Comments on: Presley’s Jukebox: Bob Dylan, Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Jerry Butler Shine on “Elvis Heard Them Here First”

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:28:06 +0000

Some elitists didn’t like Elvis just because he was so damn popular.

Quite often, an artist is popular because he is great.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:36:33 +0000

ACE sent me a new disk with the correct track!

By: Karl Evans

Karl Evans — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:13:04 +0000

This is an interesting CD. Elvis consistently takes what is largely uninspired material and transforms it, as an interpreter of songs he was unsurpassed. However no one seems to have noticed that the Charlie rich version of Pieces of my life, is NOT the same song that Elvis recorded. I’m amazed that ACE let that one through quality control.

By: Howard Jackson

Howard Jackson — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:23:17 +0000

This is a good collection. I am old enough to remember watching Matthews Southern Comfort sing I’ve Lost You on the BBC. They had a pleasant sound but disappeared quite quickly. I do not doubt it but I am surprised that Stop Look And Listen was a cover of a Ricky Nelson original. I had assumed it was movie pap.

By: Joe Marchese

Joe Marchese — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:15:40 +0000

Indeed, Hank. Well said. The art of interpretive singing is every bit as much a valid and distinct art as that of songwriting. Some are great songwriters, some are great singers, and some are both. I’ve never understood the rap of “he lacks authenticity” as aimed at an Elvis or the other rock-era figures who relied on outside songs. I think you’ll dig this CD as much as I did; there’s some fantastic material on it, and it’s instructive to see just how much Elvis shaped the songs to his own unique personality and style.

By: Hank

Hank — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:57:16 +0000

It’s my experience that people who don’t like Elvis will seize on the fact that he didn’t write his own songs as evidence that his music is bad, but I don’t necessarily see a causal connection. One might argue that a singer-songwriter as an individual has a greater overall talent than Elvis did, but in listening to some of the outtakes and rehearsals that the Presley estate has released through the FTD label, one can hear just how much of Presley’s musical instinct was entirely his own, either by how he would arrange (and re-arrange) a song in the studio to make it his own, or in the Hollywood sessions, where it is all too apparent the extent to which the soundtrack producers would–not always successfully–reign in his performances. Granted, Presley was not a songwriter, but he certainly wasn’t a musical hack.

That said, this looks like a cool CD–I haven’t heard most of these tracks.

By: Joe Marchese

Joe Marchese — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:33:54 +0000

Thanks for reading, Kevin. Certainly miles of ink have been expended on tomes looking at the singer/songwriter revolution and how it affected the music industry and the craft of professional songwriting, and I’m not going to spend any more time going into that here. But I appreciate your insights. Of course, Dylan and The Beatles weren’t the first to record their own songs; in addition to those artists in the country and blues traditions (as I mention above), Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer all recorded their own contributions to the Great American Songbook. And of course The Beatles, Dylan, etc. didn’t put a definitive end to young singers recording songs written by others.

But there’s no denying the impact that singer/songwriters had on interpretive singers and professional songwriters alike. Rock writers (you know who they are) created a bias that still does exist today. While you’ll find plenty of covers of existing songs on albums by young jazz/vocals singers or “Top 40″ pop singers, it’s much harder to find a new “rock” act relying on songs written by others. Writers and fans alike would doubt that singer’s “authenticity.” I don’t agree with this; it’s also something for another venue to explore how the advent of the singer/songwriter put out of work many “professional songwriters” who possessed the craft many of the new breed lacked. But you were far more likely to find a cover of “Spinning Wheel” on a Sammy Davis Jr. or Jack Jones album than on one by Lennon, McCartney, Dylan, Mitchell or Taylor. (And that’s no knock on those singers or any other; anybody reading this knows the depth of my affection for popular singers and the Robert Goulets and Andy Williamses of the world.) Demands were simply different of these young, guitar-wielding creators, and their material was often becoming too personal to be “believably” covered by others, as well. Even Sinatra, arguably the greatest intrepretive singer of all time, struggled during this period of which I speak above, recording Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and other songs that some might have considered ill-advised.

Again, sometimes it’s difficult not to generalize. And so while I stand by the accuracy of my statements above, know that I appreciate and recognize all of the exceptions to “the rule.”

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:30:41 +0000

Although I understand where you are coming from when you say music fans began demanding that singers also be their own songwriters, I think this point is often overblown and does not represent reality. Covers were NOT limited to M-O-R singers. Many or most soul artists primaily recorded songs by other writers, and numerous rock acts did as well.

If there ever was an emphasis on singers doing their own material, it had more to do with royalty arrangements and the singer’s management than it did with popular tastes. I really think that the music public did not care who wrote a song. It was whether that song appealed to them, for whatever reasons