Choice of material to record

Who was responsible for the material Elvis recorded? Who brought forward material for Elvis to choose from?

Despite the great number of songs of quality recorded by our idol, I think that a number of songs should have never been recorded.

It seems that those responsible for bringing songs to Elvis in the 1970's were looking too much into the Country scene while omitting contemporary songwriters from different genres e.g. Elton John, the Bee Gees (OK Elvis did 'Words' live), Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townsend, Thom Bell, Gamble and Huff, Barry Manilow, etc.

In my opinion, Elvis' idea to record material 10-20 yrs old (like Hurt and Pledging my love, etc) was not an artistically good idea (despite giving a very good interpretation)

I disagree, I like the stuff he recorded in the 70's, probably more than his older stuff....

Freddy Bienstock was the major source of many songs Elvis recorded, he even boasted, "For the first 12 years of Elvis' career with RCA, he wouldn't look at a song unless I had seen it first"

I like Elvis in the 70's most of all.

I am just saying that Elvis' potential cannot be fully heard on many tracks. Elvis is an extraordinary singer - he could sing a very mediocre song and still make it sound great and makes you like it. But still that song is weak by itself - without Elvis' input.

Don't you think that the material in the 70's varies a lot regarding quality. Songs like 'My Boy', 'I got a feeling in my body', 'TROUBLE,' 'Pieces of my life' are GREAT songs by themselves but others like 'Raised on Rock,' 'I Miss you,' fade in comparison. You might say 'I Like those songs.' But for a while imagine turning on the radio and hear one of the less interesting tracks not sung by Elvis, would you still say it's a great song?

Like Elvis said himself, he takes songs from everywhere. Mostly, his publishing companies gave him the pool of songs to record from. Elvis' disadvantage is he didn't write his own stuff, so he was restricted as to the quality of songs he recorded based on his ability to get publishing rights to good material. I think if he had let it be known that he would be interested in recording songs by contemporary song writers, there would have been a plethora of material to record as everyone from McCartney to Springsteen would have been writing stuff for him. Alas it never happened. iIthink His interest at that time was more in the Country and "sad song" vein anyway, so what he originally said, "I sing all kinds" actually held true in the '70's, although it didn't always work out from a quality stand point.

I think another factor was that the writer of the song had to sign over the song to Elvis publishing company. That's why he never recorded I Will Always Love you, Dolly wouldn't give up part of her royalities to Elvis' publishing companies.