Sunday, August 3, 2008

Reinvented By The King


Back in the day when I was a new Elvis fan, I never new that he rerecorded songs from other artists. I always thought songs like "That's All Right" 'Hounddog"or "My Way" were songs written for him. Other songs include "One Night" which was orginally recorded by Smiley Lewis in 1956. Lewis' version was much more lewd and was titled "One Night Of Sin", Elvis recorded the original song and then later cleaned it up a bit recorded it again and called it "One Night". Another song that surprised me was "Are You Lonsesome Tonight?" which was orginally recorded by Al Jolson is 1926. If i'm not mistaken, Col. Parker wanted Elvis to record the song because his wife thought it would be perfect for him. After recording it in 1960, he was nominated for three grammy awards. "Steamroller Blues" which was awesome when he sang it during the Aloha Concert was orginally composed by James Taylor in 1970. Perhaps a more famous song which (to me) described Elvis' life was a song written by Paul Anka for Frank Sinatra called "My Way". Other songs include Righteous Brothers 'Lost That Love And Feeling", Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", Three Dog Nights "Never Been To Spain", Big Momma Thorton "Hounddog", CCR "Proud Mary" among many others. He not only reinvented this songs, he made them alot better.

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