By June 1970 Elvis was riding high and achieving the critical acclaim he had not received since the early 1960s. Following the 1968 Elvis TV Special he had returned to Memphis in 1969 and for the first time recorded at the famous American Sound Studios under the guidance of Chips Moman and backed by the legendary 827 Thomas Street Band. August of that year saw him back in front of a live audience for the first time in almost nine years during a month long, sold-out engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. He returned for another run of sold-out shows in February 1970 and contracts had been agreed for him to return in August, and it would be filmed and recorded for a new documentary and album.
The material he had recorded in Memphis turned his career around. The album From Elvis In Memphis was a major success as were the singles released at the time... In The Ghetto, Suspicious Minds, Don't Cry Daddy and Kentucky Rain. Everyone expected him to return to Memphis for his next planned sessions but unfortunately it wasn't to be. Several reasons have been given, among them issues over publishing rights.
Elvis was due to provide enough material for a new album and two singles as per his agreement with RCA Records. Felton Jarvis had booked a series of sessions at RCA's Studio B in Nashville starting on the night of 4 June 1970. Elvis hadn't recorded in Nashville for almost thirty-months and a new crop of stellar session musicians would be present for this run of sessions including James Burton (guitar), Chip Young (guitar), Norbert Putnam (bass) Jerry Carrigan (drums) and David Briggs (piano). Talking about the musicians James Burton said, "These are incredible players. These guys are the A-team."
Overdub sessions held between June and October would see the addition of various instruments along with backing vocals provided by, among others, The Jordanaires, The Imperials, Millie Kirkham, Mary & Ginger Holladay and Temple Riser.
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| Elvis arriving at RCA Studio B (4 June 1970) |
On the evening of 4 June Elvis arrived at the RCA Studios for the first night of recordings each of which would run from 6pm till 4.30 am the following day. The sessions went well, were productive and Elvis was in a great mood. Over the next five nights Elvis recorded more than thirty tracks, enough for at least two albums and a few singles. After a couple of nights it became clear that a lot of the material being considered and recorded was in the country vein and so it continued over the next few nights.
A further session was held on 22 September as two further cuts were needed for the planned country album. Eddie Hinton replaced James Burton at this session and Jerry Carrigan recalled that Hinton was, "really scared to death." Unfortunately Elvis' mood was totally different from June. After recording the two tracks required and a stab at two further songs he left the studio.
The first material to be released from the sessions were on two singles released in July and October, I've Lost You/The Next Step Is Love and You Don't Have To Say You Love Me/Patch It Up, both top twenty singles.
As mentioned earlier Elvis' third Las Vegas Engagement was captured on film and released as That's The Way It Is. The soundtrack, released in November, featured four live recordings and eight songs from the June sessions including Twenty Days And Twenty Nights, Mary In The Morning, Just Pretend and Stranger In The Crowd.
A third single, I
Really Don't Want To Know/There
Goes My Everything, was followed in January 1971 with one of Elvis' best
albums, Elvis
Country. Often considered his first (and only) concept album it was a
collection of new and old country songs which was held together by the song I Was Born About Ten
Thousand Years Ago of which a short segment appeared between each
song. The album included strong performances of country classics like Make The World Go Away, Snowbird, I Really Don't Want To
Know and Little
Cabin On The Hill along with less well-known songs including I Washed My Hands In
Muddy Water, It's
Your Baby, You Rock It and Tomorrow
Never Comes. It even included a cover of Jerry Lee Lewis' Whole Lotta Shakin'
Goin' On, although it never comes close to Lewis' version. I Was Born... would eventually be released in complete form on the 1971 album Elvis Now.
Further singles were released featuring material from both the June and September sessions but none achieved much success on the charts.
Alternate versions and outtakes from the sessions started to appear officially in the mid-1990s with releases like Walk A Mile In My Shoes-The Essential 70's Masters and A Hundred Years from Now-Essential Elvis Volume 4 offering previously unreleased material. There were two tracks that had never seen the light of day in any form, A Hundred Years From Now and the instrumental jam I Didn't Make It On Playing Guitar. On the latter Elvis can occasionally be heard encouraging the band and towards the end starts singing along, albeit just the title over and over again.
Fans were treated to more with the introduction of the Follow That Dream collectors label. First up was The Nashville Marathon with a whole disc of unreleased material. This was followed in the years that followed with 2-CD editions of That's The Way It Is, Elvis Country and Love Letters in the FTD labels 'Classic Album' series. These all featured a wealth of alternate takes.
The latest release to feature material from this period is From Elvis In Nashville, a 4-CD set presented in a slipcase with a booklet. All the tracks have been completely remixed and remastered by Matt Ross-Spang from the original session tapes. While the set only features a handful of unreleased takes, bringing together the album tracks and a selection of unreleased material lifted from the FTD releases, it does have one important selling point. For the first time many of the album masters are presented in their original undubbed and/or unedited form, and it makes for an enjoyable listening experience.
The other two CDs feature a selection of the alternate takes, all but a few previously released, but a nice addition to the set. There are great alternate takes of Patch It Up, Stranger In The Crowd, the country version of Faded Love, Little Cabin Home On The Hill and It's Your Baby, You Rock It. There are unreleased takes of Tomorrow Never Comes, The Next Step Is Love and Stranger In The Crowd but these are false starts or breakdown early. However, the two unreleased takes of Stranger In The Crowd were actually included on the That's The Way It Is classic album but were not listed on the sleeve or booklet.
From a personal point of view I could live without outtakes of Only Believe, This Is Our Dance or Life. The latter took twenty takes and during one of the final attempts Elvis remarked, "god-damn thing is as long as life, man." Unfortunately that is not included here. It has to be remembered this is a mainstream release and not aimed at just the collectors who bought the FTD releases and so the inclusion of this material is justified.
Packaging is important to me and this set doesn't disappoint. Presented in an 8x8 slipcase with a great image of Elvis and the band superimposed on a sepia-toned picture of the outside of Studio B. I have heard many complaints that the main pic was also used on the Nashville Marathon set but I have never seen any other images of Elvis in the studio during these sessions so they made the right choice. The four CDs are housed in an eight-panel wallet with images of tape boxes and the RCA building. The 28-page booklet includes notes on each day of recording by Ernst Mikael Jorgensen, comprehensive notes by David Cantwell, track details with recording and release information, quotes from those taking part in the sessions and a stunning selection of photos, record sleeves, press ads and other related memorabilia.
These sessions produced some of his best material to come out of the 1970s and this set, despite my reservations about a few of the songs, gives the listener an insight into the quality and musicianship of all involved. These tracks have never sounded better and credit to Matt Ross-Spang who has done a sterling job on the remastering. A great addition to the collection.
I'll leave the last word on these sessions to David Briggs... "It was more special working with him than anybody else."
With thanks to David Cox (LD Communications)
