Wot - no 36th anniversary of Elvis Presley's Death thread; how the mighty have fallen!

Elvis Presley: 20 Essential Songs

A rather mundane selection

Wow. Whoever wrote that just looked at the back of an Elvis Presley Greatest Hits album and wrote down the songs. Mundane is a perfect description.

Promised Land would be right at the top of my list.

It Hurts Me, Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time, Long Black Limousine, and Girl of My Best Friend would be at the top of my list.

..where's My Happiness??? .... Even that day everything was already in place

And Baby Let's Play House .... heck a million white boys poured outta the mountains a jitterin' and tryin' emulate that hiccup vocal ....



ROCKMAN

Funny thing is all day yesterday I thought I had forgotten someone's birthday as I remembered Aug 16 as an important date.

I was completely vexed until I opened up this thread.

As far as the top 20 list goes, mostly no-brainers but the inclusion of Way Down and A Little Less Conversation is kind of like having a Stones top 20 and including Rough Justice and No Spare Parts.

Good songs yes, but 20 top essential? Hardly.

BTW, why hasn't our resident Elvis expert, whom I'll call LasVegasHilton to protect his anonymity, already posted on this thread?

Quote
Rockman

And Baby Let's Play House .... heck a million white boys poured outta the mountains a jitterin' and tryin' emulate that hiccup vocal ....

Absolutely. And Jimmy Page cites this as the recording that inspired him to pick up a guitar.

Compiling a top-20 'most essential' for Elvis Presley is a challenge too much!

Elvis' top-20 pre-Army recordings :-

That's All Right Mama
Baby, Let's Play House
Good Rockin' Tonight
Blue Moon
Mystery Train
I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone
Heartbreak Hotel
Hound Dog
Blue Suede Shoes
Don't Be Cruel
All Shook Up
Old Shep
Loving You
Mean Woman Blues
Treat Me Nice
(There'll Be) Peace In The Valley
Jailhouse Rock
Young And Beautiful
Blue Christmas
Don't

Kentucky rain is a overlooked gem

Quote
dgodkin
Kentucky rain is a overlooked gem

I overlooked it for a long time. For some baffling reason, it's often omitted from Elvis' Best-of's. It doesn't feature on any of his studio albums, so had to download it from i-Tunes. It's immense.

Quote
belubettlo
Wot - no 36th anniversary of Elvis Presley's Death thread; how the mighty have fallen!

Elvis Presley: 20 Essential Songs

A rather mundane selection

Some of the omissions on that list make me actually embarrassed for the guy who compiled it.

A few of them absolutely belong there, but its clearly compiled by someone whose entire knowledge of Elvis' music is a couple of greatest hits albums.


A dozen alternatives :















































and IMHO, the greatest record he ever made :

Stranger In My Own Home Town is one of his best. There's an X rated version from 1970, some months' after the 1969 Memphis version, and it's just as good.

Quote
Big Al

Quote
Rockman

And Baby Let's Play House .... heck a million white boys poured outta the mountains a jitterin' and tryin' emulate that hiccup vocal ....

Absolutely. And Jimmy Page cites this as the recording that inspired him to pick up a guitar.

Compiling a top-20 'most essential' for Elvis Presley is a challenge too much!

so elvis inspired jimmy page to steal black peoples music?

Quote
spsimmons
Wow. Whoever wrote that just looked at the back of an Elvis Presley Greatest Hits album and wrote down the songs. Mundane is a perfect description.

No different from the writers at Rolling Stone who compile any top 10, 20, or 50 list of greatest Stones songs--invariably, any top 20 list of any mega-legend artist is going to include the hits that people know.

And the greatest hits are essential--just ask Mick when he compiles a set list for a concert. He wants to get people dancing, rather than just sitting there staring.

That said, the list omits his last top 10 song (it was kept out of the #1 spot on the Billboard singles chart by Chuck Berry's My Ding-A-Ling, though it became his 20th #1 via the Cashbox chart), which, significantly, was also one of the last rock songs he recorded:







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-08-17 23:57 by stonehearted.

Quote
keefriffhard4life

Quote
Big Al

Quote
Rockman

And Baby Let's Play House .... heck a million white boys poured outta the mountains a jitterin' and tryin' emulate that hiccup vocal ....

Absolutely. And Jimmy Page cites this as the recording that inspired him to pick up a guitar.

Compiling a top-20 'most essential' for Elvis Presley is a challenge too much!

so elvis inspired jimmy page to steal black peoples music?

Minus the Jimmy Page part, Elvis has been accused of this for decades.

I couldn't be bothered to click through all those songs on the link, but seriously?? No Mystery Train??

All the Dorsey Brothers shows will have ya wreckin' the room
but it's Money Honey from the final appearance on 24 March 1956
that wrecks me .... The acoustic drive... Scotty's guitar...Elvis' hair...lip
..legs and it's possibly the closest were gonna get ta seein' on film what
they were like when they were cuttin' those Sun Sessions ......



ROCKMAN

Quote
keefriffhard4life

Quote
Big Al

Quote
Rockman

And Baby Let's Play House .... heck a million white boys poured outta the mountains a jitterin' and tryin' emulate that hiccup vocal ....

Absolutely. And Jimmy Page cites this as the recording that inspired him to pick up a guitar.

Compiling a top-20 'most essential' for Elvis Presley is a challenge too much!

so elvis inspired jimmy page to steal black peoples music?

You say that as if its a bad thing.

Just got inspired for a little Elvis fix -- "There's Good Rockin' Tonight" and "Baby Let's Play House." circa 1955

Quote
Rockman
All the Dorsey Brothers shows will have ya wreckin' the room
but it's Money Honey from the final appearance on 24 March 1956
that wrecks me .... The acoustic drive... Scotty's guitar...Elvis' hair...lip
..legs and it's possibly the closest were gonna get ta seein' on film what
they were like when they were cuttin' those Sun Sessions ......

Good call, mate.

Its a song I've probably overlooked myself over the years, but its a bloody good one.

Bill Black's bass steals it for me, though on the original.

video: [www.youtube.com]

Good call, mate.

Yeah Gazza as I said .... It's the closet we will possibly ever get to
seein' them as they woulda worked in the Sun studio ....
check the lip at around 1.05 ....although the vocal and lip work for I Was The One on 18 Feb ain't half-shabby either .....

McPhatter cut the original Money Honey in August '53 after leaving
Billy Ward's Dominoes..recruiting gospel band Thrasher Wonders
as back up vocals..renaming them The Drifters and recording at Atlantic for Wexler & Ertegun....
Money Honey hit No1 on the R&B charts in November and stayed there for something like 8 weeks ..........CLASSIC STUFF ...

We're lucky to get Money Honey on Dorsey Show for
they were scheduled to perform Blue Suede Shoes but seeing how
Carl Perkins was to have been on the Perry Como in same time slot
but was badly hurt in car accident on his way to New York ... out
of respect for fellow Sun artist Presley refused to perform Perkin's
song and opted for Money Honey ... Where he turns it from R&B into one mighty rockin' thing...

Bill Black.... check out Fred Maddox from Maddox Bros and Rose ... He was doin' slap-bass as far back as 1937 and was Bill Black's main inspiration ...



ROCKMAN

Quote
treaclefingers
BTW, why hasn't our resident Elvis expert, whom I'll call LasVegasHilton to protect his anonymity, already posted on this thread?

Sorry...celebrated a little too long and heavy...A Little Less Conversation A Little More Action...

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
treaclefingers
BTW, why hasn't our resident Elvis expert, whom I'll call LasVegasHilton to protect his anonymity, already posted on this thread?

Sorry...celebrated a little too long and heavy...A Little Less Conversation A Little More Action...

I'm a little shocked and disappointed you missed the date, but welcome back.

Quote
treaclefingers

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
treaclefingers
BTW, why hasn't our resident Elvis expert, whom I'll call LasVegasHilton to protect his anonymity, already posted on this thread?

Sorry...celebrated a little too long and heavy...A Little Less Conversation A Little More Action...

I'm a little shocked and disappointed you missed the date, but welcome back.

I'm saddened and stunned...and thirsty

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
treaclefingers

Quote
Munichhilton

Quote
treaclefingers
BTW, why hasn't our resident Elvis expert, whom I'll call LasVegasHilton to protect his anonymity, already posted on this thread?

Sorry...celebrated a little too long and heavy...A Little Less Conversation A Little More Action...

I'm a little shocked and disappointed you missed the date, but welcome back.

I'm saddened and stunned...and thirsty

it's the pretzels...consider low sodium pretzels.

It is as ridiculous and useless as any journalist's bollocks of that type. 20 essential songs? Elvis is essential as such. I am looking forward to the next article (well, it is not even an article, is it?), which I guess will be 20 essential sentences by Hemingway.

Quote
Happy24
It is as ridiculous and useless as any journalist's bollocks of that type. 20 essential songs? Elvis is essential as such. I am looking forward to the next article (well, it is not even an article, is it?), which I guess will be 20 essential sentences by Hemingway.

It will be strung together as one sentence and will not contain any commas.