max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#831: big mama thornton and buddy guy - hound dog (1965)

i would stand on doc pomus’ coffee table in phil spector’s high heels and say that jerry leiber wrote the most quietly filthy and loudly adorable pop music of the 20th century’s soft midsection. where would we be without the verses of spanish harlem that sway like hips? the sashaying shuffle of kansas city? the molasses-sticky come ons in elvis’ love me, not to mention the hound dog that he butchered? leiber and the one-month-older mike stoller even produced stuck in the middle with you, because they could, and because no one else could’ve made music good for ear cutting. jerry leiber is dead at 78.

#806: tony joe white - poke salad annie (1969)

the beach boys’ vegetables is a better and sweeter song, and it has paul mccartney chewing celery in the background, but as far as highly vulgar late-60s vegan-approvable rock songs go, poke salad annie gets extra points for crossing a certain invisible line of innuendo. it’s hard to put your finger on, but elvis presley said it well when he offered, “everybody calls it poke salad. and that’s poke! salad! poke! hut, two, three, four, hut, hut, two, three, four, hut, hut, two, three, four, yeah, ang, ang, ang, mom, mom, pop, pop, huh, huh, huh, bop, two, three, four, hut, hut, hut, two, three, four.” wonderful.

#804: kevin ayers - falling in love again (1976)

i’ve never been this full-heartedly romantic or this half-liddedly druggy, but someone’s got to be and thank god it’s kevin ayers. the man slept with his bandmate john cale’s wife the night before this, prompting dear john to later say, “the bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife, did it quick and split.” that’s the first line of guts, the first song on the album of the same name (the one with the outstanding elvis presley and jonathan richman covers.) kevin ayers had guts, and he also had the ability to make a piano explode by gently tossing a glass of champagne into it after he’s done playing: just watch.

#796: billy swan - don’t be cruel (1975)

elvis presley filled a bath with warm cough syrup, washed for the first time in days, drank up the bathwater, dried off his pompadour, stepped out of the steamy bathroom, emptied eight prescriptions from dr. nick*, slowly dressed up as a wild west sheriff, opened his mouth, and that’s how he turned into a beautiful billy swan. 

really though, a girl played this for me for the first time very late one night last week and i thought i’d just about fall over. i once swore that john cale’s heartbreak hotel was the best elvis presley cover from 1975, but, friends, a man who can admit he was wrong about something important is a man indeed.

*dr. george c. “nick” nichopoulos, not dr. nick riviera

#696: gillian welch (with david rawlings) - elvis presley blues (2007, bbc)

who am i to complain, because when she opens her mouth poppies and the confederacy and rainbows come out, and when i open mine it’s not particularly excellent insights into old music videos and new york city financiers, but what’s been happening with gillian welch? she should not be singing back-up for mediocre decemberists songs on conan o’brien’s tbs show, she should get back to making albums about murderers, mephistopheles, morphine, mornings, and miners, which are the subjects of five of the first six songs on hell among the yearlings—the other being good ‘til now, the prettiest song of them all. and that album was a matchstick next to the candelabra of time (the revelator), which, start to finish, would have made hank williams moan like a baby, especially dear someone. the only thing she’s made since then is soul journey, which is okay, and has the world’s finest song about ohio beauty queens, but is now seven years old. bring it all back home, gillian.

#499: elvis - when my blue turns to gold again & blue christmas (1968)

when elvis presley took the stage for the first time in seven years to record his ‘68 comeback special, inviting along his original memphis bandmates scotty moore and d.j. fontana, even the reindeer dropped what they were doing to listen to their radios. when blue christmas came on in the middle of when my blue turns to gold, they quietly shed a few salty tears of joy. but when rca music executives spliced martina mcbride into the footage for last year’s elvis christmas duets album, santa claus got so sad that he died. the holidays are now gone forever.

#489: arthur “big boy” crudup - my baby left me (1972)

sad music doesn’t have to be backed up by sad stories, but it helps. forest mississippi’s arthur “big boy” crudup never got royalties for writing cosmically important early elvis presley hits like that’s all right mama and my baby left me, and by the time this documentary was filmed he’d gone back to field labor and bootlegging. “if i could get that money, i could really put out a song. i really could. i could really put out one that i believe would not knock the ceiling out,” he says in the film. “but as i’ve not got that money, what have i got to put out a song about? sometimes i’ll be sitting down, i’ll be alone, and a verse or two will come to me. and i’ll say, aw, forget about it.” the documentary didn’t help him collect royalties. he died four years later.

#285: elvis presley - poke salad annie (1970)

“what are you looking at back there? some of you all who haven’t been down south too much, i’m going to tell you a little story so as you’ll understand what i’m talking about. down there we have a plant that grows out in the woods of the fields, and it looks something like a turnip green. and everybody calls it poke salad. and that’s poke! salad! poke! hut, two, three, four, hut, hut, two, three, four, hut, hut, two, three, four, yeah, ang, ang, ang, mom, mom, pop, pop, huh, huh, huh, bop, two, three, four, hut, hut, hut, two, three, four. learned that in the army. hut, two, three, four, four, ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh, cha, cha. anyway, i used to know a girl that lived down there. she used to go out in the evenings and pick a mess of it, carry it home and cook it for supper. just about all they had to eat, but they did alright.”

as peter guralnick’s heavenly two-volume biography of elvis confirms, he was totally fucking way out of his mind in all sorts of profound ways. but he also moved like a messiah, and watch the whole thing here because elvis (what a guy) really goes for it.

#150: elvis presley - return to sender (1962)

any musical number featured in a film called girls! girls! girls!, and any song that uses the united states postal service as a plot device, and any film clip that begins: “doctor livingstone! somehow this isn’t how i imagined the big reconciliation,” and any early elvis presley song that features the baritone saxophone stylings of bobby keys, who later played with the rolling stones and once threw a television off a 10th floor hotel balcony with keith richards, is okay by me.

ps. this is video #150. whoa.

#78: elvis presley - bosom of abraham (1970)

happy easter, christians! this weekend my peoples celebrated purim, which i think involves three-cornered hats and little noisemakers, whereas our jesus-adoring neighbors get to eat cadbury creme eggs, fix bloody marys, cavort around with rabbits, and go on eater hunts in large estate lawns.

if i’m lucky, maybe one day i’ll get to celebrate easter at an open-hearted christian friend’s house. in the meantime, i’m happy watching videos of obesity-era elvis lovingly chuckle his way through hymnals. for a man that guzzled barbiturates and wore gold-trim track suits, he sure loved his gospel.

#48: elvis presley - heartbreak hotel (1956)

compared to johnny cash, elvis presley was a softhearted prettyboy pansy. and yet even though they started in the same sun records recording studio, one become a whole lot more important than the other. the conclusion to draw here is that america likes sissies: elvis, wayne newton, michael jackson, clay aiken.

(and despite elvis’ hide-your-daughters reputation, he really was a weirdo—as discussed in the best music biography of all time, it turned out that he liked calling his girlfriends “mommy” while filming them sitting quietly in white underwear and white socks. true story.)

on the plus side, his band sounded awfully good. plus, it’s hard to disregard a performer when he can move his legs like this.