BLUE HAWAII
– Postcard production and… the beginning of the Presley formula-
(part 7)
“Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii”… In an interview many years ago (for the For Elvis CD Collector website), Roy C. Bennett, co-writer of the next song recorded that March afternoon, noted, “We (Sid Tepper, author’s note) were one of the few (maybe the only) songwriters who consciously tried to smuggle humor into Elvis’ songs .”
His words were confirmed by such compositions as “Ito Eats”, included by Elvis Presley in the soundtrack to the film “Blue Hawaii”.
Unlike the title track, recorded just a few minutes earlier, Tepper and Bennett’s proposal could be successfully classified more as a musical joke – a humorous commentary on one of the scenes in a comedy in the making – than a serious recording.
Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii
According to the script, Elvis was to sing it during a traditional hukilau, taking a dig at one of the dinner guests, the titular Ito, for his gluttony. “Ito is a boy born to eat, ” the song’s lyrics went. “He can never get enough fish or poi. He eats anything, no matter what. He’ll even eat a coconut shell. Eat Ito all night and day .”
Paradoxically, however, it was this seemingly simple song that caused Elvis a lot of trouble during recording. After the first rehearsal, it turned out that the singer had no idea how to handle the melody (to give it an even more island character, the song was played in calypso style * ).
This in turn meant that the song had to be repeated over and over again a dozen or so times. Mostly, interrupting each attempt after the first few or a dozen bars (of the nine attempts played, only two were complete). Ultimately, I considered only the ninth attempt to be satisfactory.
The recording process for the next song, however, was completely different. An old, early 20th-century romantic ballad, “Hawaiian Weeding Song,” whose history was much longer than the time Presley and the musicians in the studio devoted to recording it.
The song, whose original title was “Ke Kali Nei Au” (meaning “Waiting Here for You”), was written in 1926 by Charles Edward King, a Honolulu-born educator, lawyer, composer, and lyricist.
At the outset, it is worth noting that the author never intended this song to be a wedding piece (which could have been suggested by its later English title). It became one, or rather began to be treated as such, only as a result of its later translation into English.
Originally, “Ke Kali Nei Au” was created as part of the opera “The Prince Of Hawaii” ** , which premiered on May 4, 1925 at the Liberty Theater in Honolulu. The main roles were played by soprano Rose Kalamahaaheo Otis Tribe Tyson (who played Queen Kamaka) and Joseph Kamakau, who played King Kalani.
A year after its premiere in Hawaii, King traveled to the United States to present his latest work to American audiences during a several-week tour of the country.
Two years later, in May 1928, the opera’s ballad “Ke Kali Nei Au” (in the original Hawaiian language) was released on record for the first time. The piece, performed by Hawaiian soprano and composer Helen Kapuailohia Desha Beamer and Sam Kapu Sr. (with the Don Barrientos Hawaiian Orchestra), was released on Columbia Records.
Soon after, other artists began to use King’s composition. Over the following decades, it was included in their repertoires by Kalama’s Quartet, Ray Kinney, Hal Aloma (interestingly, Charles E. King himself appeared as narrator in his 1944 recording), and finally the famous trio The Andrew Sisters in a duet with Alfred Apaka.
Each of the above versions, however, has only been released in Hawaiian. The first known English version of Charles King’s hit was not presented until 1951 by Bing Crosby. The song, recorded by him in a duet with Betty Mullin, was then titled “Here Ends The Rainbow (I Found My Love)” and the lyrics were written by the American lyricist, John Francis Burke.
The song became a real hit only in the late fifties, when two American composers *** , Al Hoffman and Dick Manning, created new English lyrics for it. Because it should be remembered that the “Hawaiian Weeding Song” they wrote in 1958, like “Here Ends The Rainbow (I Found My Love)” before it, was not a faithful translation of King’s composition.
Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii
The first to reach for the re-composed ballad was Andy Williams, who had his first serious success on the charts (the song “Butterfly”, recorded by him in 1957, was Number One in both the US and the UK).
His version was released as a single with the song “The House Of Bamboo” in 1958 and became an instant hit. It reached number eleven on Billboard’s Hot 100. The following year, the song received a Grammy nomination.
The increase in popularity of Williams’ performance was undoubtedly contributed to by the decision of the US Congress in March 1959 to admit Hawaii to the United States of America as the youngest, fiftieth state **** .
In the years that followed, “Hawaiian Weeding Song” was covered by many of the top artists of the time, including Teresa Brewer, Perry Como, Jim Reeves, and Marty Robins. The list above also included Elvis Presley.
The latter, as I mentioned earlier, included the song in the soundtrack of his eighth film, and the ballad, recorded after only two attempts, was used in its final scene.
Interestingly, despite this seemingly small amount of repetitions and the amount of studio time allocated to recording the song, Elvis stated in an interview with Albert Hand of the British magazine “Elvis Monthly” that, from a technical point of view, “Hawaiian Weeding Song” turned out to be the most difficult song for him to sing during the entire session.
Today, we can only assume that what caused the singer the most difficulty were the original fragments in Hawaiian preserved from the original version.
Work on the next offering from Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett was also not easy. The Hawaiian-themed, atmospheric ballad “Island Of Love.”
“By the way, if you analyze our songs (sung by Elvis, author’s note), you’ll notice that most of them were ballads or remakes ,” Roy C. Bennett told For Elvis CD Collectors. “In my opinion, the ballads in the Elvis movies are some of the best songs we’ve ever written .”
Before a satisfactory effect was achieved, the song was repeated a dozen or so times (mostly short, several-second false starts). Along the way, Elvis had to deal with, among other things, changing the tempo of the song, finding the right phrasing and finally problems with the lyrics. To mention here, for example, a funny mistake that occurred during the seventh attempt, when Presley, engaged in his performance, did not notice that in one of the lines, instead of the title Kauai, he sang “cow… ” (which means cow) ***** . However, this mistake was quickly caught by Joseph Lilly, who, explaining to the artist what had happened, intoned the ill-fated phrase: “‘Cow’aai “. “All right. You’ll be a cow “, replied a clearly amused Elvis.
Ultimately, only the thirteenth attempt was chosen as the master version.
After recording “Island Of Love” the work on new film material continued and the next song to receive attention was “Steppin’ Out Of Line”. Reminiscent of the wild fifties, a truly rock’n’roll, energetic composition by Fred Wise, Ben Weisman and Dollores Fuller.
According to the initial script assumptions, this song was to be in the same scene as the ballad “Hawaiian Sunset”. That is, the one in which the main character gets into a fight with an intrusive, slightly tipsy customer of the “Island Inn” restaurant, who is trying to intrusively bother one of the teenage girls under his care.
Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii
However, before it was finally decided to use “Steppin’ Out Of Line” in the above sequence, a completely different recording was considered for a long time. Namely, the composition “Playing With Fire” by Fred Wise and Ben Weisman.
The same one that three years later Terry Stafford included on his debut longplay “Suspicion” and its promoting single with the song “I’ll Touch A Star”. “Elvis never recorded this song, although of course such a song exists but performed by Terry Stafford “, assured Ernst Jorgensen in one of his interviews. “In the case of films (Elvis, author’s note) it was like that for each of them about forty or sometimes even fifty demo songs were sent. Many of them were later rumored to be close to being included in the soundtrack or almost made it. ‘Playing With Fire’ was one of them. The composition actually almost made it to the film but at the last minute it was rejected “.
In turn, Ben Weisman, the co-author of the hit, emphasized in many later interviews that although the aforementioned recording was popularized only in 1964 by Terry Stafford, the song was written with Presley in mind.
“Steppin’ Out Of Line”, which was ultimately chosen to replace “Playing With Fire”, was recorded after nearly twenty takes (!), with only the seventeenth attempt being chosen as the master version.
Paradoxically, however, a few months later, the song was removed from both the soundtrack album (more on that later in the text) and the finished film (even though the scene with the above song was filmed).
- Calypso is a musical genre of African origin in 2/4 or 4/4 time (according to Wikipedia)
- Charles E. King was not only the author of all the pieces in this opera but also the conductor and musical director.
- Both Al Hoffman and Dick Manning were born in the former Russian Empire. Hoffman was born in Minsk (now Belarus) and Manning in Gomel (now Belarus)
- The decision was signed by then-US President Dwight Eisenhower. Hawaii officially became the 50th US state on August 21, 1959.
- Phonetically, the beginning of both words, i.e. Kauai and cow, are very similar.
Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii… Article written and provided by Mariusz Ogieglo (EP Promised Land) http://www.elvispromisedland.pl/
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