Long Black Limousine was composed by Vern Stovall and Bobby George and first released in 1958 by Wynn Stewart.
Cut at the Memphis Sessions in 1969 Elvis transformed Long Black Limousine from a country ballad to "a vehicle for savage social protest”.
The lyric is complex, the relationship between the narrator and his love remains unclear.
In this EIN Spotlight respected author Paul Simpson takes a close look at this powerful song from Elvis' 1969 Memphis sessions...
At Sun Studios in Memphis in the summer of 1955, Elvis warned his baby – and, by extension, himself – about the perils of pink Cadillacs. Nearly fourteen years later, in the first recording of the legendary sessions at American Recording Studios in Memphis, he chastised his beloved – and himself – with a very different vehicle, a long black limousine.
This dark tale of a girl who left for the big city promising to come back in a fancy car “for all the town to see”, only to return in a hearse was written by Vern Stovall and Bobby George.
The first released version, released by Wynn Stewart in 1958, was a plaintive country rendition, which hinted at that microgenre of doom-laden teen pop hits epitomised by Teen Angel, a US chart-topper for Mark Dinning in 1960, and spoofed by the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band’s Death Cab For Cutie.
Stewart’s version is sincere, effective and conventional.
Three years later, Stovall cut his own version, quickening the tempo but the backing vocalists are slightly too obtrusive, masking the song’s tragic ironies rather than emphasising it
.
In 1968, folk singer Jody Miller had a minor country hit with her cover, slowing down the tempo and imbuing the ballad with a fatalistic sadness. Her version is slightly over-arranged and, given the beautiful clarity and power of Miller’s voice, the backing singers seem superfluous.
That same year O.C. Smith, who had made his name with Count Basie’s band, released his version on the B side of Little Green Apples. Smith’s recording is much closer to the feel and scale of Elvis’s version, opening with drumbeats that immediately set the ominous tone for the grim events to come. Smith’s vocal oozes soul but, once again, the impact is muted by backing singers who seem determined to steer the song into mainstream pop territory.
The performance of the song Elvis gave on 13 January 1969 is full of funereal foreboding, arguably his darkest performance since Heartbreak Hotel and How’s The World Treating You? in 1956. The tolling church bells that introduce the song set the tone for the tragedy that unfolds. Tommy Coghill’s brilliantly ominous guitar chords as Presley sings “And now they’ve finally brought …” add to the sense of doom.
The horns and strings cunningly added by producer Chips Moman give the story an epic setting and the backing singers sound like a sardonic, soulful Greek chorus, almost challenging the narrator as if to say they had known all along it would end like this.
In many ways, Elvis was the small-town boy who fell for the bright lights of the city. (He was also famed for his passion for fancy cars.) Yet he gives himself completely to the song, giving a performance that, as Greil Marcus noted, gloriously smashed through the contradictions of his own myth. When he is rebuking his loved one for her blind ambition, luxurious lifestyle and recklessness – the race on the highway and the curb she never saw – he could just as easily be chastising himself.
As Ernst Jorgensen notes in Elvis Presley A Life In Music: “When Elvis selected it as his first number at the session, he brought to it a sense of loss and desolation, a kind of anger that seemed driven by an almost personal identification with the subject of the song.” His voice has a rough edge – he had a cold – which only makes his anguish even starker. He sings with a passionate abandon usually heard only on his gospel recordings (though it also distinguishes It Hurts Me and If I Can Dream).
In Elvis’s hands, this country ballad becomes, as Peter Guralnick wrote in his Rolling Stone review, “a vehicle for savage social protest”. Though he dismisses the song as ordinary, it is more complex than it sounds on first play. The relationship between the narrator and his love is unclear: though he talks of the girl being brought back to him, there is no hint of a past romance or exchanged kisses, so it is entirely possible his love was unrequited. Did he merely know the girl well enough for her to boast that she would return one day in a fancy car to show the whole town how well she had done? Or was it only with her death that he belatedly realised how much he loved her?
As the song begins, Elvis is observing the scene almost sardonically. Yet by the end, there is only desolation. His phraseology is perfect throughout, from the slow, accusatory way he observes his lover’s rich friends to that epic finale when the sight of a finely dressed chauffeur sparks the heart wrenching confession that the narrator’s heart and dreams are with his dead lover in that long black limousine. The nature of his loss – and the power of this morality tale – is mysteriously underlined by the insistent horns Moman introduces at the close.
Yet, ultimately, what distinguishes Elvis’s Long Black Limousine is the intimate intensity of his vocal. As the blogger Eric Wolfson writes: “When Elvis sings that he will never lover another, you believe him: this is less the sound of a man singing the lyrics to a song than it is a man living his words out.”
It is hard, now, to listen to Long Black Limousine, and not remember that, less than nine years later, Elvis would be lying in a long white limousine at his own funeral in Memphis, Tennessee. Yet this masterpiece lives on, its power and beauty undimmed, to remind us why Elvis touched so many hearts and inspired so many dreams.
Spotlight written by Paul Simpson (design/ images by Piers Beagley) -Copyright EIN October 2016
Interview with 'Elvis Films FAQ' author Paul Simpson: "Elvis Films FAQ" was reviewed by EIN as one of the best Elvis books published in 2013... "Paul Simpson examines every angle of Elvis’ film career and writes about it in a very engaging and enjoyable style. The real triumph of this book is that it will make you want to watch all of Elvis’ films one more time! Highly recommended."
While Elvis' Hollywood years are full of mystery, and Elvis Films FAQ covers them all! Elvis Films FAQ explains everything you want to know about the whys and wherefores of the singer-actor's bizarre celluloid odyssey; or, as Elvis said, "I saw the movie and I was the hero of the movie."
"Elvis Films FAQ" was without doubt one of the best Elvis books published in 2013 and EIN wanted to know more from its author Paul Simpson.
'Elvis Films FAQ' Book Review: Elvis' Hollywood years are full of mystery, and supposedly 'Elvis Films FAQ' covers them all! Elvis Films FAQ by author Paul Simpson explores his best and worst moments as an actor, analyses the bizarre autobiographical detail that runs through so many of his films, and reflects on what it must be like to be idolized by millions around the world yet have to make a living singing about dogs, chambers of commerce, and fatally naive shrimps. After all if Elvis Presley had not wanted to be a movie star, he would never have single-handedly revolutionized popular culture.
Yet this aspect of his phenomenal career has been much maligned and misunderstood – partly because the King himself once referred to his 33 movies as a rut he had got stuck in just off Hollywood Boulevard.
All Shook Up - EIN Spotlight: Composer Otis Blackwell liked to boast that he could write a song about anything. So when music publisher and lyricist Aaron ‘Goldie’ Goldmark dropped a Pepsi on the floor and urged Blackwell to turn that into a hit, the songwriter did precisely that.
But Elvis' classic 1957 hit All Shook Up wasn't the first version released - what Elvis managed to do was to transform the demo into something unique with a playfulness, sense of freedom and simple instrumentation that were all reminiscent of the more innocent, earlier understated sound of Sun Records.
'Suppose - Did It Inspire Imagine': Released only as a Bonus Song on Elvis' 1968 Speedway soundtrack LP, this quiet, chilling ballad, Suppose is worth a listen in its own right.
It is one of a handful of Elvis’s recordings that – like his cover of Dylan’s 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time' – suggests roads he sadly never got to take.
Yet it also intrigues me because of the possibility – and I put it no more strongly than that – that it inspired 'Imagine', the utopian anthem that became John Lennon’s signature song.
At times this mere suggestion divides Presley’s legion of fans.
