Forget the cult, what about the music.

Music was obviously raw and amazing when it came out - had it not been stolen from blues and recontextualized by the cult to begin with...

Oh give the world a royal fucking break. Elvis "stole" the blues about as much as Chuck Berry "stole" country music. Jesus Christ.

As far as the question goes, there's so much greatness (Sun sessions, Elvis is Back!, the comeback special, the Memphis sessions) and so much unutterable garbage ("Do the Clam" and its ilk) that it tends to even itself out unless you're prepared to concentrate. But when he was good he was pretty damn amazing, no doubt about it.

We did this one already. Whadda ya think that we forgot about da King?

How about Queen then? ;-)

i thought it was general enough you could extroplate.

elvis is my king and queen

I'll go out on a limb and defend some of the movie soundtracks. You can find them for a buck or two at yard sales, and they've got some great super-tight session musician-played tracks, and document the weirdness of Elvis Presly in the 60's - his only concessions to encroaching hippiedom being the odd fuzzed out bassline, except on the fantastic 1966 "Spinout" soundtrack where he (as race car driver/roaming pop singer Mike McCoy) tackles Dylan's "If Tomorrow Wasn't Such A Long Time" to pretty good effect. The only time Elvis recorded a Dylan song, and one of his longest studio cuts - over 5 minutes! The rest of the album is cartoon misogyny like "Adam & Evil" (shoulda been covered by Pussy Galore) and "Smorgasbord" (with the immortal lyric, "some guys like apple pie, some take just cake/I'll take the dish I please and please the dish I take") but the band features former Blue Cap James Burton alongside DJ Fontana & Scotty Moore. "Girl Happy" is a pretty cool soundtrack too, featuring the unfairly maligned "Do The Clam". I love it when he plays the reverbed- out Duane Eddy lead on an acoustic guitar on the beach!

Some of the bizarre south-of-the-border musical romps from the movies just baffle me. But what could top Having Fun With Elvis On Stage, I ask you?

Having scarfed plenty of the early nineties box sets for mega-cheap a few years back, I took the time to listen through from start to end, and I concluded that I actually liked the early seventies Elvis a hell of a lot -- made perfect sense to me finally why people like Nick Cave rated that particular era.

I think "Having Fun With Elvis On Stage" is the greatest thing he ever released. It's just so...monstrously, gloriously perverse and manipulative...how can any self-respecting pop fan not like that?? ;]

Since I think Anthony was trying to expand the question into broader areas than just The Pelvis, I can say that yes there are many artists who's, uh, cult of personality has prevented me from getting into the music. The Beatles are a big one. Even though I love a great deal of their music, I can't listen to it without feeling as though I'm contributing to their canonization as "greatest rock band of all time so pack it in chumps." The sneery condescending attitude of most backpackers keeps me from getting into a lot of undie/indie hiphop (just as - irony of ironies - my own sneery condescension kept me from enjoying mainstream hiphop for a good couple of years.) Conversely, my own anti-rockist tendencies keep me from often appreciating any new rock music (the most recent Tool album being a good example.)

'Having Fun With Elvis on Stage' is something I'm unfamiliar with... what's the deal with it?

My first exposure to "Having Fun" was in a Lester Bangs article ("Where Were You When Elvis Died?") Frankly I've never heard it and have no reason to even believe it exists. But based on Bangs' description alone, it's the second greatest pop record ever released (the first being Metal Machine Music of course.) It basically consists of nothing but onstage patter and banter collected from Elvis shows, completely devoid of music, delivered in such a way as to make Billy Burroughs sound like the Scatman.

>"It basically consists of nothing but onstage patter and banter collected from Elvis shows" Oh fucking hell, I've heard that!
I haven't heard it in years and years. I don't have it now. My Dad used to have it (or something v much like it).
Sadly, he died when I was 14 and I've no idea what happened to his old records - I've got a couple of his Neil Diamond LPs, that's all - but I remember we used to sit and chuckle at the King's hopeless banter.
Aww, I wish I had that record! That new Elvis DVD looks super fine, and there's a new box set of some his live Vegas shows out as well.

Shit, that sounds fantabulous! I'll surely pick it up if I ever find it for a couple of bucks. There should be more albums of just stage banter. I'll bet there are some artists whose banter would make for surprisingly engaging listening! (A thread idea perhaps???)