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Big Al

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Maindefender
Just saw the movie……it goes without saying he was a force of nature. A master showman. And that band plus backup singers…woof! He was so intimate with them.
Probably wise he did movies during the first British Invasion. I have to see if there is a collection of songs from the post Germany movie period that would be cool to have.
There was a 20 second nod to the Stones and Jagger being the only artist that could hold a candle to Elvis……that’s speaks volumes

in my opinion, some of his finest work was recorded during the immediate post-army period: It’s Now Or Never; Little Sister; His Latest Flame; Suspicion; She’s Not You; the Elvis Is Back! album. GI Blues is awful, but for me, the music didn’t fully deteriorate until about 1963. 1960-1962 was a great and commercially successful period for Elvis. Oh, there’s also the fabulous Return To Sender and Can’t Help Falling In Love With You!

Edit: give Elvis’ Golden Records Volume 3 a listen. The extended release from 1997 covers the 1960-1962 period very well.

Will do thanks

I have recently seen the Jeff Buckley film ,the new Paul McCartney/Wings film and this new Elvis film at the cinema. I loved it. Elvis really oozed charisma and talent - he really was something else.
I have also just booked tickets to see the new Marianne Faithfull film coming out. My local cinema shows so many great 'obscure' films and they are all £4 each. I am very lucky.

I used the word 'film' way too many times :'D



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-05 15:35 by Barkerboy2.

Is any of the Elvis film’s video and audio qualities AI enhanced?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-05 20:20 by Taylor1.

No... In most of the Baz Lurmann
interviews he stresses that AI was not used



ROCKMAN

Quote
Big Al
Who else, here, would rather listen to prime Elvis than the so-called 'blues greats'; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf; Elmore James and B.B. King, etc? Don't get me wrong; I do appreciate - and enjoy! - some blues music, but it simply doesn't resonate with me like rock 'n roll does: Elvis, Buddy Holly; Chuck Berry and Ricky Nelson.

dear god no!

don't get me wrong elvis is fine and i enjoy him and appreciate his significance to music and culture (and thanks to this thread i'll try to see this film as it sounds great)

but by my own personal preference if i was to rank him alongside the other early rock n' rollers i'd put him below fats domino, little richard, jerry lee lewis, buddy holly, bo diddly, and chuck berry

would i rather listen to him then muddy, howlin' wolf, elmore james, and bb king?

nope

that's like preferring the the monkeys to the rolling stones

not that there's anything wrong with the monkeys either

Quote
Rockman
The Sun Sessions are essential ....

Again, this. Hear the revolution begin. Sam Phillips's Sun Records in Memphis was recording mostly black artists. He knew instinctively that if a hot young white guy with rhythm were to deliver the more overt sexuality, innuendo, and beats that already existed in black blues and rhythm and blues, that would be something that might do well.

Bill Haley and the Comets of Pennsylvania had already been recording rock n roll for years, but Haley simply lacked the sex appeal, he wasn't doing much for the girls. And when Elvis walked into Phillips' studio at 18, then again at 19, honestly Phillips didn't see the possibility there. Phillips' secretary kinda did, though.

There's lore among his worshippers that young Elvis had hung out on Memphis' black entertainment strip, Beale Street, to absorb that influence. But I agree with Elvis's definitive biographer, Peter Guralnick, that that was very unlikely. That street at night was dangerous and way too scary for white people who weren't cops. (My parents were farm people from just north of Memphis.) Rather, Guralnick points out that there were very few black radio stations in the 1940s and 50s South, and those that existed had very short broadcast ranges. But the Presleys lived in a poor white housing project that was one of the few white parts of Memphis that could pick up the city's one black station, and that that was how jr. high and high school age Elvis heard those sounds. Listening to radio play of what most southerners dismissively called "(n-word) music."

And that was the big leap, the extra bit of sexiness in Elvis' Sun Records, mostly conveyed in how he peformed it live, with nasty hip bumps and grinds and very unambiguous sneers to his mostly female crowds. He skipped I wanna hold your hand and went straight to Baby let's play house. In fall 1955 at the Old Dominion Barn Dance here in Richmond, his set in the day's first show was so raunchy the woman proprietor refused to allow him back onstage for the second show. Elvis was the bad boy, deliberately transgressive. He'd hock his chewing gum in an arc out into some crowds... kinds of stuff we'd later deem punk in the 1970s. Some girls were grossed out by him, others were turned on, and all parents were offended.

Getting the suggested raunch into white music, out onto white radio airwaves, and played by white teenagers, was what changed popular music and teenaged culture... adding the sex to sex & rock and roll. Without somebody busting through that barrier in 1955 and 1956 there never could have been darling you can cream on me from Mick in 1969.

Oh, and it ignited a huge culture war in summer 1956. Every minister preached against what was happening, every newspaper editorial page opined against it, and every "respectable" magazine ran a story criticizing it. The backlash was very, very heavy. Such that the Colonel moved Elvis essentially out of rock n roll (with rare exceptions) and into movies and ballads by late 1956. All with Elvis' concurrence, of course. He'd wanted to be a movie star to begin with anyway. Movie stars were a known thing, established and, mostly, respected. Whereas there had never been a true rock star, Elvis was a singular, new and strange thing, and he was taking all the heat for all the wild changes that were happening.

There's a parody documentary, an alternative history called The Confederate States of America, in which the South won the Civil War. In it Elvis is forced to flee to Canada, and American music remains wholesome, bland, crooner and ballad-based, never having allowed all of those scary African beats and passions into it

Anybody with further interest in these beginnings, Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis is the greatest rock biography I've ever read. Baz Luhrmann relied significantly on it and its sequel Careless Love for both his Elvis biopic and for EPiC.

Quote
ProfessorWolf

Quote
Big Al
Who else, here, would rather listen to prime Elvis than the so-called 'blues greats'; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf; Elmore James and B.B. King, etc? Don't get me wrong; I do appreciate - and enjoy! - some blues music, but it simply doesn't resonate with me like rock 'n roll does: Elvis, Buddy Holly; Chuck Berry and Ricky Nelson.

dear god no!

don't get me wrong elvis is fine and i enjoy him and appreciate his significance to music and culture (and thanks to this thread i'll try to see this film as it sounds great)

but by my own personal preference if i was to rank him alongside the other early rock n' rollers i'd put him below fats domino, little richard, jerry lee lewis, buddy holly, bo diddly, and chuck berry

would i rather listen to him then muddy, howlin' wolf, elmore james, and bb king?

nope

that's like preferring the the monkeys to the rolling stones

not that there's anything wrong with the monkeys either

The ‘Monkey’s to the Rolling Stones’? Nonsense! However, if so, gimme Daydream Believer over the Stones’ limp rendition of ‘Under The Boardwalk’ any day!

ProfessorWolf, my ranking would be:

Elvis
Buddy Holly
Chuck Berry
Little Richard
Jerry Lee Lewis
Bo Diddley
Fats Domino

* I was very tempted to place Chuck ahead of Holly, but I believe Holly would’ve adapted to the 60’s and change in a way that Chuck simply didn’t. It Doesn’t Matter Anymore and It’s Raining In My Heart are masterpieces. Sigh, what could have been, eh?

Quote
Big Al

Quote
ProfessorWolf

Quote
Big Al
Who else, here, would rather listen to prime Elvis than the so-called 'blues greats'; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf; Elmore James and B.B. King, etc? Don't get me wrong; I do appreciate - and enjoy! - some blues music, but it simply doesn't resonate with me like rock 'n roll does: Elvis, Buddy Holly; Chuck Berry and Ricky Nelson.

dear god no!

don't get me wrong elvis is fine and i enjoy him and appreciate his significance to music and culture (and thanks to this thread i'll try to see this film as it sounds great)

but by my own personal preference if i was to rank him alongside the other early rock n' rollers i'd put him below fats domino, little richard, jerry lee lewis, buddy holly, bo diddly, and chuck berry

would i rather listen to him then muddy, howlin' wolf, elmore james, and bb king?

nope

that's like preferring the the monkeys to the rolling stones

not that there's anything wrong with the monkeys either

The ‘Monkey’s to the Rolling Stones’? Nonsense! However, if so, gimme Daydream Believer over the Stones’ limp rendition of ‘Under The Boardwalk’ any day!

agreed about daydream believer

Quote
Big Al
ProfessorWolf, my ranking would be:

Elvis
Buddy Holly
Chuck Berry
Little Richard
Jerry Lee Lewis
Bo Diddley
Fats Domino

* I was very tempted to place Chuck ahead of Holly, but I believe Holly would’ve adapted to the 60’s and change in a way that Chuck simply didn’t. It Doesn’t Matter Anymore and It’s Raining In My Heart are masterpieces. Sigh, what could have been, eh?

mine would be something like

chuck berry
bo diddley
buddy holly (agree he would have adapted)
little richard (he did adapt)
fats domino
jerry lee lewis
elvis



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-05 22:32 by ProfessorWolf.

Quote
ProfessorWolf

Quote
Big Al
ProfessorWolf, my ranking would be:

Elvis
Buddy Holly
Chuck Berry
Little Richard
Jerry Lee Lewis
Bo Diddley
Fats Domino

* I was very tempted to place Chuck ahead of Holly, but I believe Holly would’ve adapted to the 60’s and change in a way that Chuck simply didn’t. It Doesn’t Matter Anymore and It’s Raining In My Heart are masterpieces. Sigh, what could have been, eh?

mine would be something like

chuck berry
bo diddley
buddy holly (agree he would have adapted)
little richard (he did adapt)
fats domino
jerry lee lewis
elvis

....and Eddie Cochran....+ Gene Vincent...that's all...

I understand opinions exist and everyone is clearly entitled to their own, but in what way is rating an artist like Elvis over his 50s rock and roll contemporaries or blues legends, in any way comparable to saying the Monkees are superior to the Stones?

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HotStuff92
I understand opinions exist and everyone is clearly entitled to their own, but in what way is rating an artist like Elvis over his 50s rock and roll contemporaries or blues legends, in any way comparable to saying the Monkees are superior to the Stones?

point taken

perhaps i was being a tad extreme with my example



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-06 03:31 by ProfessorWolf.

Quote
TheBluesHadaBaby

Quote
Rockman
The Sun Sessions are essential ....

Again, this. Hear the revolution begin. Sam Phillips's Sun Records in Memphis was recording mostly black artists. He knew instinctively that if a hot young white guy with rhythm were to deliver the more overt sexuality, innuendo, and beats that already existed in black blues and rhythm and blues, that would be something that might do well.

Bill Haley and the Comets of Pennsylvania had already been recording rock n roll for years, but Haley simply lacked the sex appeal, he wasn't doing much for the girls. And when Elvis walked into Phillips' studio at 18, then again at 19, honestly Phillips didn't see the possibility there. Phillips' secretary kinda did, though.

There's lore among his worshippers that young Elvis had hung out on Memphis' black entertainment strip, Beale Street, to absorb that influence. But I agree with Elvis's definitive biographer, Peter Guralnick, that that was very unlikely. That street at night was dangerous and way too scary for white people who weren't cops. (My parents were farm people from just north of Memphis.) Rather, Guralnick points out that there were very few black radio stations in the 1940s and 50s South, and those that existed had very short broadcast ranges. But the Presleys lived in a poor white housing project that was one of the few white parts of Memphis that could pick up the city's one black station, and that that was how jr. high and high school age Elvis heard those sounds. Listening to radio play of what most southerners dismissively called "(n-word) music."

And that was the big leap, the extra bit of sexiness in Elvis' Sun Records, mostly conveyed in how he peformed it live, with nasty hip bumps and grinds and very unambiguous sneers to his mostly female crowds. He skipped I wanna hold your hand and went straight to Baby let's play house. In fall 1955 at the Old Dominion Barn Dance here in Richmond, his set in the day's first show was so raunchy the woman proprietor refused to allow him back onstage for the second show. Elvis was the bad boy, deliberately transgressive. He'd hock his chewing gum in an arc out into some crowds... kinds of stuff we'd later deem punk in the 1970s. Some girls were grossed out by him, others were turned on, and all parents were offended.

Getting the suggested raunch into white music, out onto white radio airwaves, and played by white teenagers, was what changed popular music and teenaged culture... adding the sex to sex & rock and roll. Without somebody busting through that barrier in 1955 and 1956 there never could have been darling you can cream on me from Mick in 1969.

Oh, and it ignited a huge culture war in summer 1956. Every minister preached against what was happening, every newspaper editorial page opined against it, and every "respectable" magazine ran a story criticizing it. The backlash was very, very heavy. Such that the Colonel moved Elvis essentially out of rock n roll (with rare exceptions) and into movies and ballads by late 1956. All with Elvis' concurrence, of course. He'd wanted to be a movie star to begin with anyway. Movie stars were a known thing, established and, mostly, respected. Whereas there had never been a true rock star, Elvis was a singular, new and strange thing, and he was taking all the heat for all the wild changes that were happening.

There's a parody documentary, an alternative history called The Confederate States of America, in which the South won the Civil War. In it Elvis is forced to flee to Canada, and American music remains wholesome, bland, crooner and ballad-based, never having allowed all of those scary African beats and passions into it

Anybody with further interest in these beginnings, Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis is the greatest rock biography I've ever read. Baz Luhrmann relied significantly on it and its sequel Careless Love for both his Elvis biopic and for EPiC.

What a great post!

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

ROCKMAN

Just watched it...there's a reason why he was the KING !!!

I saw it earlier. It made me need to listen to the mentionned "Under the Boardwalk".

Quote
ProfessorWolf

Quote
Big Al
Who else, here, would rather listen to prime Elvis than the so-called 'blues greats'; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf; Elmore James and B.B. King, etc? Don't get me wrong; I do appreciate - and enjoy! - some blues music, but it simply doesn't resonate with me like rock 'n roll does: Elvis, Buddy Holly; Chuck Berry and Ricky Nelson.

dear god no!

don't get me wrong elvis is fine and i enjoy him and appreciate his significance to music and culture (and thanks to this thread i'll try to see this film as it sounds great)

but by my own personal preference if i was to rank him alongside the other early rock n' rollers i'd put him below fats domino, little richard, jerry lee lewis, buddy holly, bo diddly, and chuck berry

would i rather listen to him then muddy, howlin' wolf, elmore james, and bb king?

nope

that's like preferring the the monkeys to the rolling stones

not that there's anything wrong with the monkeys either

Good one!

God knows why I posted early in this thread that Elvis was the best frontman next to Jagger. Maybe Keith gives the answer by talking about Scotty Moore:








Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-06 19:04 by TheflyingDutchman.

Depending your location in time and geography will differ your view on Elvis.

So I am a bigger fan of The Rolling Stones than Elvis but for me Elvis'56 was the spark of Rock 'N' Roll boom.

For some their age and their location could be factors that made them love Elvis. In my case I was born in France in 1959 and I lived in small towns. As a teen-ager my friends were into prog rock or hard rock.In 1974 I started to listen to rockandroll music pretty much on my own. My friends thought that Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry were old and out of fashion. I loved that rockandroll music from the 50's a lot then and I still do. It came to me naturally and I started to understand the connections and the evolution of rock and roll by studying the music of the pioneers. Of course Elvis stood out as a giant but all the other musicians of his generation were also great. My location and my age were not factors that made me follow a trend.I believe I was born with that love for rockandroll music and the first time I was exposed to it, I got hooked!

EPIC -- Elvis Presley In Commode



ROCKMAN

Quote
TheflyingDutchman
God knows why I posted early in this thread that Elvis was the best frontman next to Jagger. Maybe Keith gives the answer by talking about Scotty Moore:

Scotty Moore was incredible.

Heartbreak Hotel, by the way, was Elvis' first release recorded under the RCA label, shortly after Sam Phillips at the end of 1955 sold his contract to RCA for a then-record amount, $35,000. Sam claimed to have hated the song, calling it "a morbid mess", but I suspect sour grapes, I think it's a fabulous song.

Heartbreak Hotel was a landmark Elvis single in another way as well (and besides it causing Keith to realize that had to be his job in life, playing like Scotty). It was the first time someone had written a song specifically for Elvis to record.

Again, Elvis didn't write songs -- one of IMO multiple ways in which he was less talented than Mick, Keith, John and Paul. But starting with his RCA sessions he became so popular that songwriters would bring him new songs (like songwriters clamor to get their songs to Beyonce, Taylor, et al today). With it his progression began away from recording exclusively covers of existing r&b, hillbilly, and early rock n roll songs, and towards recording new songs that songwriters brought to him.

I believe most of his late-career biggest hits were songs written specifically for him... but that might be wrong, I'm not that versed on Elvis' movie era and beyond music.

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 ......

Rockman knows

What became famous from among Elvis' early tv appearances were his 1956 and 1957 Ed Sullivan show performances. But those were tame, paltry and sanitized compared to the actual Elvis live in 1955 and 1956. Ed Sullivan was Elvis restrained and sanitized for television (and let's not even talk about the Steve Allen show).

The early Elvis tv performances to see are his very first, Dorsey Brothers Show appearances... and even those are much watered down from his actual live act.

See those, and the Milton Berle Show appearance where he really bumps and grinds and outrages "decent" American viewers who happened to be watching. (His other appearance on Uncle Milty's show, performing on a Navy ship, isn't interesting.)

All of this is conveniently available in the excellent Levon Helm-narrated documentary "Elvis '56". The montage set to Lawdy Miss Clawdy is pure bliss.

(Reminds me, maybe my favorite of many highlights in EPiC is the extended part on Polk Salad Annie.)

It's a disgrace the musicians and singers of the fantastic TCB band didn't get a mention in the end credits.

In my book, Writing for the King, I spoke to over 140 songwriters whose work was recorded by Elvis, and most remarked about his uncanny ability to capture the essence of a song and make it his own. Like a musical geneticist, Elvis drew from every strand of DNA in a songwriter's work, which ultimately helped shape his own distinctive personal interpretation.

[www.elvis.com.au]

Quote
Big Al
Who else, here, would rather listen to prime Elvis than the so-called 'blues greats'; Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf; Elmore James and B.B. King, etc? Don't get me wrong; I do appreciate - and enjoy! - some blues music, but it simply doesn't resonate with me like rock 'n roll does: Elvis, Buddy Holly; Chuck Berry and Ricky Nelson.

This is probably the first time I would disagree wholeheartedly with you Al!

Muddy, Chester Burnett, Little Walter, Elmore James, Robert Johnson and Co are, in paraphrasing Mr GLS, the Apex. Chuck, Little Richard, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis obviously took it to another level but those cats who arrived slightly before them got it down from the start



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-07 10:10 by MadMax.

EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert - the movie

Beautiful footage, as if you were there yourself, of the great singer and showman Elvis Presley, born in Tupelo.

Some More great early musicians from my archive on vinyl:
Peetie Wheatstraw
Leadbelly
Big Bill Broonzy
Billy Holiday
Bo Diddley
J.B. Lenoir
Blind Willie McTell
The late Bill Williams
Frank Stokes

Baz gives a damn good interview and conveys his authentic passion about his projects extremely well. And he's over the moon about the number of people, including longtime Elvis skeptics, who are coming out of EPiC happy and having met a person they didn't really know before.

Baz is proud that he's giving Elvis the world tour he always wanted but in life never got.

[youtu.be]

Now Baz is working on Joan of Arc.

We need to get the Stones on his list for his next full treatment.
Elvis
Joan of Arc
The Rolling Stones

Yeah, let's get that idea out there.

Quote
runaway
EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert - the movie

Beautiful footage, as if you were there yourself, of the great singer and showman Elvis Presley, born in Tupelo.

Some More great early musicians from my archive on vinyl:
Peetie Wheatstraw
Leadbelly
Big Bill Broonzy
Billy Holiday
Bo Diddley
J.B. Lenoir
Blind Willie McTell
The late Bill Williams
Frank Stokes

Beyond for their music and performances this is the thing I most appreciate the Rolling Stones for. I'm sure that eventually in my life I'd have discovered the great black bluesmen and women who were essential to the very existence of this music we love. But I have no idea how long that would have taken were it not for Brian Mick and Keith having learned about it and harped on the rest of us to learn about it too. It's in large part thanks to those guys that in my music collection I have, idk, 500? blues cds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026-03-07 16:33 by TheBluesHadaBaby.