“Stranger in My Own Home Town” offered Elvis the chance to sink his teeth into some genuine Memphis-style blues (though the writer, Percy Mayfield, was from Louisiana), albeit at a slightly faster pace than was traditional to the genre. The song was one of the easier tracks that Elvis and Chips laid down in their second session together; it came together in only a few takes, and even though there wasn’t much that needed to be done with it, the arrangement was impressive nonetheless. There is a strong bass groove throughout the piece, and a twelve-bar-blues drum beat underneath, but nothing overpowers Elvis’s seemingly-improvised singing-style, with all the little asides and flourishes (“oh yeah” and shouts of “play it again!” peppered throughout) that would soon come to define his live act.
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“Power of My Love” was another blues number, this time sung at a more moderate pace befitting the style. It’s the Trumpet and harmonica playing of session-musicians RF Taylor and Ed Kollis that steal the show here, however, taking the subtle double-entendres and innuendo of the lyrics and putting a spotlight on every turn of phrase. It makes the simple blues song turn into almost an inside joke between singer and listener. Elvis even cracks himself up at one of the lines, where the phrase “you can’t lick it” goes from referring to “beating something up” to meaning…something else entirely.
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After a thirty-minute break, Elvis returned to work by sitting down at the piano and taking the lead on “After Loving You,” another ballad. The final mix doesn’t allow the piano much chance to shine (it’s mostly the guitar and drumbeat that grabs your attention), but the passion in Elvis’s voice is unmistakable. The song runs three minutes long and ends up being a little repetitive toward the end (it even fades out awkwardly, as though there was minutes more that was simply cut), making the whole affair feel more like an informal jam than an official recording, but the quality is undeniable and Chips ended up using it on the forthcoming LP, despite a typical aversion to informal-sounding recordings.
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As easily as everyone had arrived at “Suspicious Minds,” the country-ballad “Kentucky Rain” was a challenge. The lyrics were good, Elvis was clearly engaged by the material, and Moman saw the potential in it too, but the first few takes were off. One was too slow, one was too dramatic, one was too low-pitched. But eventually, everyone found the right way to approach the song and it started coming together. It still took several more takes before it was done, but when it was it was quickly decided that it was single-worthy. Indeed it was, and it would reach #16 on the Hot100, and #3 on the Adult Contemporary. It even reached number-one on the Canadian country music charts. Ironically, its worst charting position was on the US Country Chart, where it only reached top-30 status. Still, it was another big seller, selling at least 500,000 copies (certified gold) just as the previous four singles Presley had released had done (his best streak since 1963).
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“Any Day Now” was in the same vein as “You’ll Think of Me” in that it began with a long instrumental intro and put an equal emphasis on the arrangement around the singer as on the singer himself. Before these sessions, it was rare indeed for Elvis to record songs that required so little of himself. There are seconds-long stretches of tape where all that is heard is the studio band surrounding Presley. Compare that to the music he had recorded going all the way back to his beginning at SUN studios and you’ll see how different these songs were. And yet, it worked: Elvis sounded truly contemporary for the first time in a long time.
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In all, Elvis recorded over thirty songs under Chips Moman’s leadership. When he was done, the singer privately confided to friends that it was the most fulfilling work he’d ever done in his career. Part of that was just the afterglow of a successful session mixed with the light being clearly visible at the end of his weary 1960’s tunnel, but it was also not far from the truth. It had been a very long time since Elvis recorded that much material with that much enthusiasm. It was also the first time since working under Sam Phillips that Elvis really stepped back and let someone else control the direction of the music; he acted as a de facto producer on almost everything he recorded with RCA in the ’50s, only occasionally yielding to Lieber and Stoller on hits like “Jailhouse Rock” and “Don’t.” Those songs were right in his wheelhouse however and didn’t require too many leaps of faith. During his soundtrack days, the singer was often too bored or too frustrated to speak up and offer suggestions; he just did as he was told in order to get out of the studio as quickly as possible. Working under Chips challenged him in a way he hadn’t been since the beginning of his career, and the fruits of his labors would pay off in a big way, with five high-charting songs, including a number one hit and three platinum-sellers of over a million copies.
It was almost enough to get through Change of Habit without a single frown.
Elvis’s last (scripted) movie required a March 1969 soundtrack session, booked for Decca’s studio in Hollywood. Four songs were finished and “Rubberneckin” from the American session was added to the soundtrack to give it some oomph, likely because the rest of it was banal. The title track was just that, a movie title song and nothing more…other than a fuzz bass that is wasted on such a throwaway tune. A ballad, “Let’s Be Friends” was so flimsy it could have been see-through. Its companion song, “Have a Happy” was a little more lively, but it was handicapped by the same bad high-key piano-playing that hurts “Let’s Be Friends.”
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As with his other recent soundtracks, there was no LP released. Instead, a budget LP entitled Let’s Be Friends featured a trio of songs from the film, mixed with songs from Stay Away Joe, The Trouble with Girls, and Charro! as well as a few songs recently recorded at American (but deemed not good enough for a proper LP release). The album actually ended up going gold and then, years later, platinum. Maybe they should have adopted that mix-and-match strategy for his soundtracks earlier…
