The Godfather: Peter Corris on Elvis
In a column last year I expressed the opinion that Elvis Presley was one of the two greatest popular singers of the 20th century. The other, incontestably, was Frank Sinatra. Sinatra brought an insouciant, louche intimacy to crooning that hadn’t been there before. He had an impeccable sense of timing and improvisation. Sinatra made a song his own in a way few singers have before or since.
Elvis Presley’s comparable original contributions were sexuality and, for a white singer, an high-octane emotional charge. As Keith Richards said, ‘It was like the world went from black and white to technicolour.’ At the age of 14 I experienced the advent of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ powerfully – the freedom, the freshness and my father’s outrage – all part of the phenomenon that was Elvis Presley.
With a great vocal range and flexibility, he could employ a thin, reedy rockabilly accent (‘Milk Cow Boogie Blues’), perfect diction (‘Love Me Tender’) and a soaring operatic style (‘The Wonder of You’ and ‘It’s Now or Never’).
I recently listened to a double disk of Presley’s songs and was struck, not only by the variety of the work, but a quality not often talked about. I’m convinced after listening closely and replaying some tracks, that, with the exception of his gospel singing, the man did not take what he did too seriously. His parody of ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ is well known:
Do you gaze at your forehead
And wish you had hair?
He gave the songs, good bad and indifferent, all he had, but there was often self-mockery in his tone and approach.
Like Sinatra, Elvis was lucky in that there were some fine songwriters around when he was recording, including Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller (‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’), Carl Perkins (‘Blue Suede Shoes’), Otis Blackwell (‘Don’t be Cruel’ and ‘Return to Sender’) and Roy Brown (‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’).
Presley’s reworking of songs by black singer-song-writers like Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right’ and Junior Parker’s ‘Mystery Train’ enhanced the originals. ‘Mystery Train’ was the best of these and I’m sure it was the only song of its kind ever aired on Margaret Throsby’s ABC Classics morning program when I selected it.
Apart from Jailhouse Rock, none of the many films Elvis appeared in produced any songs of note. Like the scripts for the movies, the songs were churned out by teams of writers, sometimes with Presley’s collaboration, without regard for quality. Songs from the title tracks of pap movies like Kissin’ Cousins and Fun in Acapulco are positively embarrassing.
If the films signalled the beginning of the end of Elvis’s creativity, the appearances at Las Vegas sealed the deal. Decked out in his absurd, bejewelled jumpsuit, performing mock martial-arts movements, an increasingly pudgy Elvis became a parody of himself. But the voice remained powerful as he ran through his repertoire. To the end he was capable of imbuing a song with strong emotion. The woman’s scream from the audience at the crucial moment in the live rendering of ‘An American Trilogy’ was undoubtedly genuine.
