While The Singer Special earned Elvis new respectability, most of the rock critics who’d sneered at his records for the better part of the sixties still doubted he could turn out an artistically viable—and socially aware—album in the age of the Woodstock generation.
In the middle of January ’69, Elvis walked into Chips Moman’s American Sound Studio and proved them wrong. It was the first time since the mid-fifties that Elvis had recorded in Memphis, then in the halcyon days of the Memphis Sound—the soulful records on Stax and the other independent R & B labels in the area and the music that poured from the soul-funk studios of Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Moman’s house band played a more commercial and countrified style than its counterpart at Stax, but the sessions Elvis cut with them at American drew on the roots of his primal genius—a seamless integration of black and white music. After so many years of stupefying movie filler, Elvis was ecstatic about recording real songs again, and his performance throbs with startling self-assurance.
From the hits “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds,” “Don’t Cry Daddy,” and “Kentucky Rain” to the less-lauded, but extraordinary “Stranger in My Own Home Town” and “Long Black Limousine,” Elvis handed RCA enough material for a year and a half of releases. The profits allegedly accounted for a third of the label’s income the following year, precisely because Elvis gave his audience exactly what they most wanted to hear: a brilliant, bold, and passionate return to his legacy, an artist reclaiming, and rebaptizing, himself.
Whether this was a magic coming together of music and man that Elvis would never be able to re-create, his voice darted and flew in perfect response to all that was being asked of him, perhaps for the very last time.
MARTY LACKER: If you just looked at the building, this tiny place at 827 Thomas Street in a mostly black, run-down part of Memphis, you’d never think the American Sound Studio, along with the [black] Stax Studios, were the center of the Memphis music scene. But they were. Or, I should say, Chips Moman and that house band were. Chips was the owner and founder of American, and he was also the chief engineer, cook, and bottle washer. He wrote songs and played occasional guitar on the sessions. Everybody respected him. Neil Diamond had just been in there to record “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” and “Holly Holy” And Dusty Springfield had come all the way from England to get the Memphis Sound on her records.
I’d go up to Graceland and Elvis would start playing demos of sessions that he did, and the stuff was just terrible. He hadn’t had a Top 5 record since 1965, and that was “Crying in the Chapel,” which was basically a gospel song.
I told him about Chips and the stuff he was cutting, and I told him I thought they’d be great together. He said, “Well, I’ll think about it.” That was it.
One day when I was working with Chips, he said, “Hey, you know, I’d love to cut some records with Elvis.” Well, he kept saying it: “When are you going to tell Elvis to let me produce a record?” I didn’t want to say that I already had. So I just told him I’d talk to Elvis about it.
One evening in January of ’69, right around Elvis’s birthday, I went up to Graceland. Elvis had a sore throat, and he was sitting on the couch in the Jungle Room. And it so happened that Felton Jarvis was sitting in front of him on an ottoman. And George Klein and somebody else was in the room.
Felton started talking to Elvis about the next recording session, which was supposed to be in Nashville the following week. The truth is that Felton didn’t pick any songs, and he didn’t pick the musicians. Usually, the names were submitted to Colonel Parker’s office, and the Colonel and Tom Diskin would pick the musicians, which was the biggest joke of all. Felton’s official duty was to coordinate everything with the Colonel’s office. His name was never on a record as the real producer. On the Moody Blue album, for example, it says, “Executive producer: Elvis Presley. Associate producer: Felton Jarvis.”
Anyway, Felton was sitting in front of Elvis, and I heard Felton say, “Okay, well start next Monday. Who do you want at the session?” And Elvis didn’t know anybody except the same old guys he used. He had no idea of the really good musicians out there.
I was leaning my head up against the wall, and unconsciously, I was shaking it, “No.” Elvis looked over at me and he said, “What the hell’s wrong with you?” I said, “Damnit, Elvis. I just wish that for once you’d record here in Memphis. I wish you’d try Chips and American.” And he said, “Well, maybe someday I will.” And he went back to talking to Felton.
Then everybody got up to go in the dining room, but I just sat there. I didn’t want to go sit at the table and hear them talk about the Nashville session.
Elvis said, “C’mon, let’s go eat.” And I said, “No, I’m not hungry.” But he knew I never passed up a meal. I just sat there and stared at the TV screen, thinking of all this stuff.
Well, it wasn’t two minutes before Felton came out and said, “Elvis wants to see you.”
I said, “Felton, I don’t want to go in there. With all due respect to you and Nashville, I really don’t want to hear about it.” And he said, “No, he wants to talk to you about cutting in Memphis.” Well, I was out of that chair in a flash.
I had only four days to set it up, ’til Monday. And I knew that Chips had Roy Hamilton, who was one of Elvis’s idols, scheduled to record that day and Neil Diamond scheduled for Monday night.
I went out in the hall and phoned Chips at home. I said, “Lincoln,” which is his real name. “I’m up at Graceland. Would you still like to cut Elvis?” And he said, “Don’t be playing games with me. You know how bad I want to do that.” I said, “I’m not joking. He wants to cut here in Memphis, and he wants to cut with you.” I said, “But you got one little problem. He’s got to start Monday night, and that’s when Neil Diamond’s in there.” Chips’s exact words were, “Fuck Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond will just have to be postponed. Tell Elvis he’s on.”
I told him this would have to be a closed session, with security, so he needed to tell the musicians they couldn’t invite anybody. And he said, “No problem.” And then I put Felton on to work out the details with him on behalf of RCA.
I had one more thing to do, which was the hardest part. And I phrased it in a way where I knew Elvis wouldn’t get upset. I said, “I need to ask you to do me a favor. You’re going to have six of the best musicians in the recording business. The studio is great, the producer’s great. And we all know you can sing. So please, would you get some good songs.” Elvis said, “Well, I was going to play you some stuff that I got out in California. It’s from this really odd guy.”
When Elvis was doing Speedway, Nancy Sinatra introduced him to Billy Strange, who ended up cowriting several songs with Mac Davis that Elvis recorded, like “Memories” and “Nothingville,” on the Singer Special soundtrack. Billy was also the musical director on Live a Little, Love a Little, and The Trouble with Girls. He told Elvis he had a great songwriter he wanted him to meet.
Elvis told me he walked into the room, and this guy was sitting in the corner on the floor, playing guitar and singing these songs. And that there was no damn furniture in the room. The guy’s name was Scott Davis, but he went by “Mac.” And Mac Davis played Elvis “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy.”
That first night at American, Elvis cut “Long Black Limousine,” “This Is the Story,” and “Wearin’ That Loved on Look.” And Chips was totally in control. Elvis wanted this album to be a hit so bad. And he’d never really worked with a producer before. Elvis would be the one to say, “No, I don’t like this take. Let’s do it again.” But Chips would stop him in the middle and say, “Hey, that didn’t sound right, Elvis. You need to do it again. You can do it better than that.”
A lot of people thought Elvis was going to blow up and say, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” But Elvis listened, and Chips got him to do a lot of things because Elvis was receptive at that point. And the musicians were really getting into it, and Elvis was loving it. The really big hits that Elvis cut during the Memphis Sessions—“Don’t Cry Daddy,” “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds”—were all created in that studio by Elvis, Chips, and the musicians, by the way, as opposed to aping what was on the demo.
When we got in the car to go home that morning, Sonny was driving, Elvis was sitting up front, and I was in the back with Joe and Lamar. Elvis turned around and looked at me, and it had been a long time since I had seen that look of happiness and satisfaction on his face. He said, “Man, that felt really great. I can’t tell you how good I feel.” And then he said, “I really just want to see if I can have a number one record one more time.”
He recorded every day, but during the night of the sixteenth, the sore throat he’d had earlier in the month came back with a vengeance. He had a one-hundred-degree temperature and tonsillitis. So he stayed off four days and went back into the studio on the twentieth and recorded every day through the twenty-third.
The day before he went back in the studio, Red, and George, and Lamar, and Elvis and I were up in his office listening to some songs the Colonel’s office sent. Almost all of them were terrible. When we finished, I think there was only one demo in the “yes” stack. Of course, I knew that since Lamar was with Hill and Range, whatever was said in that room about the demos would go back to Freddy Bienstock as soon as Lamar got away from there. And Freddy would then tell the Colonel.
Elvis was sitting behind his desk. He said, “Man, I don’t know what I’m going to do. We don’t have any more good songs. I don’t know why they keep sending me all of this crap.”
I decided I might as well go for broke. I said, “Elvis, you may not like what I’m about to say to you, but I know why you don’t hear the good demos.”
He said, “Why?” And I said, “Let me preface this by saying there isn’t a songwriter in the world who wouldn’t like Elvis Presley to cut one of his songs.” And then I looked him straight in the face and I said, “The reason is, they don’t need you anymore.” And the whole room was just dead silent. No one had ever said anything like this to him before.
Red had a faint smile on his face because he knew what I was doing, and I knew he agreed. I half expected Elvis to pick something up and throw it at me. Instead, he said, “What do you mean, ‘They don’t need me’?” I said, “There was a time when you were the only person to have a million seller every time out of the box. And at that point, the Colonel was smart enough, and Hill and Range was smart enough, to get a piece of the publishing.”
Elvis said, “Well, you know, that’s business.”
I said, “Yeah, but that was then, and this is now. There are a lot of people out there today with million-selling records. And there are a lot of singer-songwriters who don’t need other people to do their songs. So when they do try to bring a good song to you, they get hit over the head with this thing about giving up 25 percent of their publishing. And they’re just not going to do that anymore.”
He didn’t say anything, so I said, “But you know what else? The real crime is that you don’t hear but a fraction of what you get. Someone’s picking your fucking music for you. There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t have been the first person to hear the demo of every hit record that’s been cut in the last five years. Writers come to us, but all we can say is, ‘Send it to the Colonel.’”
I looked at Elvis, and he was sitting there with his hand over his mouth, like he was thinking it over. Lamar was gritting his teeth because I was taking money out of his pocket. And Red’s grin was bigger. Even George agreed with me, but he’s such a wimp, he wouldn’t say a peep to Elvis. They all just let me take the risk.
Elvis straightened up in his chair, and he was kicking his foot a mile a minute, which was his habit when he was nervous. He looked around, and he said, very firmly, “Well, here’s the way it is. I want everybody to know this, and I don’t give a fuck who they are. You tell them that I’ll pick my own goddamn music from now on. I want to hear every song I can get my hands on, and if I’ve got a piece of the publishing, that’s fine. But if I don’t have a piece of it and I want to do the song, I’m going to do it.”
Then he pointed his finger at me, and he said, “I want you to get me some songs.” And he looked at Red and he said, “I want you to get me some good songs, too. I want every one of you, if you know somebody, to get me some songs.” He was talking to George on that one because George knew a lot of artists through this TV show he had. So Klein immediately got on the phone and called Neil Diamond. That’s how Elvis got “And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind,” which he recorded during the third stage of the sessions, in February, along with “Kentucky Rain.”
LAMAR FIKE: Eddie Rabbitt was one of my writers then. He was a young unknown. And he’d written this thing called “Kentucky Rain.” Elvis wasn’t exactly knocked out with it. But I just insisted he cut it. I said, “You’ve got to do it. It’s just that good.”
MARTY LACKER: When we went back into the studio on January 20, everybody was mumbling under his breath. Elvis had already recorded “Don’t Cry Daddy,” the Mac Davis song—Ronnie Milsap played piano and sang a little background on that, by the way—and now Elvis took “In the Ghetto” in with him. They were getting ready to record it, and all of a sudden Elvis came into the control room and said, “I don’t know if I should do this song or not.”
Because it had always been drummed into him by Colonel Parker, “Don’t get involved in messages or politics.” He looked over at me, and I said, “Elvis, this song is fantastic. This song ain’t going to hurt you. If you’re ever going to do a song like this, this is the time.”
And Chips popped up and said, “Elvis, I’ve got to tell you, man, this is a hit song. You should cut this.”
Elvis just stood there, thinking about it, with his face knitted up. And Chips said, “Elvis, let me ask you a question. If you don’t do it, can I have the song?” Because at that time, Chips was also recording Joe Tex and Joe Simon, these two hit black artists. And Elvis said, “No, I’ll do it.”
So Elvis put the demo track down, and then he came back into the control room. There was a little vestibule in the studio, up in front of the control board. And Tom Diskin, Colonel Parker’s man, and Lamar, and Joe, and Harry Jenkins, the vice president of RCA, and maybe a couple other people sat there during all of this. Probably half of them were hoping this session wouldn’t fly because it interfered with their agendas. None of them had as much control here, and that included Felton and RCA
In the beginning, before they started doing takes, Chips and Elvis and Felton talked. And, actually on this record, their working relationship was fantastic. But Felton’s contribution on this record, other than some overdubs, was just to nod his head. And Diskin and Bienstock and Lamar weren’t happy because Elvis and Chips were beginning to look at outside songs that Hill and Range didn’t have the publishing on.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis had never recorded a social commentary song like “[In the] Ghetto.” I mean, “Ghetto” was not for him. “Ghetto” was supposed to have been given to Rosey Grier, the black football player. And Elvis said, “Hey, I want this song. I don’t want Rosey Grier to have it.”
But you talk about the success of this album . . . I remember a funny thing that happened there. They spent $75,000 on that album. They spend a half-million dollars on an album today, but at the time, it was more money than had ever been spent on a record, or certainly an Elvis record.
MARTY LACKER: After they did “In the Ghetto,” they were pretty much out of really good songs. And during the January 22 session, Chips turned to Elvis and said, “I’ve got this song that Mark James wrote. We had a little record out on it, and nothing ever happened with it, but I really think it’s a hit song.” And he played him “Suspicious Minds.”
Elvis listened to it, and he wasn’t too sure of it, but Joe Esposito talked him into recording it. Elvis said, “Well, we’ll put the track down at least.” Because they were recording the modern way, where he did a rough voice track with the rhythm section, and then they did the sweetening and overdubs with the horns or strings or background singers, and then Elvis came back and sang the final vocal track. He wasn’t crazy about that method, but he realized it let the producer get a better balance on the sounds.
“Suspicious Minds” was spliced together from three different takes. And, of course, it became a million seller and one of the biggest hits Elvis ever had. In fact, it was his last number one hit on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart. Two years after he recorded it, the local music industry named it the “Outstanding Single” recorded in Memphis.
There was just this one little problem, see. Chips had the publishing on it. And when they were doing the overdubs on it. Chips walked out into the hallway. Freddy Bienstock was at this session. And him and Diskin cornered Chips in the hall. Chips was leaning up against the wall, and both of them were on either side of him, trying to get a piece of the song. I was standing next to them, listening, and hoping they wouldn’t screw up the session.
Chips doesn’t take any shit from anybody, and after a little bit of this, he decided he’d had enough. He looked at both of them and he said, “Gentlemen, I thought we were here to cut some hit records. Now, if that’s not the case, let me tell you what you can do. You can take your fucking tapes, and you and your whole group can get the hell out of here. Don’t ask me for something that belongs to me. I’m not going to give it to you.”
Well, Harry Jenkins, the RCA vice president, spoke up and said he agreed with Chips. And Chips went in the control room and put his feet up on the board and pulled out a pack of unfiltered Camels. He was just hotter than hell.
Diskin said, “I’ll go talk to Mr. Presley about this.” So I thought, “I’ll go listen to what he tells him because there’s no need for this session to be sabotaged.” I wanted Elvis to know the truth, not some version of the truth that Diskin wanted him to hear. I was standing right behind him, and Diskin never saw me, not even when I followed him into the studio.
Elvis and Felton were still working on something with the musicians, and when Diskin said he’d like a word with them, they came over. Diskin said, “Elvis, we’re trying to get this piece of ‘Suspicious Minds,’ and Chips is being belligerent about it.” Elvis saw the look on my face, which said, “This is bullshit.” And he said, “Mr. Diskin, I appreciate that you’re trying to do your job, but leave the session to me and Felton and Chips.”
That’s the first time Elvis ever did anything like that. Diskin got so pissed off, he went back up to the front and picked up the telephone and called Colonel Parker in L.A. One of the guys was sitting up there, and he heard them talking, and he told me the whole thing. Diskin told Colonel, “Elvis wants to handle this himself. We don’t have any control here. What are we going to do?” And then he said, “Well, okay, if you say so.” He put the phone down, walked out the front door, got in his car, went back to the hotel, packed his bag, and left for California.
I later found out what Parker said: “He doesn’t want any of us around? Then you leave there, you come back here right now, and let him fall on his ass.”
So Elvis fell on his ass, all right. In twelve days, he cut thirty-six sides. Four of them were singles—“In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds,” “Don’t Cry Daddy,” and “Kentucky Rain,” and all but the last were gold, even though “Kentucky Rain” was a substantial hit. And the two albums that came out of it [From Elvis in Memphis and From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis] went platinum. That’s some falling on your ass.
It was the first, and I might add the only, time in Elvis Presley’s [RCA] career that someone from the Colonel’s office was not at the session.
LAMAR FIKE: What happened there was that Hill and Range was starting to lose control because Elvis was not selling records, and he couldn’t demand the fees like he used to. In a way, it was the end of an era. But he still recorded our songs.
BILLY SMITH: Elvis had bucked the Colonel. If he could have only kept that up . . .
MARTY LACKER: The first single to be released out of the Memphis Sessions was “In the Ghetto.” It hit Billboard real fast, the fastest any of Elvis’s records had hit in five years. The Billboard charts list the producers of the records. And I looked in there, and for the producer, it said, “Felton Jarvis.” Chips’s name wasn’t mentioned.
I said, “Bullshit.” I called Billboard, and I said, “Look, you got a mistake here on these charts. On ‘In the Ghetto,’ you have ‘Produced by Felton Jarvis.’ When in actuality, it was produced by Chips Moman.” Well, the next week the Billboard chart came out and it said, “Produced by Chips Moman,” and Felton’s name was nowhere to be seen.
The third week, I looked, and there was no producer listed. By this time the record was going into the Top 10. So I called Billboard again. I didn’t use my name. I told them I was somebody from RCA. I acted real indignant, and I said, “What is wrong with you people?”
The guy said, “Did you say you’re from RCA?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, I wish you guys would make up your mind. You called a week ago, screaming and hollering, and wanting to know why we had Chips Moman’s name in there. And then you had the Colonel’s office call and say, ‘No producer.’”
I said, “Put Chips Moman back on there.” And he said, “We’ll have to have this in writing.” I said, “I’ll get back to you.”
BILLY SMITH: The Colonel might have been outsmarted that one time, but he had a way of coming back and goosing you when you least expected it. Like with “Suspicious Minds.”
MARTY LACKER: When “Suspicious Minds” came out in September, it had a surprise on it. Because after Chips turned over the master tapes to RCA, somebody took “Suspicious Minds” back to Nashville or to California and remixed it. They put all these other voices on it—Millie Kirkham, for instance—and went back to that Nashville crap. And then they stuck a phony fade-and-bump ending on it, where it drops down and then pops back up.
That’s a technique that works well onstage. It’s visual, with the dimming of the lights and the dramatic comeback. But on a record, it ain’t worth a shit. And radio stations don’t like it because they time their music so closely and it screws up their program. Bill Gavin, of “The Gavin Report,” talked to me about it. His report was bigger than Billboard. He said, “Why did they do that? It was a great record, but I can’t tell you how many program directors said they wouldn’t play it unless they cut it off themselves. It almost killed that record.”