Vocal miscues, barking dogs, and other weird things

[Lonniebealestreet]

Let's see how many strange things captured on Elvis recordings we can think of. At first I was just going to ask about vocal errors (not trying to be negative--just having a little fun) that are noticeable, but not so much that they didn't make the cut. But I thought if we included all of the above it would be easier to come up with a lot.

I'll start with one...

Never Ending - "Just as heaven has no 'bounders'..."

[Liverbobs]

Little chuckle during Promised Land!

[Sonny]

Laughing during the fade out of "If You Talk In Your Sleep".

And the barking dog at the end of "Way Down" comes to mind reading the title of this thread.

The guitar or stool squeek at the very end of "Are You Lonesome Tonight".

These came to mind rightaway, more soon, I'm sure...

Sonny

[Leroy]

There's a stool squeek during "This Is Our Dance" some at the beginning of the sentence "wait 'til everybody has gone". There's also a conversation going on during the second interlude of "Mary In The Morning".

[jbgude]

There are few tracks that has audible errors - " Ill hold you in my heart" comes to mind and a few where E laughs a softly - and still carries on - just cannot remember the songs.

Funnily enough I still cannot hear the " yellow dog" or the phone that E mentions on " The Jungls room sessions" or for that matter the siren that caused Elvis to abort "Poor mans gold" on the Memphis Anthology CD....

[Lonniebealestreet]

Funnily enough I still cannot hear the " yellow dog" or the phone that E mentions on " The Jungls room sessions" or for that matter the siren that caused Elvis to abort "Poor mans gold" on the Memphis Anthology CD....
Me neither, jb, in either case.

It's not that I'm all about pointing out Elvis' goofs, but more of those are coming to mind right now than the other kinds of sounds are...

You all ever notice in Moody Blue how I believe on the first chorus, you can tell that he started to sing, "tell me who'm I talkin' to" instead of "tell me am I gettin through"? His voice sort of briefly drops out to make the correction, but essentially it comes out like, "Tell me who'm I gettin' through." Though you can hear it on the previous releases, it is most noticeable on the E2 version, because they brought his voice so much further out in front, and naturally on the undubbed master.

[Lildarling]

Weird?Only funny things, goofs that El made just for fun come to my mind...fo example the funniest Memories with cat meows, dog barkings etc. or Don't cry daddy (or fatty:P )...

The most CREEPY oh yeah was the monologue with "I'll pull your tongue out with the ROOTS"...

Those are all so-called "outtakes", but speaking bout "original" recordings- what about "one two three four, one two thre four" in the beginning of"Inherit the wind"?

[nashville cat]

Two that immediately come to my mind are on the last chorus of "The Next Step Is Love" Elvis' voice cracks on the last line before the tag.

The bass player hits a wrong note on the turnaround of "Sylvia" before the key change into the second verse.

[jbgude]

heck I wrote a fairly long post on some tracks and it just got lost on outer cyber space :'( I aint going to write again ...

[Lonniebealestreet]

That sucks, I know. It's happened to me before and it was as if I was watching Robert Goulet on my computer. ;)

[rick]

Here's a few:


A `squeaky hinge' sound on `So Glad You're Mine'
Something that sounds like a karate noise just after I Can Help' - like a `hoo-haa' matching a karate movement.
Does he also stumble on the lyric of `It's Easy for You' during the second refrain, replacing `what do you think I should say' with `tay'?
rick

[Leroy]

He probably was thinking "Stay" while he ought to sing "Say".....

[Lonniebealestreet]

Little chuckle during Promised Land!
Remind me of when this occurs, please.

Reading that again made me think of the chuckle following "No, baby, you can't lick it" in The Power Of My Love. :lmfao:

[Sonny]

That high squeek on "So Glad You're Mine" almost sounds like one single blow on a saxophone, doesn't it?

I've noticed this before and it's like the sax-player thought he had to do a solo at that point and suddenly realized that wasn't the case.

Then again, was there a sax-player present during that session?

Sonny

[paultoronto]

In Indescribably Blue ... just before he sings "I smile, and tell them".. the "I" he starts to say it too early.. then starts it again at the right time... you can hear him catch himself, in fact, when I recorded the song myself, I put that in... one of those little things no one cares or notices, but I know it's there, and that's enough :)

[Sattnin]

Weird?Only funny things, goofs that El made just for fun come to my mind...fo example the funniest Memories with cat meows, dog barkings etc. or Don't cry daddy (or fatty:P )...

The most CREEPY oh yeah was the monologue with "I'll pull your tongue out with the ROOTS"...

Those are all so-called "outtakes", but speaking bout "original" recordings- what about "one two three four, one two thre four" in the beginning of"Inherit the wind"?

The "Memories" with Elvis meowing, etc. is so hilarious!!! I wish I could find that and download it!!

[Lonniebealestreet]

In Indescribably Blue ... just before he sings "I smile, and tell them".. the "I" he starts to say it too early.. then starts it again at the right time... you can hear him catch himself...
You know what's odd about that? I'm pretty sure that on the home recording of the song (Elvis singing at home to the background track, which was recorded in the studio in his absence), he did the exact same thing. So either he had the exact same problem on that occasion or it was actually intentional, which is possible. I'm referring to the performance on The Home Recordings.

[jbgude]

I guess the " From Elvis in Memphis" LP /album has the most unintended sounds recorded (and released) starting from " Ill hold you in my heart .." " After loving you" "Power of my love" as already mentioned ..... there are quite a few more which slips my mind right now.

[Liverbobs]

[QUOTE=Lonniebealestreet]Remind me of when this occurs, please.



I can only pick it up when I have the mp3 player on, earphones in and volume up! there's a definate chuckle towards the end of the song when he almost gets tongue tied, I only heard for the first time a few weeks ago after listening to the song for the last 3 decades!!!!! either that or i'm going crackers!!:P

[Albert]

One of the weirdest errors ever done by Elvis ?nd released by RCA is the dialogue during "That's When Your Heartache Begins". I can't believe why RCA decided to release that version without fixing that part.

[Cryogenic]

I've heard dozens of mistakes on many of Elvis' studio and live recordings that fit ALL of Lonnie's criteria simultaneously: vocal miscues/barking dogs/other weird things. The name? Charlie Hodge.

Tree trunk looking b*stard...

Just kidding, people. ;)


Remind me of when this occurs, please.

Reading that again made me think of the chuckle following "No, baby, you can't lick it" in The Power Of My Love. :lmfao:

Ah, I love that, too! It completely validates the inherent silliness of the lyrics and enhances my enjoyment of the song immeasurably. In fact, this is an excellent example to play to people who think that Elvis was blithely unaware of the quality of a set of lyrics and took himself too seriously.

Although it's a live recording and the tendency here has to been to talk of studio errors (I guess it's stranger to have errors/quirks show up on disc compared to live performances where errors are a dime a dozen), I'm still surprised that no one's mentioned the laughing version of "Are You Lonesome Tonight". Rumour has it that the FTD label is releasing this entire 1969 concert later this year! Interestingly enough, I was reading some responses to a question posed on www.elvisnews.com (http://www.elvisnews.com) recently: what Elvis song(s) would you have played at your funeral? Now, while many went the serious route - suggesting epics like "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "American Trilogy" and gospel recordings - some actually had a sense of humour. One person put forward the laughing version of AYLT because they said they didn't want anyone too sad in attendance: Elvis' infectious - and LOUD! - laughter would certainly have done its job! Of course, someone else said they desired "Burning Love" to be played as their corpse went into the oven... :lol:

What else is there?

If I recall correctly, high-spirited laughter can be heard at the end of the studio master of "Mystery Train".

An interesting one from my perspective (since I like the song so much) is in the released master of "Can't Help Falling In Love". Just as Elvis sings the end of "Like a river flows/surely to the sea" at 1:55, a very brief metallic clanging can be heard - like, to my ears at least, a pair of keys being shook. Or maybe Elvis' jewellery decided to make a contribution to history... ;)

An Amazon.com reviewer also claims that during the infamous Memphis '69 sessions, a fire engine drove past the studio and put Elvis off as he was recording "Poor Man's Gold". Any further details on this one...?

[Lonniebealestreet]

When I've had a rough day or nothing seems to be going right, I put in a CD I've compiled of all recordings on which Charlie sang lead or his harmony vocal is high in the mix. It more or less puts your mind at ease; it does mine. "We--welllllll, now you better run..."

:P

Regarding Poor Man's Gold, as jbgude mentioned earlier, this recording is on Suspicious Minds: The 1969 Anthology, and I can't hear any siren. Elvis sang one line, than laughed a little, and that's the end of the track. I can't remember if I've blasted that with the headphones on before or not, but if there is a siren to be heard on that recording, it is barely audible...at least I hope so. :blink:

If you can't hear the siren on that version, then you won't hear it on this version, but I just thought about this and it's kind of neat. That one line is just Elvis singing a cappella...so it doesn't seem that a siren disrupted an actual take. Anyway, besides the one line from Elvis, all RCA ever recorded was the backing track. Merijn van der Meer put the brief vocal to the appropriate music, which was a good idea...one that should have occurred to BMG. (A possibility is that Elvis actually was singing to the pre-recorded track, but BMG simply chose to present it in a cappella fashion. I don't think that's the case, but I'm no sessions wiz. A check of the sessions chronology would probably answer that real quick, but I'm lazy.) You can hear that short goodie here: http://www.evdmeer.dds.nl/homepage.html