Why is there not a single Elvis book that talks about the goddam music???

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OK, there are a few grocery list compendiums: "18 April, 1961: Elvis spends afternoon dubbing vocals in a Hollywood studio." Otherwise, the books on Elvis go from Albert Goldman character assasination to fluff hero worship. In between those dregs we find "respected" bios and socio-political tracts by the likes of Guralnick and Marcus.

But notice how NONE of these books ever have much of anything to say about the actual music. Guralnick gives us plenty of background about Elvis' school days and whether or not Colonel Parker killed a man; Marcus rants a bunch of collegiate American Studies bullshit, replete with quotes from Herman Melville and (haha) Bruce Springsteen. In other words, the twaddle emanating from these two jerks ends up about as enlightening as any ghostwritten Priscilla Presley puffjob.

Whatever you feel about him, at least Ian MacDonald actually wrote about the Beatles' *music*.

Well, have I missed it, then? Has anyone ever written an intelligent (or even passable) book dealing with Elvis's music?

― JQK, Monday, 11 April 2005 08:51 (twenty years ago)

The Rough Guide to Elvis is pretty good. Obviously it's not Revolution in the Head, but it's very concerned with discussing Elvis' discography.

― Masked Gazza, Monday, 11 April 2005 09:01 (twenty years ago)

The second volume of Guralnick's Elvis biography is more musically focused than the first, featuring some pretty detailed investigation of the fruitful 1968-72 period. But it's not exclusively musical, so maybe you'd find it equally frustrating.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 11 April 2005 09:12 (twenty years ago)

Marcus discusses almost nothing BUT the music in Mystery Train. It's pretty obvious from the title that Dead Elvis isn't going to be all that hot on the subject of music-itself.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Monday, 11 April 2005 10:37 (twenty years ago)

Marcus does a good job on the music in "Mystery Train." I think it's a valuable book, just way too pretentious. Remember, back thirty years ago this kind of thing was in its infancy. The book's a bid to make rock and roll something people could take seriously. Whether his way of doing that is justified is something I am not sure of. He's best on Randy Newman in that book, I think. I just re-read part two of Guralnick's bio. He's good on some aspects of the music--the Chips Moman section is probably the best part of the whole book. But on the whole, Guralnick wrote a boring book; he lacks the requisite appreciation of EP's vulgarity. Elvis deserves "respect" but PG is far too respectful.

Maybe Presley's output is so vast it daunts writers? I don't know. Presley never had any unified approach to recording, too. If he'd had Chips Moman around all the time, perhaps the story would've ended up differently. It's sad to read about those idiots EP had always around him, and how that whole situation deformed his musical output. You have to wonder just how terrifically insecure Elvis was to have allowed that to go on.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Monday, 11 April 2005 12:05 (twenty years ago)

Yeah reading about how his buddy Lamarr picked most of the songs (and that Elvis didn't even LIKE "Burning Love") was depressing!

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 11 April 2005 12:32 (twenty years ago)

eight months pass...

The official discography (by Ernst Jorgensen) is fascinating. His comments on WHY the music works are a little simplistic at times, but it's still well worth a read.

I tried to discuss elements of Elvis's music in my thesis, but that's another story.

[Re: the opening message in this thread, sure MacDonald wrote about the Beatles' music, but it's hardly inspiring reading a list of chord progressions]

― whatever (boglogger), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 22:53 (twenty years ago)

i think i'd like to write a book like this! marcus's "presliad" is a masterful piece of work, but i think there's still lots to be said about the sun sessions, and even the classic '50s hits don't often get written about that well.

the problem with doing a "revolution in the head" style book is that elvis's catalog is so sprawling and uneven that it might be hard going. remember that macdonald only had 214 songs to write about; there's probably more than a thousand elvis songs out there, and a lot of them you'd be hard pressed to say anything interesting about. who wants to trawl through the details of the making of the girls! girls! girls! soundtrack, yknow?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 23:18 (twenty years ago)

Elvis was so all over the place that they don't know what to do with him. I've seen some writing on early Elvis, but...

― patrick bateman (mickeygraft), Thursday, 15 December 2005 02:12 (twenty years ago)

There _is_ one book that does go through the recordings track-by-track, called 'Elvis: a life in music' by Robert Matthew-Walker. Billed as a classically-trained musician writing about rock 'n' roll, I thought it was great when I was younger in that it picked out the gems from the not-so-gemlike, but it reads as very dated now. Probably out of print too.

The Carr/Farren 'illustrated record' was an earlier discography that has some limited but pithy observations on some of the music.

Agree with you, J.D., that there's a huge book waiting to be written. One of the problems (I have) is just how to describe exactly why 'Hound Dog' (for example) is such a monumental rocker, or how the simplicity and looseness of the Sun sides unmasks a really rigorous and complicated aesthetic underneath.

TCB, anyway.

― whatever (boglogger), Thursday, 15 December 2005 15:02 (twenty years ago)

One of the reasons why "Hound Dog" is such a rocker is J.D. Fontana's drumming, which helps put it in very different territory than Big Mama Thornton's original (I haven't heard Freddy Bell's version, which is the one that inspired Elvis to perform the song).

I'll second the recommendation for Jorgensen's book. It does rely heavily on technical detail and data at the expense of, say, Elvis' influences and styles, but Guralnick covers the latter well. I think if you combined the Guralnick and Jorgensen books, you could come up with something as good as Will Friedwald's excellent "just the music" book on Frank Sinatra.

― James, Thursday, 15 December 2005 15:17 (twenty years ago)

"hound dog" is a pretty weird recording if you think about it - in front you've got this wild rock'n'roll performance, what with scotty moore's incredible guitar solo (one of my 4 or 5 favorite solos ever)and elvis, and in the background the jordanaires doing those ridiculously old-fogey vocals. they sound like they can't even hear the rest of the band!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 15 December 2005 15:25 (twenty years ago)

Greil Marcus wrote a nice paragraph or two about that "Hound Dog" solo (or solos) in some little piece that was republished in "Ranters & Crowd Pleasers". Can't remember what it was called - I think it was largely about Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" and gtr solos in general, how they can increase tension in a song and so forth.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 15 December 2005 18:17 (twenty years ago)

agree re: the 'hound dog' drumming. so loud it sounds like it's beginning to feed back. and the second of scotty moore's solo is a foul-up too: those chords at the beginning are him getting his fingers started on the wrong frets, but he still manages to wheedle a fine solo out. and then there's the narrative of the musicians/engineers feeling that the track was nailed by about 20 takes, but elvis goes on to do another 12, then listens to every single one back again on the monitors, plumping for take 28. what i'd like to know is what it was that he heard in that take that he didn't hear in the others.....

plus i'd love to hear some of the other takes too. one of those master tapes that rca binned in the 60s i think.

― whatever (boglogger), Thursday, 15 December 2005 20:43 (twenty years ago)

Ack. I meant D.J. Fontana, of course. Blah!

― James, Thursday, 15 December 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)

I thought you meant D.C. Fontana.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 15 December 2005 21:06 (twenty years ago)

Guralnick made me appreciate the Vegas Elvis, FWIW...

― Pete Scholtes, Friday, 16 December 2005 06:51 (twenty years ago)

I met Fontana once, and told him that the drums on "Hound Dog" were the greatest sound ever.

"Really?" he said, incredulously.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Friday, 16 December 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

That's wonderful.

― moley, Friday, 16 December 2005 12:07 (twenty years ago)

six years pass...

http://soulfulmusic.blogspot.com/2012/08/chips-moman-cmhof-interview.html

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 21 August 2012 14:48 (thirteen years ago)

http://soulfulmusic.blogspot.com/2012/08/hit-making-house-band-memphis-boys-gets.html

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 21 August 2012 15:03 (thirteen years ago)

There is also this book about The Memphis Boys http://www.amazon.com/Memphis-Boys-Story-American-Studios/dp/1617031992/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345562691&sr=8-1&keywords=memphis+boys

but it is way too long to read straight through.

― Safe European Momus (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 21 August 2012 15:26 (thirteen years ago)

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