By 1966, most of Elvis’s singles were either leftover tracks from old Nashville recording sessions or songs pulled off of mediocre movie albums. Despite his spurt of success in ’65, by the following year, both his singles and albums had slipped to a new low on the charts. And Elvis seemed too numbed out to care.
That same year, Elvis met a man whose fate would forever be linked with his. Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, a Pennsylvania-born son of Greek immigrants, grew up in Anniston, Alabama, where his parents ran a restaurant. He received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University at age thirty-two, but not without an interruption for academic probation.
MARTY LACKER: Early in ’66, Elvis got a bad cold. He thought he’d just tough it out, but it didn’t get any better. He was talking to George Klein one day, and he said, “Man, this cold is getting me down.” So George said he’d talk to his girlfriend, Barbara Little. Barbara worked for this doctors’ partnership called the Medical Group, and she asked one of the doctors if he’d pay a house call. That was Dr. Nick.
Dr. Nick was personable, and Elvis charmed him the way he charmed everybody else. Pretty soon, Elvis was getting what he wanted out of him—which was pills—and Dr. Nick was flattered to be Elvis’s personal physician.
Drugwise, Dr. Nick didn’t really play that big a role until about 1971, although he was around off and on for a long time before that. He’s supposed to be the bad guy in all of this, but Dr. Nick just got in over his head. He was swayed by the glamour, when he should have stuck to being a doctor.
BILLY SMITH: So many people blame Dr. Nick. But Dr. Nick did as much as he could, right from the beginning. I’m sure at times he thought, “To hell with it, let him have it.” Because Dr. Nick fought a losing battle.
LAMAR FIKE: When Dr. Nick came into the picture, Joe and Jerry glommed onto him right away. Now Dr. Nick and Joe and Jerry became the elite part of the group, always looking down their noses at people.
MARTY LACKER: In the spring of ’66, Elvis got one of the early Sony video recorders. It was huge. The day it came, Elvis was making Spinout, which was one of Norman Taurog’s pictures.
Elvis showed it to Mr. Taurog, and he really liked it. He said, “This would be great to have because we could play back the scenes right after we shoot them.” So Elvis looked at me and said, “I want to give this to Mr. Taurog. Can you get another one?” These things were very scarce at the time, and Sony had a waiting list a mile long. But I called the factory and talked the guy into selling Elvis a second one.
LAMAR FIKE: I remember hauling that nine-ton son of a bitch around. It liked to have killed me.
BILLY SMITH: When Elvis first got that video machine, he started filming a few things here and there, and then it dawned on him, “Hey, this sucker can be used for other things. I can direct my own [sex] movie.” So when he was having the intercom installed at the house, it presented the perfect time to have a camera mounted. He even filmed Priscilla with that thing.
MARTY LACKER: I’ve seen those videotapes of Priscilla with another girl in bed. They’re wrestling. In panties and bra. They certainly exist. Or did.
BILLY SMITH: Don’t think Priscilla was the only one Elvis taped because she wasn’t. He taped a couple of girls that he was going with. He was producer, director, and star, all at once.
MARTY LACKER: In ’66, we were coming home from California, and every time we’d stop, Elvis would have the video recorder taken off the bus and carried up to his room. He’d sit up there and watch sex tapes.
One of our regular stops was the Western Skies Motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We checked in there, and Elvis called me and said, “Have someone go out to the airport and meet this girl.” She was from L.A. I said, “What’s she doing here?” And Elvis said, “I called her before I left and told her to meet me here.” This was one of the girls he had taped before.
We had to stay four damn days while they played around with the video in the room. I remember we were all pissed off because we wanted to get home to our families.
LAMAR FIKE: These were explicit, graphic, sexual videotapes. The kind popularly referred to as “down and dirty.”
MARTY LACKER: One time, everybody went to Palm Springs except me and Joe. And Joe said, “Let’s go see if we can find those videotapes.”
We went in Elvis’s bedroom and looked in the closet, and there was the machine. We pulled it out, and Joe found three videotape boxes. He looked inside, and he said, “Bingo.”
We were practically frothing at the mouth because Elvis was very secretive about stuff like this. We got the machine down and took the cover off. And we discovered that Elvis thought he was going to be clever because he either took the power cord with him or hid it somewhere so that no one else could use the machine. Joe was cussing, and I was cussing, and then I said, “Wait a minute.” And I called Westwood Camera Shop. They had one cord left. I told the guy if he sold it to anyone else I was going to kill him.
I got the cord, and Joe and I set the machine down on the floor in Elvis’s room and watched those videos. We were so spooked we locked the doors. Even though Elvis was supposed to be in Palm Springs, you never knew when he was going to walk in.
Except for the tapes of Priscilla and this other girl, all of these were tapes of girls he had dated. In bed. He was never on there doing anything himself. But he made one mistake—he walked through the frame in one of them while the girl was in bed playing with herself. She was nude, except for the white panties.
Goldman wrote that there were copies of these on the black market in L.A. after Elvis died, and that in one of them, Elvis stepped in front of the camera with a full erection and masturbated. I never saw anything like that. Elvis wasn’t dumb. He knew better than that.
BILLY SMITH: You know, this stuff is tame by today’s standards. But Marty and Joe weren’t the only ones with access to the tapes. While everybody was off touring in the seventies, all those things were left at Graceland. And they definitely missed one. It shows Elvis and the girl on the bed. But they’re not really doing anything other than going through the motions. It was a side view, when he had the camera on a tripod. It was easy to see what they were doing, although it wasn’t real close.
MARTY LACKER: The tapes I saw weren’t particularly raunchy. They were sensual and erotic. Because they were silent. With the ones of just two girls, or of Priscilla and the girl, I had the feeling Elvis was off in the corner telling them what to do.
BILLY SMITH: I heard that story about the tapes being on the black market, but I don’t think that’s true. As best I remember, I told Priscilla where they were in 1979. They were still upstairs in his room. I imagine she had ’em destroyed.
MARTY LACKER: I think the tapes were just one example of how Priscilla was changing, but it’s probably inaccurate to suggest that she had turned into some kind of wild sex addict. One time when Elvis was living on Rocca Place, she came back to the house and said that she’d gone over to visit Larry Geller and his wife, Stevie, and they were trying to talk her into sunbathing in the nude.
Larry was bad news. In ’66, we were at Graceland one night. Geller was staying at the Admiral Benbow Inn, near the airport, but he was up at the house. I was out of cigarettes, and I got in the pink Cadillac and started down the driveway to go to the store.
Just before I got to the guardhouse, I saw a bunch of guys in suits up against the gates, trying to see who was coming down the drive. I don’t know what made me do it, but I got out of the car. And just when I did, these guys took off running to each side.
I went in the guardhouse, and I said, “Vester, who are those guys out there?” And Vester said they told him they were out-of-town detectives visiting Memphis on vacation and they wanted to see Graceland. Well, that would have been fine, except why did they run? I called up at the house and told whoever answered what had happened, and then I said, “Tell Elvis not to come down to the gate.” Of course, that was the worst thing I could have said. Because he and a bunch of the guys came down in two cars.
Elvis got to the gate, and he told Vester to open it. Then he went out and he said, “What the hell’s going on here?” These guys were all lined up around the walls, and there was a car setting away from the gate. The door opened, and here came Bill Morris, the sheriff of Shelby County and supposedly a friend of Elvis.
Elvis said, “Hey, Bill, what are you guys doing out here? Why’d you run when Marty came down?” And Morris said, “We’re investigating a call from California.” And Elvis said, “So what’s that got to do with me?” Morris said, “Is Larry Geller up there?” And Elvis said, “He may be. Why?” And Morris said, “The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a shipment of marijuana and other drugs sent to Larry Geller, addressed to Elvis Presley at Graceland.”
Geller was stupid to have a package sent to Graceland. But he had a friend who sent him “gifts,” and he probably thought nobody would question Elvis getting a package. But either they were investigating his friend, or they got a tip from L.A. And they immediately called the Memphis police. Elvis said, “Bill, I don’t know anything about this.” And he motioned for Geller to come to the gate. Geller said he didn’t know anything about it, either. Morris said, “Well, we’re going to have to take you in anyway, Larry.”
Before they put him in the car, and without them hearing, I said to Geller, “Do you have anything else coming to Graceland, Larry?” He said, “Well, I don’t know. It depends on what was in that package.”
After the guys went back up to the house, I told Elvis I was going to call Larry’s friend in L.A. and tell him if he had anything else, not to send it. But I was paranoid. I thought, “Maybe they’ve got his line bugged. Maybe they think he’s a dealer.” So when I got him on the phone, instead of coming right out with it, I said, “Hey, look. You know those beauty supplies you sent?” He said, “What beauty supplies?” I said, “That stuff you sent to Larry.” And he said, “Oh, yeah!” I said, “He wanted me to let you know he doesn’t need anymore.” He said, “Oh, okay.”
One time in Palm Springs, Geller talked Elvis into seeing this woman who was supposedly clairvoyant. A part-time psychic, part-time masseuse. One day, she came up to this place we rented called the Alexander House and went upstairs. Elvis’s suite looked like a huge space capsule, with big windows and a giant bed.
About fifteen minutes after she got there, she came walking down the steps, all upset. She said, “I can’t take him anymore.” I said, “What are you talking about, lady?” And she said, “Somebody better go look in on him.” I went upstairs real quick. Elvis was lying across the bed on his back, and his eyes were closed, and he looked like he was asleep. All he had on was a bathing suit.
I said, “Elvis?” and he didn’t answer. I said it again, and he still didn’t answer. So I grabbed his arm, and it just fell limp. Then I put my ear down like I’d seen in the movies, to try to hear his heart, and I couldn’t hear anything, and I tried to shake his body, but he didn’t move.
I thought, “Goddamn!” And I slapped him across his face and said, “Elvis, get up!” And he went, “Ahhhhhh.” So I was relieved, because I knew he was alive. And I shook him again. I said, “Damnit, Elvis, get up!” He said, “Ahhh, go on, leave me alone.” I left him to sleep it off.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis tried to act macho, but he was really a sensitive soul. If something happened to me, he would cry. When my son, who had spinal meningitis, got real sick, Elvis cried about that. He really cared for me. But, of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t zing me real good once in a while.
MARTY LACKER: Elvis really never wanted anybody to be able to read him. Even though we knew he loved us, he didn’t want us to feel too confident about it.
In ’66, on Rocca Place, Elvis was up early one afternoon. Joe and I were the only other ones up. And Elvis said, “Y’all come with me. I’ve got to meet the Colonel at his apartment.”
That was the first and only time I was at Colonel’s apartment. It was in the Beverly Comstock Apartments, at Comstock and Wilshire. These were hotel apartments. And his wasn’t that big, which surprised me. It had a nice-sized living room, but his bedroom was small. And most of it was taken up by a hospital bed, which is what he always slept in, supposedly for his back. He had an office in the bedroom, and he’d conduct business from bed. Mrs. Parker was in Palm Springs.
When we first got there, Elvis went in Colonel’s bedroom and talked, and Joe and I waited in the living room. Then Elvis came out and said, “Y’all come in here.”
I forget what they were talking about, but Colonel said to Elvis, “Remember what I told you.” Elvis was sitting on the couch. And without looking at me or Joe, Elvis said, “Well, these guys don’t mean nothing to me.” It took me aback, but I didn’t say anything. And Joe just sat there, too.
Elvis and the Colonel talked a few more minutes, and then we left. We got out to the car, and I looked back at Elvis. And he smiled that all-knowing smile. I always meant to ask him about it, but I left it alone. I know he cared for me. A few years ago, Billy and I were talking about what Elvis said to him in that last year. Billy said, “There’s a lot of guys who would be totally shocked to learn how Elvis really felt about them.”
LAMAR FIKE: Now that I look back on it, I see how stressful it was to be with him. We never realized it at the time—like a guy who works in a damn rivet factory or runs a jackhammer and never hears it.
MARTY LACKER: Elvis would bounce back between being incredibly insecure and amazingly confident. And between being selfish and magnanimous. By ’66, he’d outgrown the Dodge motor home, and it was getting some age on it. So Elvis bought a big double-decker Greyhound to get us back and forth to California and had George Barris renovate it for about $50,000. Then he gave the Dodge mobile home to Lorne Greene, the actor, who had a center for underprivileged kids in Canada.
Another time, in the seventies, Elvis was out driving in Mississippi, and he passed this little black kid, sitting at a watermelon stand on the side of the highway. He was maybe ten years old, just dirty and dusty from the cars, and all by himself. Elvis thought about it for a second, and then turned around, and the whole five-car entourage stopped to buy a watermelon. By the time they left, Elvis bought the entire stand, just to see the look on the kid’s face.
BILLY SMITH: On one of the last bus trips we made from Memphis to L.A. before Elvis started flying, he invited all the wives. The trip took a week or ten days because we stopped to sightsee along the way. One night, we started playing Yahtzee. Elvis said that anybody who threw the dice out got hit on the hand. By the time it was over, we were all beating each other to death, but I think I got the worst of it.
A day or two later, everybody come in my room to see the bruises on my arms. Elvis was giving me all this sympathy, and then all of a sudden, he hauled off and hit me again. I just laid on the bed ’cause I was hurting too bad to get up. Elvis laid on the floor laughing because I couldn’t get up and do anything. He was a kid, you know, very spoiled.
One time in the seventies, it was about four in the morning, and Elvis wanted me to hear this song that he was getting ready to record. We’d been up all night, and I was just pooped. Elvis made Charlie get up out of bed and come upstairs, and Charlie sat down at the organ and started playing and harmonizing with him. I sat there calling out song titles.
About seven-thirty, I couldn’t take it no more. There wasn’t anything I liked more than hearing Elvis sing, but my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. I called out another song title, and, boy, Elvis was putting his heart into it. And then I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes, and started patting my foot. I just fell asleep on him is what I did. In a minute, I felt something mashing down on my leg, just digging in.
Elvis said, “Wake up!” He said, “Goddamnit, you’re going to listen to this! It’s your special request!” I said, “I’m not sleeping, I’m just resting my eyes.” But in a couple bars, I was dozing off again. And he come down on my leg the second time, and said, “Open those marble eyes!” Then he turned to Charlie and said, “Here I am giving a million-dollar performance, and this son of a bitch just wants to go to sleep!” I broke up laughing, even if he did call me a son of a bitch.
LAMAR FIKE: When Elvis moved to Rocca Place, Cliff Gleaves came back for one of his visits. He’d show up every few years and stay a while, and then take off as quick as he came. Cliff always had something going on. He always wanted to be an actor, but he couldn’t cut it. And in the sixties, I think he wanted to give it one last shot.
MARTY LACKER: When Cliff wanted something, he’d just worry you until he got it. So back in the fifties, he kept bugging Elvis, “Man, can’t you get me a bit part in your movie?” And Cliff drove Elvis nuts until he finally arranged it. So Cliff walked around popping his fingers and saying, “Yeaaah, I’m gonna be a movie star. I’m gonna be a big movie star.” He only had two lines, but he was studying his script. And pretty soon, they put makeup on him, and fixed the little tissue around his neck.
It came time for Cliff’s big scene, and he was saying, “This is a piece of cake.” The assistant director called him, and they positioned Cliff in front of the camera. But when the director said, “Action,” Cliff froze. He couldn’t utter one word. And from that time on, Elvis told him, “Don’t you ever—ever—ask me again.”
It didn’t phase him, though. In the mid-sixties, Cliff would come out to California every once in a while to see what he could get. And all he’d have with him was this little flight bag that the airlines used to give out. He’d have all his sole possessions in there, and one of them was a Water Pik, believe it or not.
What always amazed me about him was that he had no shame about bumming stuff. I smoked a lot back then, and I bought cigarettes by the carton. One time Cliff came out, and the first morning, before we left the house to go to the studio, he said, “Hey, man, let me borrow a cigarette.” Like he was really going to pay me back. I gave it to him. And about ten minutes later, he said, “Hey, man, let me borrow another cigarette.” I gave him another one. Five or six cigarettes later, I said, “Cliff, I ain’t the only one that smokes around here.” And he said, “Oh, well, don’t worry about it. I’ll ask somebody else. But just let me borrow one more.” And that night, he asked me for another one. I said, “Cliff, go to somebody else.” So he said, “Oh, okay.”
The next morning, this started again. I said, “Wait a minute, Cliff.” I went in my room and got a full pack and gave it to him. And I said, “Here, now don’t ask me for any more cigarettes today.” Cliff said, “Oh, man, great!” I gave him a pack for four days in a row. By the fifth day, I was out of cigarettes. I just had the pack in my pocket. And that morning, going to the studio, Cliff said, “Got a cigarette?” I said, “No, Cliff, I’m all out.” He said, “You ain’t got another pack?” I said, “Nope.” He said, “You cheap son of a bitch!”
BILLY SMITH: Cliff could talk just like Walter Brennan. Everything he said was funny. He’d say, “That’s right, mister.” All the time. And he’d say, “You bet your life, and someday you may have to.”
One time, Cliff and an actor named Billy Murphy crashed a party in Texas with all these big multimillionaire oil men. Murphy was in The Sands of Iwo Jima. Played Richard Jaeckel’s brother. Anyway, they were at this party, and they sat around listening to all these guys talk about how much money they made and lost in oil. Well, they got up and went to the bathroom, and all they heard was the same thing. And they couldn’t get over it. They went back to the table and got to thinking about it, and they got drunker and drunker, and finally they couldn’t stand it no longer. Cliff jumped up in the middle of the table and said, “Gentlemen!” Just as loud as he could. He threw his arm up, and he said, “We’re talking in millions!” And they throwed their asses out.
MARTY LACKER: By ’66 or ’67, Cliff was wearing thin with Elvis. One night on Rocca Place, he was there, and Elvis got hooked on listening to a record of “Cool, Clear Water.” And Cliff, just to play along with Elvis, started singing the song. Cliff had made a few records. His “biggie,” as he called it, was a song called “Hold Back the Dawn.” And he would sing it for you at the drop of a hat. That’s what he’s been doing all these years, down in Florida. He played at piano bars for these rich old women.
The night he got on “Cool, Clear Water,” about three or four of us went to the Red Velvet. When we got back, we heard “Cool, Clear Water” up real loud.
I said, “Elvis must still be up.” Which surprised us because he had to be at the studio the next morning. We went in the house, and Cliff was by the sliding door to the pool, sitting at the round table and chairs. He had a fedora on his head and a bottle of vodka. And the stereo was just blaring.
We said, “Cliff, where’s Elvis?” He said, “Ah, shit—” He was drunk. He said, “He’s in the back sleeping.” I said, “Cliff, what the hell are you doing playing music this loud?” He said, “Well, I wanted to hear the record. ‘Cool, clear—’” And he started singing. Somebody went over to the stereo and turned the damn thing off. I said, “Cliff, you can either go to bed, or somewhere else, but this ain’t gonna happen.” And the next morning, Cliff was gone. That’s the last anybody saw of him for years and years.
LAMAR FIKE: Trying to get Elvis out to a nightclub was like pulling teeth. Part of it was that he didn’t want the hassle of people coming up and asking for autographs. And part of it was that certain performers just made him uneasy. When he did go, it was a rare occasion.
MARTY LACKER: We used to go see Fats Domino a lot in Vegas in the early to mid-sixties. He used to play at the Flamingo. Fats supposedly owed the hotel so much in gambling debts that he played for nothing.
One night, we were sitting at the table and Fats was taking a break between shows. Elvis went up to the bar where he was, which was unusual. He’d usually wait for somebody to come to the table to him. But Elvis admired Fats, so he didn’t think anything of it. We noticed they were having this animated conversation. Fats used to drink straight scotch or vodka, and he kept pouring drinks and knocking them down.
I remember he wore this star tiepin. It was huge and encrusted with diamonds. Same thing with his cuff links. Elvis came back to the table and said, “Poor old guy. I guess he’s broke. He asked me to buy his tie tack and cuff links for $5,000.”
BILLY SMITH: Elvis liked black artists. He liked the way Jackie Wilson sang and the way he moved. He kept up with how he was doing, even after Jackie had a stroke, I believe, in ’75 and went into a coma. Now, he didn’t like James Brown. He didn’t like his attitude, and he didn’t like his singing. He thought he was a screamer. He liked Jackie Wilson, and Clyde McPhatter, and Billy Ward and His Dominoes, all those guys.
MARTY LACKER: We used to go to a club called The Trip, in the Playboy Building in L.A. We got Elvis to go there one night when Jackie Wilson was there. That was the first time they met. Jackie kidded him, saying, “People call me ‘the black Elvis Presley’” because he always wore his hair in a pompadour.
Jackie was a fantastic guy and a gentleman. So Elvis invited him to the set of Double Trouble, which, again, was unusual because he just didn’t invite people to the studio. We had a great time with him.
That night, Elvis went back to The Trip. It was the last night of Jackie’s engagement there, and James Brown was opening the next day. When Jackie came offstage, the owner of the club, who was a friend of ours, brought over four bottles of champagne. Elvis didn’t usually drink like that, but he wanted to toast Jackie, and he was having a good time.
In a little while, James Brown came over. He just barged in. And Elvis didn’t like it. James didn’t know Elvis, and he was loud and trying to be the center of attention. Well, it killed the atmosphere. But Elvis was polite. And James looked at Elvis and said, “You know, I’m opening tomorrow night. I’m sure you’ll be here.” Well, the next day was a weekday, and Elvis had to get up at four-thirty in the morning. But Elvis looked at James, and he said, “I’ll do my best.” And James pushed himself on Elvis. He said, “I know you’ll be here.”
The next night, me and Richard and Alan were going to go see James perform. Elvis wasn’t about to go, so I asked him what I should tell James. Elvis said, “You got one of those watches?” I said, “Yeah.”
Elvis had these watches made, where the Star of David and the cross intertwined on the face every thirty seconds. I designed it. And I kept all the extras in my room. So Elvis said, “Give me some paper,” and he wrote James a note that said, “Sorry I can’t be there. I have to be up in the morning, and I hope you’ll accept this gift. I wish you well on your show.” And he signed it. That was the first time I ever saw him go to that kind of trouble.
James had two other people in his dressing room after his show, and when he saw us, he said, in this really abrasive tone, “Why didn’t Elvis come?” I said, “He has to be up early in the morning.” And James said, “Goddamn, he came to see Jackie Wilson, and he won’t come to see me!” I said, “He asked me if I would give this to you and tell you he’s really sorry.”
James opened up the box, and he said, “Oh, yeah, that’s nice.” Like it was no big deal. And he read the note, and he put it back in the box and closed it, and he slammed the box on his dressing-room table. And he said, “What’s this watch?” I said, “Well, James, it’s a unique watch, and only the guys have them. Elvis wanted you to have one.” I said, “If you’ll take it out —” And I had one on my wrist, and Richard and Alan had theirs on. And James looked over at me and said, “Well, it’s nice you gave me a watch, but where’s theirs?” Meaning the two other guys who were in the room, both white guys. One was the pilot of his plane.
He was trying to minimize Elvis’s gesture and make a fool out of me at the same time. So without blinking an eye, I looked over at Alan and Richard. I said, “One of you, let me have your watch, and I’ll replace it later.” And I took mine off, too, and I gave the watches to the pilot and the other guy.
James didn’t know what to do then. So he looked over at Alan, and he said, “How come Elvis still travels in a bus? I got my own airplane.” I said, “Maybe he’s just a little bit more comfortable in the bus. Some people like to fly, some people don’t.” And James said, “Well, if you want to be classy, and you’re supposed to be number one, you fly. Here I am, flying around, and Elvis is riding the bus.”
Just then, somebody brought in this little black kid. It was, like, midnight, and this kid, only ten or eleven years old, was in a nightclub. James started talking to him, and he said, “You go to school? You don’t get in any trouble, do you?” And the kid said, “No, sir.” James said, “You got a knife on you?” And the kid looked down at the floor, and he said, “Yes, I do.” And James said, “I’ll tell you what. You give me that knife, and I’ll give you some money.” And out of goodwill, I said, “And I’ll give you something, too,” because I couldn’t see this little kid carrying a knife. And James looked up at me and said, “He don’t need your damn money.” And I said, “What?” He said, “I got money. I can take care of it.” I said, “Fine.”
We sat and talked for a while longer, and then we decided to go upstairs. Alan was going to get something to eat with James, and Richard and I were going back to the house. We were walking up this circular stairway, and James was right behind me. I turned around and said, “James, it’s really a pleasure to meet you. I enjoyed it, and I always love your music.” And I was being sincere. He looked at me, and he said, “I don’t want you to be that way, man. You know, all that shit was two hundred years ago.” I looked at him, and I was just dumbfounded.
I said, “James, what are you talking about?” He said, “You know what I’m talking about.” He meant slavery. Now, he had no idea whether I was prejudiced or not. He automatically assumed it because I’m white and because I lived in Tennessee. But that’s James Brown. I told Elvis the next day. And he just said, “Fuck him.”
LAMAR FIKE: James Brown might have been ticked off that Elvis didn’t come to his show. Or Marty might have rubbed him the wrong way. But James loved Elvis. He was the first guy who came to Elvis’s wake. I answered the door. I said, “James, how are you doing?” He said, “Man, I’ve come to see him.” And he sat down.
MARTY LACKER: In the middle of all this negative stuff, a bright spot appeared in May of ’66. That’s when Felton Jarvis took over as Elvis’s producer at RCA. Elvis really liked Felton because he was a lot of fun. But Felton still didn’t call the shots in the recording sessions. Nobody from RCA ever did. Elvis was still his own producer.
LAMAR FIKE: I found Felton Jarvis in Nashville and brought him into the whole situation. Because for three years, Elvis had just done those soundtrack sessions in Hollywood and no regular sessions in Nashville. I said to Elvis, “You need a really hip producer. And this guy is that.” Felton was just different. He used to keep a live snake—a viper—in his office in a burlap bag.
Felton had been at ABC-Paramount. He’d produced Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Fats Domino, and he’d produced “Sheila,” that Tommy Roe hit. One reason Elvis liked Felton right off is because Felton let him do several gospel tracks on their first session, which led to that [second] sacred album, How Great Thou Art. Elvis ended up getting his first Grammy for it. They laid down eighteen tracks in four nights on that first session. And Felton brought in a couple of bright musicians, like David Briggs on organ. “Love Letters” came out of that session. Felton even got Elvis doing a Bob Dylan song, “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.”
Felton was the one who found out that Colonel controlled the mixes on Elvis’s records—that he ordered Elvis’s voice out so far, which Elvis hated. Felton went to the engineer who did it, and he said, “What are you doing?” The engineer said, “This is the way Colonel wants it done.” Elvis went nuts. He made Felton go to New York and follow the mix all the way through so that the engineer couldn’t get to it.
MARTY LACKER: Felton used to jump up and down and imitate Elvis while Elvis was recording. And Elvis loved that because it got him up. He always liked to have somebody moving, especially on a fast song. Sonny West was a hell of a good dancer. So Sonny would be out there dancing by himself, and I’d shadowbox and sway back and forth.
BILLY SMITH: Recording with Felton energized Elvis quite a bit. He started taking it serious again. In some sessions, Elvis would know that the first and second take wasn’t going to be worth a shit, and he would warm up. He would never sing anything high right off. He’d save his voice.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis used his voice like a muscle. He’d warm it up, and get it into position, and do it.
MARTY LACKER: The second session Elvis did with Felton was in June of ’66. We went back to Nashville to cut material for the singles, not the movies. This was the session where Elvis did “Indescribably Blue,” a really pretty song. The first day, Elvis was in a pissy mood. So he faked one of his illnesses. Said his voice was hurting. But nothing was really wrong.
He said, “Just tell them to go ahead and do the tracks.” And even though he liked Felton, he said, “As a matter of fact, I want Red to handle the session, and Marty can help him.” And he said to us, “Be sure they do what I want them to do,” because we talked about how he wanted the songs laid out. He liked the high part that Millie Kirkham, the background singer, did in this particular song, and it really did give the song a fantastic effect. So we said, “Okay,” and me and Red went over.
Now, Red doesn’t have a bad voice. He can almost sound like Elvis. So Red filled in as the voice while the musicians cut the track. At first, the musicians were a little ticked that Elvis wasn’t there. But Red did a really great job of putting this together. We laid down “Indescribably Blue,” and “I’ll Remember You,” and “If Every Day Was Like Christmas.” And we got them to cut the acetates, so we could take them back to the motel. Elvis had a stereo set up in his room so he could listen to them.
That afternoon, Elvis got up. We went in his room, and he was playing the dubs, and he said, “Boy, that sounds good. I’ll probably go to the studio tonight.” And in talking to him, I mentioned that the studio guys weren’t too happy about Red and me coming over and telling them what he wanted done.
Something else must have been bothering him because Elvis flew totally off the handle. He said, “What do you mean you told them?” He said, “Who the fuck do you think you are telling those guys what to do?” I said, “Wait a minute, Elvis.”
He said, “Wait a minute, hell! These guys have been playing all their lives, and you go over there and tell them how to do it?” I said, “No, I just did exactly what you asked me to do.” I said, “Matter of fact, Red was the one handling most of it.”
“Goddamnit,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of nerve doing that!” He said, “I don’t want anybody going with me tonight except Red. The rest of you fuckin’ guys just stay back here at the motel!”
I was really pissed. But we just stayed back and played cards—me, Billy, Alan, Richard, and the others. And Billy got me out of my mood. He lost some money playing cards, so he called Jo and said, “I need you to send me some money.” And it was so funny the way he said it because he was drunk, and he was giving her the address, and he said, “And send it to me, Billy Smith . . . ”
BILLY SMITH: When I was with Elvis, I wasn’t afraid of anything. Even when we first started flying. And I normally would have been scared to death over that.
MARTY LACKER: All of a sudden, Elvis decided he wanted to start flying. I don’t know if that James Brown story got back to him or what, but right before we went to Nashville, Elvis said, “I don’t want to take a bus. I want to fly up there, and I want to fly up there real quick.” I was surprised because up until then, he was really afraid to fly. And he got airsick, too. Even the few times we’d fly to L.A., he’d throw up. He always had to have two barf bags in his seat.
I said, “Elvis, we don’t have any reservations, and we don’t know the flights.” And he said, “No, I want you to get me a private jet. See if you can get Kemmons Wilson’s Lear jet.”
Kemmons Wilson was the chairman of Holiday Inn. He founded the chain, which started in Memphis. So I called, and we got the Holiday Inn jet. And from Memphis to Nashville, all a Lear jet does is go straight up and come straight down, it’s such a short flight. But I said, “Elvis, I’m not going on a Lear jet.” I’d never been on a private plane before, and I didn’t like to fly anyway. And Elvis said, “No, you’re flying with us.” I said, “Look, you can’t get all these guys on the Lear jet, plus all the baggage, because it will overweight the plane.”
I said, “Let me call the airlines and see if I can get on the next jet to Nashville.” Elvis said okay, and I got to Nashville before he did. Lamar met me, and we loaded all the stuff in his car, and took the baggage to the Albert Pick, and then waited for Elvis to land. Here he was staying at this old dump, and taking a Lear jet to get there.
LAMAR FIKE: We had a pact, an agreement, that whenever we’d fly somewhere we’d take out flight insurance. A $100,000 policy. They had those insurance machines at the airports back in the sixties. So we’d all make a beeline for them and take out the biggest policy we could. We figured if somebody got killed, the rest of us would buy a Chris-Craft and name the boat after him.
MARTY LACKER: The night before we left Nashville to go home, Elvis was all peaches and cream. He came in and said, “What’s going on?” We said, “Nothing. We’ve been playing cards.” And he said to me, “I want you on that Lear jet in the morning, and I don’t want to hear any shit about it.”
The next day, he sat across the aisle from me, and he just smiled and smiled. He said, “See, I told you they’d take those bags.” He was thrilled to be on that jet. And when we landed, Priscilla and the wives were there, and Elvis spent another hour taking people for rides. He was fascinated by it. That’s when he got in his mind that he wanted his own plane.