How Much for the Album Blue Hawaii by Elvis With Joliet News Clipping of His Death

Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii

November 18, 2019

ALBUM REVIEW

OVERALL (OUT OF 10): 8

Anybody know what the second best selling album in the U.S. was in the 1960s behind – inexplicably – the soundtrack to West Side Story? Abbey Road? The Doors' debut album? Led Zeppelin II? Let It Bleed? Surfer Girl? Whipped Cream & Other Delights? (That isn't actually a joke, it was the best selling album in the U.S. in 1966, probably more due to the album cover than any music buying public affinity for Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass). Actually, at that time rock was still in its infancy, for the first half of the decade the best selling album each year was the soundtrack to a movie musical, ending with Mary Poppins in 1965. So given the public preference for musical soundtracks combined with the growing popularity of rock and roll, perhaps it is no surprise that the second best selling album of the entire decade in the United States was none other than the soundtrack to Elvis Presley's film Blue Hawaii.

I know I should hate Blue Hawaii. We all should – at least anyone who appreciates Elvis Presley an artist should. Blue Hawaii is the album that put Elvis on a trajectory that took him out of any sort of artistic relevance for the next seven years. The success of Blue Hawaii – both the movie and the album – is directly responsible for setting Elvis firmly on the path toward such movie musical atrocities as Harum Scarum, Double Trouble, Frankie and Johnny, and about two dozen other abysmal movie soundtracks. Elvis' popularity was such that it took a few years for people to stop buying that crap, but eventually even the hardest hard core fans caught on that the movies and their attendant soundtrack albums were hopeless schlock, and they'd been conned by that biggest carnival barker of all time, "Colonel" Tom Parker, that albatross around Elvis' neck that tragically kept him from reaching his full potential as an artist. It is a testament to the irrepressible abundance of Elvis' talent that he accomplished as much as he did with the almost insurmountable barrier of Parker's greed and artistic indifference in the way.

So Blue Hawaii is the album that ruined Elvis Presley, up until the Comeback Special anyway. If the film had flopped and the non-soundtrackSomething for Everybody had outsold the Blue Hawaii soundtrack album instead of the other way around, the 1960s might have been very different for our boy Elvis. I mean, sure, we can all speculate how the King of Rock and Roll might have responded differently to the British Invasion and the rise of Psychedelia had he not been sidetracked with soundtracks to awful movies, but when he finally shook that off the movie soundtrack shackles late in the decade he demonstrated a remarkable capacity to adapt to contemporary trends. His comeback proved conclusively that he had the ability to adapt to the times – although the years that followed also proved conclusively he had difficulty maintaining interest in staying artistically relevant. So who knows? Elvis might have struggled even without the movies, he certainly did in the mid-70s even without three trashy movies a year holding him back. All that is certain is the Blue Hawaii was the first step towards movie musical hell for the world's most popular hip swiveler.  Sure he'd made movies of varying quality before it, but it wasBlue Hawaii that set the template for the next several years.

However, it must be said, the album itself isn't bad. In fact, I have to confess, it is my second favorite Elvis album. My relationship with the album is complicated – I hate it for what it did to Elvis, but I love it for being the great album that it is. I know a lot of you don't get it, when asked about his thoughts on the King's death John Lennon famously said that Elvis died when he went in the army, and tons of people agree. For many Elvis fans, you can't beat anything Elvis did pre-Army, and they may have a point. But two things are absolutely undeniable:

1) at the time he recorded Blue Hawaii, Elvis was 110% committed to the material he was singing, and

2) the material was pretty good, about a thousand times better than what he'd soon be singing in Kissin' Cousins and Easy Come Easy Go and Clambake.

Listen to his performance on "No More", for example – just as smooth, suave, and emotional as he'd ever sound, and Elvis was the most remarkably emotive singer of his time, if not of all time. And I have to give the album credit, the Hawaiian flavoring is actually fairly authentic. I lived in the Hawaiian Islands for two years and heard a lot of Hawaiian music, and the slide guitar, ukuleles, and Polynesian-sounding drums (some of them played by the legendary Hal Blaine – who knew?) aren't really too far off from what you might hear on KAPA Hawaiian FM, even if it was closer to the commercial version of Hawaiian music hawked by Don Ho than the more innately Hawaiian sounds of groups like the Makaha Sons of Niʻihau.  Elvis and co. could have put out a typical run-of-the-mill Elvis movie soundtrack, but let's give credit where credit is due, they really did put some effort into making a Hawaiian-sounding album.  And "No More" succeeds as a great melody, a more than acceptable love song lyric (lyrically it kicks the crap out of "My Heart Will Go On" or something like that people play at their weddings), and a successful incorporation of pseudo-Hawaiian motifs. It's got a Hawaiian vibe that, yes, may not be 100% authentic, but then isn't really too far off from what some of the Hawaiian artists themselves were producing at the time. It's closer to the spirit of Hawaiian music than Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles", for example. I think "No More" is a great song, and Elvis must have agreed, he recorded it again immediately after the 1973 Aloha concert, albeit in an inferior version to the original.

There are plenty of great love songs on the album just like it. "Ku-U-I-Po" and "Hawaiian Wedding Song" and "Hawaiian Sunset" and "Island of Love" are all great ballads. No one on the planet could sing a love song like Elvis, and he is by turns tender, passionate, and powerful in his delivery at exactly the right moments in each of these songs. He truly had no parallel in his ability to deliver a song with the maximum amount of emotional impact, his voice acting as the perfect communicator of each different emotion as it came up moment by moment in the lyrics. Of course, the absolute pinnacle of this is "Can't Help Falling in Love", perhaps the greatest love song ever written and the greatest vocal performance of a love song of all time. Hell, I'm halfway convinced Elvis is in love with me every time I hear it, the performance is that genuine and heartfelt, I don't know who he was thinking about when he sang it, but he must have really loved her (loved her at the time anyway, and probably not for very long, Elvis was pretty fickle that way). It has a hymn-like, reverent majesty, moreso than any secular song I can think of (and moreso than most sacred songs I've heard, to tell the truth). The stately grace and majesty has rarely been equaled in the history of recorded music. It's a love song for the ages. It's me and my wife's song, and for that it will always hold a special place in my heart. The original version of "Can't Help Falling in Love" is the exemplar of how a love song should be handled, and the live version Elvis used to close every concert in the 70s with is a tutorial on how not to handle a love song, with the schmaltz factor cranked to maximum and all the gloopy stings, screaming horns, and cloying background vocals the cheesiest decade in human history had to offer – his live versions of the song are some of the most unspeakable blasphemies I've ever been witness to. They are vile, profane, and I would just as soon pretend no version of "Can't Help Falling in Love" like that had ever existed, however often the Elvis Presley Estate attempts to remind me by releasing every concert the guy ever performed.

"Can't Help Falling in Love" is timeless, unparalleled, and deservedly iconic, all by itself it justifies the existence of the Blue Hawaii soundtrack album. But the other ballads are great too, and only suffer by comparison in the shadow of that mighty ballad. All of them have great melodies, plenty of emotion, and fit snugly in their faux-Hawaiian trappings. Sure, they may be a bit overly sentimental, but then why is that such a bad thing when they are delivered with such heartfelt honesty? I have no bones with sentimentalism as long as it isn't phony or emotionally manipulative, and none of these songs are. Take "Hawaiian Sunset" – I've watched many Hawaiian sunsets in my time, and however sentimental it may be, if I close my eyes listening to the song I'm almost there listening to the waves and watching the sun slip over the edge of the world – "sleep Hawaii sleep". "No More" is just as wonderful, and Elvis' delivery on the song is masterful. "Island of Love" might bore you, but I lived on Kauai briefly, and I think it's a wonderful tribute to the Garden Isle. I also love the gentle sway of "Moonlight Swim", a song whose slightly swinging rhythm fairly bobs along on the waves washing into the shore. Elvis gives "Ku-U-I-Po" a passionate reading, and who doesn't want to hear "I love you more today/More today than yesterday/But I love you less today/Less than I will tomorrow"?  Props to Elvis for including the traditional Hawaiian song "Aloha Oe", in my estimation he treats the song with the respect it deserves, with its Hawaiian language intro and solemn delivery.  Even a final bluesy "until we meet again" by Elvis doesn't mar the Hawaiian vibes of the song or compromise its cultural relevance.

The title song deserves special mention – the dreamy slide guitar and laid back island rhythm are as evocative of the Islands as any song I know. "Dreams come true in Blue Hawaii" indeed. I've always thought it was a little odd the way the piano comes stumbling in after Elvis sings "Night and you and Blue Hawaii" the first time, but other than that it is a slice of Hawaiian steel guitar paradise.

Unfortunately, the album stumbles badly whenever it attempts to rock, and the King of Rock and Roll should have known better. I don't know if the songwriters didn't know how to write a rock song – more likely the movie's producer Hal Wallis wanted to ensure nothing raucous or even remotely rocking scared off any of the moviegoing families of America, so the faster songs are all toothless and lame, although most of Elvis' soundtrack songs in the years to come would be even more toothless and lame. "Rock-a-Hula" is downright embarrassing, and I'm betting Elvis didn't like it any better than any of the rest of us, although it went to #23 in the U.S and #1 in Australia. Horrible, horrible song, although nowhere near the depths to which Elvis would soon sink (think "(There's) No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car" or "Yoga is as Yoga Does"). Although I don't know if that is Scotty Moore or Hank Garland (my guess is Scotty Moore) playing the quicksilver guitar runs in the background, but it's pretty cool, so maybe the song is redeemed a little bit. "Slicin' Sand" is supposed to be fun, but just comes off as phony and annoying, a generic and uninteresting attempt at a sunny beach song. But then even here, Elvis embues the song with a bouncy, sunny vocal, he probably knew it was crap but he still did his best with what he had to work with – the time would come when it would be all he could do to phone in the vocals for his soundtrack songs, and they didn't even deserve that much.  "Beach Boy Blues" is entirely forgettable.  The less said about "Ito Eats" the better, easily the worst song on the album, which is saying something in the company of "Rock-a-Hula". But then even that has some cool Polynesian drums, although it's still total crap as a song. Elvis's mock "wo-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh" at the end of the song may well have been an actual groan of pain.

The only faster song on album that isn't completely unpalatable is "Almost Always True", which I find kind of clever and fun, and it even kind of rocks a little in a Bill Haley and the Comets sort of way. And it's pretty cute really: "I was always/Baby I was always/Well almost/Always true to you". But on the whole, the rule of thumb on the album is the faster the tempo, the worse the song.

So by now you are probably wondering if having lived in Hawaii and having a strong love of the islands hasn't hopelessly compromised my critical judgment of the album, and maybe it has. But it is absolutely undeniable for maybe the last time until How Great Thou Art in 1967 Elvis sounded like he actually cared about the material he was singing, he put his heart and soul and everything he had into these songs, and it was the last time he'd have a movie that gave him much material that was worthy of it. I love the ballads – they are melodic, tuneful, and with just enough Hawaiian flavor to have a little authenticity. While not wholly Hawaiian in execution, the production is not far off from the type of traditional Hawaiian music I'd hear on the radio when I lived there, and it's not like Don Ho was producing 110% authentic Hawaiian music at the time either.  Home-grown local artists had been blending a pop sensibility into their Hawaiian music for many years by that point. So the ballads are wonderful, and on the whole the arrangements are great, but the pathetic attempts at rock are weak and embarrassing, excepting "Almost Always True", which is a fun song.

But in spite of the wimpy Kidz Bop-level "rock" songs, the love songs are great enough that I Can't Help Falling in Love with the album. Even though I know that its success redirected Elvis into seven years of soundtrack hell, into a Hollywood exile that would have doomed a lesser talent, you'll never get anything but love for the album from me.  After the success of the Blue Hawaii movie and album, Colonel Parker switched gears from plans for one soundtrack and one non-soundtrack release per year to three movies and mostly no non-soundtrack releases for most of the 60s. That Elvis is Back and Something for Everybody were artistically outstanding was of no concern to the Colonel, and if schlocky, shoddily produced soundtrack albums turned a profit, that was all he cared. And so it was that Elvis squandered precious years in his prime making some of the worst music of the decade.  If the overall quality of the songs on the soundtrack albums that followed it had been as good as Blue Hawaii it would have been one thing, but the Colonel was intent on producing product with the least amount of effort possible, with a distinct lack of concern for the quality of either the movie or the songs Elvis recorded for it. And Elvis went along like some kid in the back seat of the car with no chance of taking the wheel, until he finally grabbed the wheel for a few short, brilliant years in the late 60s before he got bored and let go of it.

So go ahead and hate Blue Hawaii if you want, but be clear about hating it for what it did to Elvis and not because it's a bad album in and of itself. Because if you can separate it from its historical Elvis context, you get an album with beautiful ballads, cool Hawaiian-ish arrangements, passionate vocal performances – and a few lame rockers you can skip pretty easily.  As for me, I'll love it to my dying day.

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