Felton Jarvis resigned from RCA soon after the Houston Concert. Over the several years he’d worked with Elvis, the singer came to enjoy the laid-back approach that Jarvis took as a producer and he asked him to come work for him directly, not only as his personal producer but also as a co-manager of his suddenly-busy concert schedule. With his new role, Jarvis would work with RCA on behalf of their most prized asset, giving him more leverage than he had as an employee of RCA. The downside would come when Elvis grew bored of his current situation and started craving new adventures; when that happened it would be up to Jarvis to reel him in and ensure the singer met the contract obligations RCA set out for him (multiple albums and singles per year). But in 1970 Elvis was focused and excited, so getting him to work was no challenge at all.
The June recording session in Nashville would accomplish multiple needs: RCA needed a new studio album and Elvis wanted to make a whole record of country songs, almost like an anthology of the history of the genre that was only recently breaking into national airplay. In addition, there would be a soundtrack accompanying the documentary film that was set for Thanksgiving of 1970. The idea of doing it as a closed-circuit show was nixed for a traditional film release, focusing on Elvis as a stage performer and the excitement fans had to see him live for the first time in years. Thirty-five songs were selected to be spread out over the two LP projects, with others set aside for single release. Even then there would be enough material left over for an additional album. It was the biggest recording session Elvis had ever undertaken, but he was in a working-mood and it needed to be used while it lasted.
Unfortunately, only a handful of the songs Felton assembled for him to sing were able to match the library Chips Moman brought to him the previous year. Many of the standouts of the session were old songs that Elvis intended to sing; the new material frustrated him and he would even criticize them on stage when he had to sing them (for the documentary). His 1968 pledge to Steve Binder was already out the window.
“Twenty Days and Twenty Nights” was supposed to be the big new ballad to be shown off for the movie and released as a single, but Elvis never got comfortable with the lyrics and even said on stage “this is a new song I have and I don’t particularly dig singing it…but it’s on the program so here we go…” and even showed obvious frustration when he and his band were out of sync. The final film cut out all of that, but out-takes reveal it. The song itself just didn’t have the spark that the 1969 ballads offered. The straight-love song “How the Web was Woven” offered a little more to work with, but only a little.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“I’ve Lost You” was a more like it, however. A ballad about love-lost would become an albatross that dragged down much of his music in the final few years of his life, but here he sings with gusto and passion instead of depression and solemnity. The big band production elevates it further and made it a song worthy of a single release. It only hit #32 on the Hot100 however, but it peaked at #5 on the Adult Contemporary charts.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“The Sound of Your Cry” is sort of the forgotten sibling to “I’ve Lost You.” The songs are similar in composition and arrangement but where “It’s Only Love” was given a big 45 release, “The Sound of Your Cry” was dropped as a B-side a year later with little fanfare or publicity. In the years to come, when RCA would re-release seemingly every Elvis song on one compilation album or another, “The Sound of Your Cry” would typically be overlooked. It’s become almost a lost gem that many Presley fans have never heard.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“The Fool” was originally informally recorded in the late-50’s while Elvis was in the army. There’s a pretty fine quality version of it floating around online, despite it being a home tape-recording. Elvis returned to it twelve years later to give it a big-budget makeover and to feature it on the country and western album he was excited about. Playing the two songs back to back shows how far Elvis had come since he said goodbye to the 1950s and how much his voice and style had grown too.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“Bridge Over Troubled Water” was only a few months old when Elvis recorded his own version. Of all the songs he performed live in Las Vegas, this is arguably the greatest vocal performance that never received a studio rendition. His voice is huge, operatic, and chill-bringing in its delivery. Unfortunately, it would not become a fixture of his act in the future, but it never failed to bring the crowd to a standing ovation whenever he performed it.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“It’s Your Baby You Rock It” was one of the few new songs Elvis recorded during the June studio session, and its silly lyrics and passionless delivery illustrate how hard it was to get consistently-good hit music that was also new. Most of Elvis’s best work came from material twenty or thirty years old, songs he’d been singing since childhood. When he was given something written recently for him and told to deliver it with the same passion and effortless charm as the “old stuff” he rarely could do it. He needed to believe in the music to really give it something special; sometimes he could take a brand new track and make it instantly-timeless, but it was a magic that couldn’t be brought to life on cue.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“Just Pretend” is an enigma of a song. The official version, released on the soundtrack for the upcoming-documentary is the studio master, in all its plodding. The studio version is so sleepy and uninspired it might as well be white noise. It inspires no emotion. It stirs up no reaction.
On the other hand is the live version, featured in the docufilm: Elvis ups the speed, and feeds off the energy of the moment to deliver a stirring version that’s night-and-day better over its sister version.
“Faded Love” is a western-swing in its origins, with lyrics that date back to antebellum days. In Elvis’s 1970 hands, it was turned into a country-rocker with far more attitude and emotion found in the fiddle-featured versions sung in generations prior. Elvis was happy with the finished product and suggested it as a single, but instead, RCA went with “I Really Don’t Want to Know” as the big lead-off of the Country Album. It reached #6 and Faded Love faded into relative obscurity, though it was resurrected in 1980 as a B-side that managed to be a top-40 hit.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
“Tomorrow Never Comes” is probably the most effective ballad on the Country Album. Elvis’s voice booms with heartache over a love that promises eternal companionship but never follows through with it. Where it was equal parts tender and powerful, the outlaw-country tune “I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water” was equal parts loud and energized. Elvis sings about a rebel on the run and turns silly lyrics into a fun country-rocker.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
Please accept YouTube cookies to play this video. By accepting you will be accessing content from YouTube, a service provided by an external third party.
If you accept this notice, your choice will be saved and the page will refresh.
After thirty-five masters were finished over the course of a week, Elvis flew out to Vegas with documentary cameras ready. The film, now titled That’s the Way it Is, focused on three aspects of Elvis’s 1970 Las Vegas commitment: His rehearsals, the anticipation of his fans for the show, and excerpts from the concerts themselves.
For his outfit, Elvis turned to Bill Belew, who designed Elvis’s instantly-iconic black leather suit. What Presley needed here, however, was something that allowed a little more freedom of movement. The same basic design was retained, with the open chest and massive collars, but the fabric was switched to 100% cotton. Stark white was the color of choice, as it would allow Elvis almost to glow under the spotlight in the darkened concert hall; at times he looked like Jor-El in the Dick Donner Superman movie! Multiple variants were featured, some with more tassels, some with more splashes of color, some more simple and some more extravagant. Within just a year, Elvis would add rhinestones, and then would come the giant belts and the capes, and the costumes would grow and grow to mythic proportions, but in the beginning, it was a very clean white suit meant to let the overly-energized Presley dance and shake and move at 100mph.
“Suspicious Minds” was the song that best-demonstrated the importance of freedom of movement. Elvis sings the song for six manic minutes, occasionally literally hopping in place in an attempt to drive his pent-up energy out. By the end of it he was absolutely haggard, but still commanded the band like a karate instructor-turned-orchestra conductor and with just a wave of his hand brought the audience to its feet during the final note.
The documentary film was released in theaters in November and though it was not a huge hit, it still performed better than his recent scripted-films had done, and the accompanying soundtrack was a top-twenty album in the overall LP chart and reached #8 on the country chart (higher than the eventual Country Album would do, ironically).
To Elvis, things looked better than they had in a very long time. He was making music again—real music—and even with another movie in the can it was a movie that did not require embarrassing line readings or insulting soundtrack material. He played himself, which was always a more interesting character than anything Hollywood could write. Right now he was starring in the comeback story for the ages.
Unfortunately, right around the corner would be a much darker sequel.
