Elvis Presley: "Little Sister" / "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame"

September 11, 1961 (1 week)

So far, Elvis Presley's thirteen number one hits — which doesn't include this, his fourteenth — have earned scores of 7, 5, 9, 4, 6, 7, 6, 5, 6, 4, 5, 7 and 6 respectively. This begs an important question: when exactly did he really start to suck, at least on a consistent basis? For sure scores of four or five out of ten are underwhelming but they point to a certain degree of indifference, rather than anything he recorded at the time being outright terrible. Plus, the lower scored number ones are spread out, covering the pre-army period, material released while he was being deployed to Germany and post-honourable discharge.  

To his credit, Elvis seemed to be able to read the room. His run of hits inspired by Italian operas and so forth had been successful but it was proving to be a creative dead end and there were only so many of them that the fans could take — and they may not have been alone in this regard. "It's Now or Never", "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "Surrender" had all been beautifully sung by The King but none of them felt like true Elvis numbers; had he not done them, someone else would have and they probably would've been almost as good.

The double A-side of "Little Sister" and "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame" are a pair of songs that only Presley could have done, to the extent that it's almost as if he wrote them. Of course, this was not the case at all, with the latter having previously been recorded by Del Shannon earlier in 1961 for his debut album Runaway with Del Shannon. (Both, however, were penned by the duo of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, who had experience writing for Elvis as well as being responsible for fellow CHUM number ones "Go, Jimmy, Go" and "Save the Last Dance for Me") While the original has some neat musical ideas and Shannon had a great voice in his own right, he simply doesn't convince to anywhere near the same extent as Elvis. To be fair, he was hardly the only one who suffers by comparison: Morrissey effortlessly glides through a snippet of the lyrics on a medley paired with The Smiths' "Rusholme Ruffians"; while the end result on their so-so live album Rank does include a very clever key change, it's inclusion is largely pointless, only reaffirming the fact that Moz wasn't The King.

"Little Sister" is the lesser of the two but not by a whole lot. It's a straightforward blues tune with a rockabilly beat that really gives you an idea of why the members of Elvis' backing band — including longtime mates Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, as well as lead guitarist Hank Garland — were some of the best in the business. The Jordanaires are barely noticeable which is, frankly, how they are best appreciated. And Elvis himself is in exceptional form, sounding moody, sexy and just a little bit callous all at once. Indeed, he rarely sounded as good as on either side of this single.

This blog has been covering a great deal of Elvis. Over the course of the fourteen reviews I have written, I have gone through a number of stages. I started off with a dual sense of "Elvis is a lot better than I remember" and "he sure could be erratic". Since then, I have been going back-and-forth between getting awfully sick of him while also feeling I ought to stand up for him in the face of many critics and purists who wish he could've remained the uncorrupted wild youth of his Sun period. As we get more and more into the sixties, I am beginning to wonder if his recorded output is a good deal more respectable than they would have you believe. Of course, it's likely that his worst stuff didn't get to anywhere near the top of the charts but the fact that he was still able to put out excellent songs like "Little Sister" and "His Latest Flame" indicates that the quality control hadn't fallen away completely. And I'm beginning to wonder if it ever really did. Was Elvis capable of being as good as ever despite no longer being at his peak? He certainly could be.

Score: 8