Elvis In Paris

It is the soundtrack to the movie "Private Elvis", which we missed unfortunately. Bought for unseen footage of Elvis from 1959, but a kind surprise by Johnny Earl, most often including The Jordanaires.

This Johnny Earl had a minor hit about a decade ago with Pocketful of Rainbows. He was touring with The Jordanaires and his show was a kind of disappointment. Nothing wrong with the voice, the way the tribute show was built up (chronological overview of Elvis’ career) and certainly not with The Jordanaires. But "an Elvis" with an uniform a couple of inches too short, a black "leather" suit made of very shiny plastic (including blue socks!) or a jumpsuit with patchwork on his knees was too much for us.

We stumbled on this CD by accident and the footage of Elvis in Paris was enough to buy it. And we were surprised. Beautiful cover-art, like the import CD "Greetings from Germany", shows a great picture of Elvis on the front, and has some great candids inside. Also on the inside is a picture of "All the King’s Men" (The Jordanaires, Scotty Moore, DJ Fontana and Carl Perkins(!)) together with Johnny Earl. Finally there is some advertisement for Johnny’s other releases. This artwork is done by Johnny Earl himself. The music on this CD was quite surprising. Besides some well known Elvis-songs, among them beautiful renditions of Don’t and Is It So Strange, there are a bunch of songs written by Johnny Earl himself (sometimes together with C. Skornia). They’re all Elvis-like songs, with that typical early 60’s-sound, sometimes they even sound very familiar, at least it is clear on which songs they are based. Obviously Johnny Early doesn’t try to sound as much as possible like Elvis. He is sounding very natural, sometimes very close too Elvis, sometimes certainly different. We found this CD a great one to listen too and it will certainly find its way to the player pretty often.

The footage on this CD is what could be expected, not too good quality, but in colour, and it is really great to have. It shows Elvis in uniform and last for almost 2 minutes. There’s pretty much contrast in the footage, and it is sometimes hard to even recognize Elvis. Besides this footage there is also a piece from Johnny’s show, together with the Jordanaires. Together with the pretty good music the footage makes it worth the money anyway.

Elvis in Paris, original soundtrack of Private Elvis, JEM Records CD 2000.