live it up, love it up, southern style
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FImwVKsBfEM&mode=related&search=]
Elvis died on 16 August 1977. The Times has a comprehensive retrospective here with many video links and a reexamination of his career and the potential he did/did not live up to. (Obligatory fried banana sandwich recipe included.)
Bob Stanley reviews a book by Jerry Schilling, one of Elvis’s close friends. According to Schilling, the “real” Elvis yearned to break out of the cheesy movies he was contracted to do, to do anything to avoid a tragic fate he could see coming all too clearly:
By 1965, [Jerry] Schilling was in his hero’s employ, at a time when Elvis had been eclipsed by the Beatles and Bob Dylan and was rapidly becoming an anachronism who churned out vapid movies. “He wanted to grow like any of us,” says Schilling, “but the machinery wasn’t built that way.”
Audio interlude: Something wonderful here, the audience give and take, something in the joy and vocal play…
[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/6/30/1226026/Trying%20To%20Get%20To%20You.MP3]
Bob Stanley continues:
While the songs of [his] twilight years are often dismissed as schmaltz, they are just as much a part of the real Elvis as “Jailhouse Rock” or “Hound Dog.” Elvis’s taste in music extended way beyond the R&B/hillbilly fusion that made his name. […] But gospel remained his music of choice and often brought out his best performances—the fire he poured into mid-Seventies renditions of “Hurt” and “Unchained Melody” was normally reserved for numbers such as “How Great Thou Art” and the show-stopping “American Trilogy.”
So much promise, so many obstacles both internal and external. Did he rip off contemporary black musicians? Was he schmaltzy? What is his place in history as a musician, rather than as a performer? All this controversy obscures the fact that he left some incredible moments of music: the man could entertain, and his voice would emote and soar with that seriously gorgeous head resonance and bass tone. You can feel the man wanted to jam, he just never got there.
Our relationship with blue-eyed soul/white gospel singers is fraught with social complexities that just don’t seem to disappear, do they? And the music industry/management does have a way of chewing up some good old boys…
[audio http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/6/30/1226026/Steamroller%20Blues.MP3]
Reading about Elvis always makes me hungry. What is it about Southern boys and carb cravings? Yum.
categories: Uncategorized
posted by guinness at 01:00 am
Poor Elvis…this video is so revealing. I think that he was indeed “caught in a trap”…a trap that ultimately led to his early death. He was a beautiful and talented young man, but naive in many ways. So many people used him and took advantage of him. He was smart enough to know that he was in a trap, but for some reason could not find a way to escape it. So sad.
Can’t help but compare Elvis to Taylor in some respects. Taylor seems to have more knowledge of the music business and the traps that lurk there…and he seems to have surrounded himself with better people as he’s approached his celebrity status. I only hope that Taylor can avoid the pitfalls of the business and live a happy life and not one “caught in a trap!”
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
Hunter Thomas
Man, every single time I listen to or see the clip of Elvis doing “Tryin’ To Get To You” from, was it the ‘68 Comeback Tour? I get all goose bumpy and freaking palpitations and all that stuff. The kind of moment that is very rare but when it strikes, man you just feel like a bolt of lightening shot through ya.
Elvis was, as his song implies, caught in a trap. He came around at exactly the right time to become a music legend and exactly the wrong time to become ALL that he could have been. The Beatles saw to that.
I had the good fortune to see Elvis in concert a few months before he died. I did not grow up on his music but my brother and sister did and so I was pretty familiar with it. I was struck by the power in his voice. He looked like a bloated whale on stage but the moment he opened his mouth, the power almost knocked me back and when he did American Trilogy, his voice actually boomed through the arena. It was one of a handful of magic moments in my own lifetime. Whoaaaaa.
You can really see the influence that Elvis has on Taylor pertaining to being an entertainer. I believe that Elvis rode a fine line between entertainer extraordinaire and being schmaltzy. I did find myself sitting here grinning like a school girl while I was watching the Elvis videos. Hmmm… the same thing I do while I watch a Taylor video.
I do feel, that from what I’ve read about Taylor, he has surrounded himself with good people that he has known for years. That would be one of the hardest aspects of being famous, who can you trust? With your career, your money etc. Elvis found out the hard way. Although having known someone for a long time is no gaurantee that they won’t screw you eventually.
pass the cornbread. I’ll be having some of that carb goodness also.
I think we make such a big deal over Elvis because he died when he did. still, his overall impact on music was tremendous and his appeal longstanding.
heart-attack stemming from a reliance on prescription pills. tragic.