Falls es irgendwer noch nicht kennt habe ich mal Peter Guralnick's Besprechung von "From Elvis in Memphis" abgetippt, welche '69 im Rolling Stone erschien.
Elvis and Memphis have changed, along with everything else. Country music has beenpolysyllabized, and rhythm and blues, which was once just that, has long since dropped the blues from it's make-up. When Elvis was in high school he could have heard Muddy Water's "Long distance call" or "Honey bee" as popular new releases, and Sonny Boy Williamson's "Don't start me to talkin'" came out at just about the same time as Elvis' own first song. Sam Phillips, Elvis' discoverer, had in the course of just a few years recorded Howlin' Wolf, Bobby Bland, Little Junior Parker, Johnny Ace and BB King, all for the first time. Some records had been leased; others had appeared on hisown Sun label. There was a relaxed interplay- musical and probably social- between white and black that was the product as much of naivete as of conscious commercial exploitation.
When Elvis first redorded fifteen years ago there was no name for the kind of music he was playing. It was just the sort of thing you heard at roadhouses and country fairs all through Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee. Country singers like Sonny Burgess were known for raucous blues like "Red headed woman", and Harmonica Frank, the Great Medical Menagerist recorded by Phillips, was popular for his blues and novelty numbers. All of this was at Elvis' fingertips, and he could sing Arthur Crudup's "That's allright" as naturally as "Isle of broken dreams" or "My happiness" (the song he originally paid to record for his mother's birthday).
Elvis' first commercial release, Crudup's blues backed by a Bill Monroe bluegrass tune, changed everything. For one thing, it changed Sun Records. From a white-owned blues label which might have given the Chess brotehrs (to whom much of Phillips' material was leased) stiff competition Sun became first the harbinger and then the king of the new rockabilly sound. It's generally been assumed that the phenomenal commercial success of this music reflected a correspondent deteriotation in quality, but I think that in reality no such decline took place. In just three years Phillips put together a list that could rival that of any other recording company in any other field. There was room for the talents of artists as diverse as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Rich, Billy Riley, Warren Smith, Johnny Cash, and Elvis himself, and really the only conclusion to which we are led is that Phillips was a man of exceptional and wide-ranging musical taste who possessed extraordinary abilities as a producer.
Dewey Phillips, a popular Memphis DJ with a big rhythm and blues following, broke Elvis' song on the radio, and according to legend the station was flooded with calls demanding that the song be played over and over again. Elvis himself hid out in a movie theatre and at last appeared on Dewey Phillips' radio show to quiet the publicuproar, and, at Phillips' prodding, to give assurance (in order to authenticate his color) that it was indeed all-white Humes High School that he had attended. We listen to these accounts not with disbelief but with a kind of incomprehension, unable to recapture so revolutionary a moment. In those days Sonny Boy Williamson was on the radio broadcasting from West Helena, Arkansas with his King Biscuit Boys, who sometimes included Elmore James and BB King. Rufus "Bear cat" Thomas, the novelty blues singer, was a regular DJ on WDIA- as he remains today- and it was just a couple of years before that Howlin' Wolf left his job at KWEM and went north to Chicago after five years of spinning records and selling fertilizer. It seems in retrospect like such a fabulous time- yet many of these same singers are still around, and Elvis is still on top.
The new album is great. I think it is flatly and unequivocally the equal of anything he has ever done. If it were made up only of it's weakest elements it would still be a good record and one that would fulfill in many ways all the expectations we might have had of Elvis.
"In the ghetto", a hit big enough to substantiate Elvis' continued popularity, is for all it's lush orchestration convincingly sung and phrased with sensitivity. It substantiates as well the whole liberal complex we grafted onto Elvis in adopting him for our hero, and despite a message fuzzy enough to allow the song considerable C&W popularity it gives us a statement as explicit as any we are ever likely to get. "Only the strong survive", while a little stiff and tightly sung, is a creditable soul offering, and even "ny day now" is palatable enough in this vein. Finally "Gentle on my mind" offers us Elvis in the new mod buckskin image of country music, as he triumphs forcefully over the banality of the lyrics with a willingness to use dramatics, even at the risk of seeming melodramatic, and all this on a song that has previously been the bland property of singers like Glenn Campbell and Bobby Goldsboro.
Most striking are the powerful evocations of an earlier style with "Power of my love", a tough blues with a popular bridge, and "Afetr loving you", a stammered blues ballad very much like "One night". Both have basic rock and roll accompaniment, both are marked by the boastful sexual swagger of earlier days, and "After loving you" is highlighted by what sounds like Elvis' own lowdown guitar (with the same runs that brought cries of "Play it dirty, play it dirty" on the TV special). "True love travels on a gravel road" gives us a well-written love ballad, eerily updated with scarcely a hint of the anachronistic style of "Love me", "Love me tender" and "Loving you". It's put across in Elvis' best genteel manner, offering a glimpse of real sophistication while at the same time "It keeps right on a-hurtin'" and "Movin' on" are masterful reminders of country and western roots. "It keeps right on a-hurtin'" showcases fine Jerry Lee Lewis-styled country piano, and "Movin' on", Hank Snow's driving classic, complete with whining steel guitar, is nicely understated by Elvis' normally extravagant voice. Both cuts are marked by the same sensitive arrangements which distinguish the greater part of the album, and both are vivid, highly successful performances.
All of this is merely confirmation of what we already knew about Elvis, though. What is new, and what is obvious from the first notes of the record, is the evident passion which Elvis has invested in this music and at the same time the risk he has taken in doing so. From the hoarse shout that opens the album to the hit song that closes it, it seems clear - as indeed it was clear on the TV special - that Elvis is trying, and trying very hard, to please us. He needs our attention, and it comes as something of a shock to discover that a hero whom we had set up to feel only existential scorn, a hero who was characterized by a frozen sneer and a look of sullen discontent should need us in the end. It is his involvement after all which comes as the surprise.
Many of the songs take their inspiration from gospel stylings. "Wearin' that loved on look" is very much in the gospel idiom, for example, with it's strained hoarse vocal, ethereal female chorus, and the almost classic piano break in the middle. Both "Power of my love" and "After loving you" are sung with umistakable feeling, with "After loving you" in particular notable for it's staggered gospel-type phrasing. Even the soul ballads, "Only the strong survive" and "Any day now", present an unashamed emotionalism that few of Elvis' golden hits would admit to and achieve a kind of tension at least that is singularly absent from the earlier songs.
But it is "Long black limousine" and "I'll hold you in my heart" which mark the highpoint of the album and indeed may mark the highpoint of Elvis' carreer to date. "Long black limousine" is the almost quintessential C&W ballad, whose melody bears traces of such mournful standards as "Old shep" and "Green green grass of home". It tells the classic story of the country girl who goes to the city in search of riches, only to be corrupted by city ways:
When you left you know you told me
that someday you'd be returning
In a fancy car for all the town to see
Well now, everyone is watching you,
you've finally had your dream
And you're riding in a long black limousine
Ordinarily a song like this will be treated as a kind of grim cautionary tale, delivered in a flat unadorned voice with simple sentimental country backing. Here the accompaniment is ornamented with bells, horns, and female choir, but it is Elvis' voice upon which the words depend for theri dramatic effect. In a departure quite uncharacteristic of most country music there is a fierce, almost shocked indignation in the voice, and the passionate intensity of Elvis' voice transforms a fairly ordinary song into a vehicle for savage social protest.
"I'll hold you in my heart ('til I can hold you in my arms)", an Eddy Arnold composition, is a simpler kind of song and a simpler kind of message. Here Elvis dispenses with words almost altogether, the arrangement is just country-gospel piano, strong supporting guitar, organ, and rythm, and the message consists only of one or two verses repeated hypnotically over and over. The effect is all-enveloping, though, and nothing could better exemplifythe absorbing character of Elvis' unique and moving style. At the same time nothing could more effectively defy description, for there is nothing to the song except a haunting, almost painful emotionalism. It goes on and on, long past the point where you would think it might logically have stopped, as Elvis himself is seemingly caught up in the mesmerizing effect of words and rythm untile he is lost in the song, using the dynamics of his voice to marvelous effect, calling up an aching vulnerability whic he has never before exposed. He doesn't let go of the song until he has wrung every last ounce of feeling from it, and listening to this performance is an absorbing, emotionally riveting experience. Elvis has never sung better.
And yet it's still not the same. There is that unavoidable tightness in his voice. For a moment we lose sight of it in "I'll hold you in my heart", but it's a function of knowledge as much as anything else. You can't rercapture the innocence ease of those first sides, you can't recall the easy innocence of adulthood, wether for listener or for singer. What is so striking about the Sun sides, even today, fifteen years after their first release, is the freshness of style, their cleanness and enthusiasm. There is a total lack of pretentiousness in Scotty Moore's crisp lead guitar and in the easy swing of the combo. The sound is without affection or clutter, and the songs - about equally divided between blues and country and mostly available on two RCA albums, A Date With Elvis (LSP 2011) and For LP Fans Only (LSP 1990) - are all of them timeless. Most of all the voice, free of the mannerisms with which it has inevitably become infected, is joyously full of confidence and youthful vitality.
The first arrangement of "That's allright", it is said, was worked out during a coffeebreak between takes of a ballad called "Without you". Really, all the early songs sound like some kind of inspired accident. It's as if some musicians got together and fooled around to make music for themselves, and the result somehow found it's way onto record. There's the unexpected falsetto and chuckle with which Little Junior Parker's "Mystery train" trails off, the bubbly beginning to "Baby let's play house", and the too-perfect,beautiful slow take of Kokomo Arnold's "Milkcow blues" when Elvis says, "Hold it, fellas. That don't move me. Let's get real, real gone for a change."
Well, he got gone. Sun sold his contract to RCA for $35,000, Elvis and Colonel Parker got rich, and Sam Phillips wrote several more chapters in musical history. Elvis may have benn a little bewildered, but he never let it show, for he withdrew from the world to make movies. He made more money, the Colonel's formulaic approach to show business continued to pay off, and he didn't go back to record in his hometown of Memphis until 1969.
His homecoming can now be accounted a triumph. But then his whole carreer can be accounted a triumph. There's no point in wasting any sympathy on Elvis or on anyone else. Because if he lost what he had he certainly got what he wanted, and that's all you can really hope for, isn't it? When he first came to our attention it would have been difficult to imagine the seriousness with which rock and roll would one day be greeted. We took Little Richard's outlandish screams for a welcome relief, and the nonsense lyrics of Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins seemed to express an implicit view of the world that each of us secretly shared. Now the secret is out, and everyone is covering up.
- Peter Guralnick
Autor
Ok SUPER!
