Gospel Truth—Elvis Presley

Legendary American producer Bob Johnston once suggested of Bob Dylan that he was “filled with the holy spirit”. The same could have been said of Elvis which, given that he was accused of propagating the devil’s music, would have been an ironic accolade. But the fact is that if he hadn’t been tempted by the forbidden fruit of rock ’n’ roll, Elvis might have taken a more righteous path and become a gospel singer.

“Elvis loved gospel music. He was raised on it. And he really did know what he was talking about. He was singing gospel all the time,” recalled Cissy Houston, formerly of Elvis’ backing group, the Sweet Inspirations. Swedish musician Per-Erik Hallin, who played piano with Elvis in 1973 and 1974, said “without hesitation that gospel was the type of music he liked the most”.

Presley tries his hand at drums in a Hollywood studio in 1956. Elvis entrusted rhythmic duties to D.J. Fontana for 14 years, with Fontana appearing on well over 400 tracks for the King. D.J was originally part of the cast of the Louisiana Hayride until October 1854 when he joined Elvis.

Elvis himself admitted in an early interview that the first songs he loved were “spirituals from years back”, adding, “I lived in a country where there were all-day singings, and sang religious songs when I was real young in church.”

During his career, he recorded just three gospel collections, two of which won Grammy Awards, How Great Thou Art (1967) and He Touched Me (1972). His version of the hymn, How Great Thou Art, from Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis, claimed a third Grammy gong for him in 1974.

With riots breaking out wherever he went, Elvis quickly became a focus for parental anger. In 1956, the New York Daily News wrote that pop music “has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley”. The ultimate rock ’n’ roll rebel had arrived.

Of course, given that Elvis came up in the so-called Bible Belt, his deep faith in the Lord and affinity with spiritual songs isn’t all that surprising. As a child he attended the First Assembly of God in Tupelo with his parents. The initially small congregation of about 25 members met in a building located among the working class neighbourhoods.

“I sang some with my folks in the Assembly of God church choir, but it was a small church, so you couldn’t sing too loud,” Elvis told a reporter in 1965.

Elvis first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 9^th, 1956—a seismic moment in the career of the young rock ’n’ roller. With #1 hit Heartbreak Hotel under his belt, he performed to an audience of 60 million . . . 82 per cent of the television-viewing public.

When he got a new guitar at the age of 11, it was the young pastor. Reverend W Frank Smith, who tutored him on the instrument. According to Reverend Smith, “He bought a book that showed you how to place your fingers in position, and I went over to his house a time or two, or he would come to where I was, and I would show him some runs from different chords from what he was learning out of his book. That was all—not enough to say I taught him how to play, but I helped him.”

Elvis buffs up his 1956 Lincoln Continental. The most famous of Elvis’ cars is probably the pink Cadillac that he gave to his mother, but there were numerous others, amongst them Lincolns, Rolls Royces, BMWs, Mercedes, a Messerschmitt, and his favoured Stutz Blackhawks . . .

It wasn’t long before Smith was urging Elvis to perform at services. “I would have to insist on him getting up there—he didn’t push himself. At the special singings we might have someone do a type of quartet number. Different ones in the church would get up or maybe somebody visiting would sing, but there were no other kids to sing with him at that time. He sang quite a few times, and he was liked.”

Elvis became a regular at the All Night Gospel Singings in Ellis Auditorium, captivated by the “big heavy rhythm beats” of the uptempo numbers and the gentle beauty of others. Among the acts to make an impression on him were The Blackwood Brothers (who had a national hit in 1951 with The Man Upstairs) and The Statesmen Quartet. The latter’s frontman, Jake Hess, remembered meeting the young Elvis.

Clad in black leather, Presley strums his cherry end Gibson guitar on the Comeback Special at NBC Studios in Burbank, CA. 33 years old and a recent father, Elvis was in fine fettle and proved that, despite claims to the contrary, he had lost none of his raw talent or affable charm.

“We didn’t know him from a sack of sand. He was just a nice kid, this bright-eyed boy asking all kinds of questions and asking in a way that you would really want to tell him. He wanted to know about the spiritual aspects of it—did you do this or that?”

The curious child evolved into an adult seeker. When his beloved mother Gladys, passed away, Elvis sought solace—and enlightenment—in the Bible. But his spiritual quest wasn’t only confined to conventional religion. Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet, originally published in 1923, was a favourite choice of reading matter, which increased exponentially under the influence of his personal hair stylist, Larry Geller, a disciple of New Age ideas.

A horde of screaming fans are forcibly restrained by police at an Elvis concert. Elvis had many girlfriends including plenty of celebrities—Mamie Van Doren, Natalie Wood, Tuesday Weld, Barbra Streisand, Connie Stevens, Nancy Sinatra and Ann-Margret all fell for his charms.

Before Elvis’ star ascended into the stratosphere, he met The Jordanaires backstage at an Eddy Arnold concert in 1954. Established gospel artists in their own right, they also moonlighted as backing vocalists for major country artists. Elvis enthused to Hoyt Hawkins of The Jordanaires that he would like an outfit of their calibre “to sing with me if I ever achieve the kind of success Eddy Arnold has”. His dream was realised some 18 months later when The Jordanaires debuted with him at the Paramount Theatre in Atlanta, the first time Elvis had worked with a full quartet. They would remain with him for the next 12 years, and feature on his first gospel collection. His Hand In Mine, released in 1960.

Presley performs the gospel medley during his ’68 Comeback Special on NBC

Four years earlier Elvis had demonstrated his churchy chops when steering the Million Dollar Quartet with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash at Sun Studios. A vast religious repertoire included When God Dips His Love In My Heart, Just A Little Talk With Jesus, Walk That Lonesome Valley and Peace In The Valley, the last of which Elvis sang on The Ed Sullivan Show in January, 1957. It would be his final appearance on the TV programme, and he dedicated Peace In The Valley to the people of Hungary after their failed 1956 rebellion against the Soviet Union. This and three other hymns were recorded for an EP in 1957, which, to RCAs surprise, sold more than 400,000, as many as most of Elvis’ secular Eps.

The Presley family’s local church, Tupelo, Mississippi

Military service in Germany, and his transition from the king of rock ’n’ roll to big screen idol, meant Elvis had to shelve the recording of His Hand In Mine for another three years. When it was eventually recorded, the 14 tracks were completed in 14 hours, with Surrender and Crying In The Chapel withheld as future singles, though they weren’t issued until 1961 and 1965 respectively.

The Blackwood Brothers, who became friends with Elvis in 1952 and were one of his favourite gospel groups

His Hand In Mine was a loving tribute to the quartets Elvis admired as both boy and man, with a large number of the tracks culled from the catalogue of The Blackwood Brothers and The Statesmen Quartet. New friend Charlie Hodge had introduced him to the music of The Golden Gate Quartet while they were stationed together in Germany, and Elvis even had a chance to meet, greet and sing with the outfit in Paris on an army furlough. The jubilee style of The Golden Gate Quartet material was a perfect counterpoint to the reverential selections from The Blackwood Brothers and The Statesmen Quartet, as Elvis moved from a full-bodied baritone to a soaring tenor.

The Jordanaires, formed in 1948, accompanied Elvis from the RCA sessions of 1956 until the early ’70s

“He had the ability to hear any song and record it immediately without using a lyric sheet,” claimed Gordon Stoker. “Joshua Fit The Battle was another one of those songs he didn’t know when he decided to record it. After rehearsing it a few times, he was ready to roll tape.

He recorded it by memory. Listen to it—those words are not easy. My personal favourite is Known Only To Him. The words to this song touched Elvis’ heart and are meaningful to me every time I hear it. He was a such a beautiful soul, and you can hear it in his voice in these recordings. That’s what those of us who knew Elvis loved about him.”

The majority of Elvis’ output in the six years after His Hand In Mine comprised movie soundtracks. So when studio time was booked in Nashville at the end of May, 1966, talk abounded of a return to his rock ’n’ roll roots and a subsequence chart renaissance.

Elvis had a different ambition. For months, along with Charlie Hodge and Red West at his Los Angeles home, he had been listening to records by Jimmy Jones And The Harmonising Four, singing and taping his impromptu jams. Elvis wanted to work on a second gospel anthology, and asked RCA to hire bass singer Jones. When Jones couldn’t be found, the label suggested The Statesmen Quartet’s tenor, Jake Hess, then fronting a new troupe, The Imperials Quartet.

Singer and civil rights activist Mahalia Jackson was the most popular gospel performer of her day

Elvis decided to use them alongside The Jordanaires, augmented by three female vocalists. What transpired from the sessions was How Great Thou Art, an altogether darker piece than His Hand In Mine, impelled by a strident rhythm section and heavenly choir.

Stoker again: “How Great Thou Art became Elvis’ favourite gospel song. When we first discussed cutting it, he said he had never heard of it. Ray Walker, our bass singer, said he had a hymn book in his car. He ran out and got it, and with the lyrics from the hymn book in front of us. The Jordanaires sang it for him. He agreed it was good and wanted to record it. Neal Matthews, our second tenor who wrote so many great vocal arrangements for us, made an arrangement of it. Elvis listened to it, rehearsed and recorded it by memory.”

Per-Erik Hallin’s strongest memory of Elvis doing How Great Thou Art was during a tour in March, 1974.

“It was one time when I wasn’t on stage and could listen to him perform it. I remember I was very moved. He did the song with incredible feeling.”

How Great Thou Art followed its gospel predecessor, His Hand In Mine, into the Billboard Top 20, and earned Elvis his first Grammy Award. Over the years it has gone on to become one of his best-selling albums ever, shifting over three million units in the States alone.

In 1967, Elvis was back in Nashville putting together some additional tracks for the Clambake soundtrack along with some new singles. One of these was supposed to be Ben Weisman’s We Call On Him, but Elvis changed tack at the session when he sat at the piano and asked for the lights to be turned down low. Then he began playing You’ll Never Walk Alone, again and again, without pause between takes, emotionally draining the lyric. It would secure him yet another Grammy nomination.

The gospel influence was a theme on his 1968 TV comeback, one production number helmed by a medley of Sometimes! I Feel Like A Motherless Child, Where Could I Go But To The Lord?, Up Above My Head and Saved. He closed the landmark show with Walter Earl Brown’s If I Can Dream, which quoted Dr Martin Luther King and was recorded by Elvis just a couple of months after the civil rights campaigner’s assassination. Although not strictly gospel, it was equal in sentiment and intensity to any of the spirituals he had covered, and indicative of the epic compositions he favoured at the time, among them Mickey Newbury’s American Trilogy and Marty Robbins’ You Gave Me A Mountain. It was Brendan Bowyer, known as Ireland’s Elvis in the 1960s, who introduced him to You Gave Me A Mountain.

Back in Hollywood to make Change Of Habit in 1969, Elvis was visited on set by Mahalia Jackson, the indisputable queen of gospel. Barbara McNair, his co-star in the him, reflected, “Elvis and I were sitting there together and Mahalia came on the set and she asked Elvis if he would participate in a fund-raiser that she going to organise. Elvis was so gracious—‘Oh, Mrs Jackson, I am so happy to meet you. I would love to do it, but I still have to ask the Coloner. So after she left, he said to me, ‘I’ll never do it. The Colonel won’t let me’. But he was so gracious to her.”

When Elvis came to record He Touched Me, his third gospel album in 1971, he made sure to acknowledge Mahalia Jackson as a touchstone, reprising her classic An Evening Prayer alongside compelling versions of Amazing Grace, He Is My Everything and There Is No God But God. The Jordanaires were now gone, replaced by The Imperials, while the music was given a contemporary boost by his TCB Band guitarist James Burton and by in-demand Nashville players Charlie McCoy on keys, Norbert Putnam on bass and Kenny Buttrey on drums.

By the time of his final tour in 1974, gospel had become an increasing part of Elvis’ set, especially the profoundly moving How Great Thou Art Elvis himself explained his unending need for gospel music in the documentary Elvis On Tour, and revealed how offstage, too, he immersed himself in the healing waters of sacred songs. “We do two shows a night for five weeks. A lot of times we’ll go upstairs and sing until daylight—gospel songs, “We grew up with it. It more or less puts your mind at ease. It does mine.”

 

It is a quote. VINTAGE ROCK PRESENTS – ELVIS COLLECTORS EDITION 2015