAL
Hi ‚Regarding your comment about Elvis movies, younger people today watching Elvis movies like Roustabout, Love in Las Vegas, Spinout,Girl happy,Speedway etc are in my experience in awe of how cool he was ‚regardless of the plot, they love the American cars,ladies fashions of the time , Anne Margaret (!) and there are some spectacularly good songs (Stop look and listen/king of the whole wide world/bossa nova baby/whatd I say/little Egypt/follw that dream ...etc etc .as the King himself said....“Hell they were not all bad , I believe he especially liked “Tickle me” !
There are enough songs from the 7os to match Yoga is as yoga does/old macdonald/barefot ballad....
As Paul McCartney sings....“there is good and bad in everyone....”....Elvis in the 6os is my favourite time .
P
It’s cool that there are young people watching those movies.
As for the songs, I never said they were all bad. For the most part, they were unexceptional, pedestrian, which bored everyone‚ Elvis and the fans.
And unexceptional simply wasn’t good enough to sustain interest in the movies or the records, hence the declining sales of tickets and vinyl.
There are other articles on this site addressing my love for a lot of what Elvis did in the ’60s. Check ’em out ...
N
PS: It was VERY distressing being an Elvis fan in 1966–1968 and going to the new Elvis movie and being one of only a dozen people in the theater.
The one thing to say about Elvis which seems to get overlooked while dissing his movies and the 70s Vegas Elvis is that he had the greatest singing voice ever known.I see nothing wrong with the Vol 3 and 4 albums and loved every song on them.Ok they were not vol 1&2 as far as content go but you cannot have everything.As regards his movies there were some incredibly bad ones admitted.The mention of Tickle Me is a bit lame as far as the songs were concerned because they were better than the usual bunch simply because they were not movies songs but a crop taken from earlier studio albums to save money.
D
Elvis’s movies 1964–1968 were discussed because many of them were garbage, as were the soundtracks: no one listening to the recordings for HARUM SCARUM or EASY COME EASY GO or DOUBLE TROUBLE would ever in a million years guess that he had “the greatest singing voice ever known.” The songs were lame, the arrangements uninspired, the band limp, and Elvis flaccid—and the engineering on some simply dreadful!
Like the first two volumes, ELVIS’ GOLDEN RECORDS VOLUME 3 is one of his very best LPs of all time; VOLUME 4 should have been one of his best but isn’t even close.
For me, TICKLE ME is memorable for the presence of Julie Adams (who shoulda been a bigger star) and Jocelyn Lane, not much else. I wonder if there is anyone out there involved in the making of that movie who has all the details of what hhappened: convincing Elvis to make it basically to save a foundering company. Might make a good movie all by itself.
N
PS: Somewhere I have the beginnings of an article on what GOLD RECORDS VOLUME 4 could have been—all I gotta do is find it and finish it ...
I agree that Elvis great singing voice was not very much in evidence in the movies you mention.He sounded bored and disinterested and who can blame him but as a kid I just loved the color and the music and the women.It was not until I was older that I could hear the difference from Are You Lonesome Tonight and say You Gotta Stop.This does not detract from my view on the overall singing voice of the King.I sometimes try to think what his worst song was and have of course come up with Yoga Is As Yoga Does.The writers should go down in history.
D
I remember going to see DOUBLE TROUBLE in May or June 1967. I was 15 at the time. Went with my grandfather, who was sober for a change and wanted to treat me.
I already had the soundtrack album, and try as I may, it was tough to think much of the title song, “Baby, If You’ll Give Me All of Your Love,” and “Old MacDonald.”
And to release the absurd “Long Legged Girl (With the Short Dress On)” at the same time that the Doors and Jefferson Airplane and other fab new groups were issuing killer singles was tough for us fans to justify.
But now I look back and think that if there hadn’t been that period of lousy movies and soundtracks, there would never have been a need for the 1968 NBC-TV Special, and that more than justified the bad movies!
I have several cool articles on the selling of Elvis product in 1956 that I should be posting soon. Hope you enjoy them . . .
N