It had been twenty years since a twenty-one-year-old Elvis Presley first walked into RCA Studios in Nashville to record “Heartbreak Hotel”. Since then, he had achieved unprecedented stardom. After early hysteria, he found himself in the army, before triumphantly returning to firmly establish himself as the top star in Hollywood. There had been struggles as the quality and success of movies started to fade. So, he returned to the stage with a spectacular TV performance, then stormed Las Vegas, and then toured to sold-out audiences in cities across America. Now it was all taking its toll.
One sign of this was the frequency with which Elvis now visited a recording studio. Since the prolific output of 1969 and 1970, Elvis recorded new material less and less. In 1974, he did not go to a recording studio at all and only did a few sessions in 1975.
Part of the problem was an old one. Just as in the 1960’s Colonel Parker was demanding publishing rights from writers, who were becoming more reluctant to give in to the Colonel’s demands, meaning good new material was scarce. Whilst Elvis had dabbled in songwriting and often adjusted lyrics and music to fit his style, Elvis was really more interested in performance than in serious writing. The policy caused him to miss out on recording Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, which she had written with Elvis in mind. Parton refused Parker’s demands, which she initially regretted until 1992, when Whitney Houston performed the song in the film “The Bodyguard”, and it became a worldwide smash.
The other problem was that Elvis did not really want to go into a recording studio between his heavy Las Vegas and touring schedules.
Requiring new material, RCA opted to bring a mobile recording unit to Graceland in 1976. The Jungle Room, with its deep-pile carpet on both walls and the ceiling, would be ideal as a recording studio. It was also large enough to accommodate Elvis’s rhythm group. Cables were run to a truck housing the recording equipment, positioned as close as possible to the room, which is located on the rear right-hand side of the mansion.
This was done on two occasions, in February and October of 1976. The results would form all the material for the appropriately titled album “From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee” and half of the “Moody Blue” album.
Key tracks recorded included “Hurt”, “Moody Blue” and “Way Down”. “Hurt” would be a top-40 record in the UK and a top-10 record on the US Billboard Country charts; both “Moody Blue” and “Way Down” would eventually top the Country chart. Both would also be top-ten hits in the UK, with “Way Down” going all the way to number 1.
The theme of the songs was generally about lost love, with one of the songs, “It’s Easy For You”, including the lyric, “You don’t have to face the music, you don’t have to face the crowd”. Elvis also covered Neil Sedaka’s “Solitaire” and even Roger Whittaker’s “The Last Farewell”.
In total, sixteen songs were completed, and in 2016, they were released in their entirety on the album “Way Down In The Jungle Room”, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the recordings. It was a two-disc set with the completed masters on one disc and various alternate takes on the other.
Aside from additional live recordings captured during tours in 1977, these were Elvis’s last recordings.
