Charlie Hodge (a member of Elvis' entourage and band, who was in the army with him) once told a story about when Elvis was at RCA Studio B in Nashville, October 1, 1967 recording songs for the movie "Stay Away Joe". One of the songs he was to record that day was called 'Moo Moo Move' (the title was later changed to 'Dominick'). After listening to a demo of it, Elvis looked sick and Scotty Moore (Elvis's original lead guitar player from the 50's) who was playing the session looked at him and said, " Has it come to this, man?" Charlie considered that to be the lowest point in Elvis's musical career. The song was so bad that Elvis made his producer, Felton Jarvis, swear that it would never be released on record.
According to Charlie, Elvis swore that day that he would never again record crap that bad. And he didn't. That was towards the end of his movie career, and his last few films had fewer songs than previous films and the quality of them improved. ('Speedway' which contained some pretty awful music such as 'He's Your Uncle Not Your Dad' was released after 'Stay Away Joe', but was actually made before.)
It's too bad that it had to reach that point before Elvis gave up recording such awful music. His 60's movies in the beginning, like 'G.I. Blues', and 'Blue Hawaii', usually had a few good songs, some that weren't great but were fun, but some of his later 60's movies contained songs that were truly awful, even though Elvis always made the best of them. In my next post I'll have a look at what I would consider to be the ten worst.
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