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The 50 Best Elvis Songs, 35-31: "Blue Christmas," "Guitar Man" and more

Aug. 06, 2015
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By Chris Herrington

Aug. 06, 2015 0

On Day Four of our countdown, Elvis gets in the holiday spirit, takes on the Bard of Hibbing and offers female fans an invitation they can’t refuse. (See "Related Headlines," to the left, for previous entries.)

35. “My Baby Left Me” (1956)
What: Recorded January 30, 1956 at RCA Studios, New York, and released in May as the B-side to “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.”

Why: Elvis jump-started his career and perhaps rock and roll itself with his cover of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right,” so it’s appropriate that this follow-up dip into the bluesman’s catalog is every bit as energetic if not as epochal as its predecessor. No other Elvis RCA recording is as close to the spirit, fire and sound of Sun as this raw workout, which establishes beyond all doubt that Scotty Moore (guitar), Bill Black (bass) and D.J. Fontana (drums) are one of the great combos in rock-and-roll history. -- John Beifuss

34. “Blue Christmas” (1957)
What: Recorded Sept. 5, 1957 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood and first issued in December on the Elvis Sings Christmas Songs EP, Elvis’ rendition was at least the fourth released version of this holiday chestnut since Doyle O’Dell’s original in 1948.

Why: Elvis’ contribution to the holidays is as loaded with goodies as a Christmas stocking, from the plunk-a-plunk-plunk of the guitar to the almost doo-wop background vocals of Millie Kirkham and the Jordanaires, which move from high to low pitch like garlands wrapped in waves around a Douglas fir. With a quintessential Elvis vocal performance (“I’ll have a bluuuuue blue-blue-blue Criss-muss” the singer concludes), this Christmas classic seems to become more ubiquitous every season; it may be the most popular holiday pop song since Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” in 1942, probably because it never fails to make the listener smile. -- Beifuss

33. “Tomorrow is a Long Time” (1966)
What: The King meets The Bard as Elvis cuts a Dylan rarity. This cover was first recorded by Elvis in 1966 during sessions for the How Great Thou Art album.

Why: This early Bob Dylan folk number was demo’d in 1962, and debuted publicly during a Town Hall concert the following year, but not recorded by him until 1971. It was actually Odetta’s 1965 version of the song that caught Elvis' ear – thanks to mutual Presley/Dylan session player Charlie McCoy. It’s a spare and moving piece that makes one wish the King had dug deeper into the Dylan songbook, and more often. As it stands, Dylan would note, in a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone, that “Elvis Presley recording a song of mine, that’s the one recording I treasure the most.” -- Bob Mehr

32. “Guitar Man” (1967)
What: Georgia-bred guitarist and songwriter Jerry Reed scored a small country hit with this snappy 1967 number about a musician making his way from Memphis to Macon to Mobile leading a swingin' five piece band. But the tune would be redone memorably – not once, but twice – by Elvis.
 
Why: “Guitar Man” would find new life in the summer of '67 when Presley summoned Reed to Hollywood (“Get Me that redneck picker who’s on the original tune”) to add his licks to the track. Reed’s madcap personality seemed to energize the King. “I got pumped, and then Elvis got pumped, and the more he got pumped up, the more I did,” recalled Reed of the session, “it was like a snowball effect.” (At the same time, Reed famously stood his ground with Elvis publishers, refusing to give up any part of his rights to the song, which was standard practice.) While “Guitar Man” failed to crack the Top 40 at the time -- it came out during the doldrums of Elvis’ film and chart career -- in 1981, three years after Presley’s passing, the track was re-recorded with his original vocal left on, and released again, becoming a surprise country hit #1. -- Mehr

31. “Love Me” (1956)
What: Written by the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller -- who will be heard from again on this list -- in 1954 and went through several versions before Elvis covered the song in 1956. It appeared on his second RCA album, Elvis, and on the EP Elvis Vol. 1, but was not released as a single because of its title similarity to “Love Me Tender.” Still, the song charted, reaching #2 on the pop charts, and Elvis performed it on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Why: Sophisticates and humorists, Leiber & Stoller intended “Love Me” as something of a parody of country love songs: “Treat me like a fool/Treat me mean and cruel/But love me.” Elvis played it (mostly) straight. Recorded in September, 1956, about eight months after “Heartbreak Hotel” had cemented his superstardom, “Love Me” may have been the first song to acknowledge the helpless and intense ardor of Elvis’ female fans, indeed to make that the song’s subtext. In Elvis’ hands, and in that context, those first lines aren’t ironic commentary on love-song convention as much as an invitation for bedlam. Watch that “Ed Sullivan” show performance and you’ll see Elvis mischievously anticipate the reaction before he’s through the song’s opening phrase. More than a decade later, digging deeper into the song on his 1968 “comeback” special, the effect was the same -- Chris Herrington

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