![]() And I have to give the album credit, the Hawaiian flavoring is actually fairly authentic. Listen to his performance on “No More”, for example – just as smooth, suave, and emotional as he’d ever sound, and Elvis was the most remarkably emotive singer of his time, if not of all time. But two things are absolutely undeniable:ġ) at the time he recorded Blue Hawaii, Elvis was 110% committed to the material he was singing, andĢ) the material was pretty good, about a thousand times better than what he’d soon be singing in Kissin’ Cousins and Easy Come Easy Go and Clambake. For many Elvis fans, you can’t beat anything Elvis did pre-Army, and they may have a point. I know a lot of you don’t get it, when asked about his thoughts on the King’s death John Lennon famously said that Elvis died when he went in the army, and tons of people agree. My relationship with the album is complicated – I hate it for what it did to Elvis, but I love it for being the great album that it is. In fact, I have to confess, it is my second favorite Elvis album. However, it must be said, the album itself isn’t bad. Sure he’d made movies of varying quality before it, but it was Blue Hawaii that set the template for the next several years. All that is certain is the Blue Hawaii was the first step towards movie musical hell for the world’s most popular hip swiveler. So who knows? Elvis might have struggled even without the movies, he certainly did in the mid-70s even without three trashy movies a year holding him back. His comeback proved conclusively that he had the ability to adapt to the times – although the years that followed also proved conclusively he had difficulty maintaining interest in staying artistically relevant. I mean, sure, we can all speculate how the King of Rock and Roll might have responded differently to the British Invasion and the rise of Psychedelia had he not been sidetracked with soundtracks to awful movies, but when he finally shook that off the movie soundtrack shackles late in the decade he demonstrated a remarkable capacity to adapt to contemporary trends. If the film had flopped and the non-soundtrack Something for Everybody had outsold the Blue Hawaii soundtrack album instead of the other way around, the 1960s might have been very different for our boy Elvis. So Blue Hawaii is the album that ruined Elvis Presley, up until the Comeback Special anyway. It is a testament to the irrepressible abundance of Elvis’ talent that he accomplished as much as he did with the almost insurmountable barrier of Parker’s greed and artistic indifference in the way. Elvis’ popularity was such that it took a few years for people to stop buying that crap, but eventually even the hardest hard core fans caught on that the movies and their attendant soundtrack albums were hopeless schlock, and they’d been conned by that biggest carnival barker of all time, “Colonel” Tom Parker, that albatross around Elvis’ neck that tragically kept him from reaching his full potential as an artist. ![]() The success of Blue Hawaii – both the movie and the album – is directly responsible for setting Elvis firmly on the path toward such movie musical atrocities as Harum Scarum, Double Trouble, Frankie and Johnny, and about two dozen other abysmal movie soundtracks. ![]() Blue Hawaii is the album that put Elvis on a trajectory that took him out of any sort of artistic relevance for the next seven years. We all should – at least anyone who appreciates Elvis Presley an artist should. So given the public preference for musical soundtracks combined with the growing popularity of rock and roll, perhaps it is no surprise that the second best selling album of the entire decade in the United States was none other than the soundtrack to Elvis Presley’s film Blue Hawaii. Actually, at that time rock was still in its infancy, for the first half of the decade the best selling album each year was the soundtrack to a movie musical, ending with Mary Poppins in 1965. in 1966, probably more due to the album cover than any music buying public affinity for Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass). was in the 1960s behind – inexplicably – the soundtrack to West Side Story? Abbey Road? The Doors’ debut album ? Led Zeppelin II? Let It Bleed? Surfer Girl? Whipped Cream & Other Delights? (That isn’t actually a joke, it was the best selling album in the U.S. Anybody know what the second best selling album in the U.S.
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