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Saturday, September 1, 2007

No put luck with Girls! Girls! Girls!

I read today that the next two Follow That Dream releases will be "Girls! Girls! Girls" and "Pot Luck". That made me think of when I heard the songs on "Girls! Girls! Girls!" for the first time.

It must have been in the early 80's. Me and my brother (who also is an Elvisfan) took the train from the suburb where we lived to the big record store in town where they had pretty much all of the LPs from Elvis catalogue. This time my brother bought the double LP "From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis" and I picked "Girls! Girls! Girls!".

In those days we still hadn't heard all of Elvis songs. So every LP we bought was "new" to us, and it was always very exiting to come home and put it on the record-player.

This time, I think we started with my brothers’ record, and man, it blew us away! This, we agreed, was a great double album, especially the first LP recorded live on stage in Las Vegas in 1969.

Then it was my turn with "Girls! Girls! Girls!" and I remember that I thought the title track was pretty much ok (after all it was a Leiber/Stoller number) and "I Don’t Wanna Be Tied" bumped along pretty good. But then my disappointment grew as we listened to "Where Do You Come From", "A Boy Like Me, A Girl Like You" and the terrible "Song Of The Shrimp". Even "Return To Sender" couldn't cheer me up.

Funny, I can still recall how jealous I was. I wish that I had bought "From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis" and that my brother had chosen "Girls! Girls! Girls!" instead. Fortunately, that feeling has long since passed but "Girls! Girls! Girls!", I have to admit, hasn’t been one of my most played Elvis albums through the years.

Maybe I would have been happier that day with my brother if I had picked “Put Luck” instead. Though Elvis recorded the majority of the songs for that album only about a week before the soundtrack session for the movie “Girls! Girls! Girls!”, the two albums are miles apart. That's why I'm happy the FTD release of “Pot Luck” is a double CD and “Girls! Girls! Girls!” only a single disc.

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