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Love Me Tender
SteynonLine ^ | January 5, 2025 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 01/05/2025 2:48:14 PM PST by Twotone

Elvis Presley would have turned ninety this Wednesday. In real life, alas, he never made it halfway. But we remember him at this shingle, with the biggest hit song he supposedly wrote.

These days more or less every pop star is expected to come up with his own songs. It wasn't always that way: Once upon a time, songwriters wrote songs, and singers sang them. Very occasionally, a singer ventured onto the writer's turf: Frank Sinatra genuinely wrote a handful of songs, including the much covered "This Love of Mine", and made a significant enough contribution to the even more covered "I'm A Fool to Want You" that Joel Herron and Jack Wolf insisted he be given a co-author's credit. In a looser age of pop composition, surely then Elvis Presley, coming midway between Frank and the self-composing Beatles, must have penned a ditty or two over the years?

Well, like Sinatra, Presley had a house composer in his bodyguard. Frank's muscle was Hank Sanicola, a music-biz jack-of-all-trades who served as Sinatra's co-writer on "This Love of Mine" and his Christmas song "Mistletoe and Holly". Presley's muscle was a guy called Red West. For a dilettante songwriter, Red did a pretty good job on a late-Elvis number called "If You Talk in Your Sleep". Before that, one day in 1961 Elvis said to Red, "How about coming up with a song called 'That's Someone You Never Forget'?" He was thinking about his mother, Gladys, who'd died a couple of years earlier. Red did most of the rest of the work, but a good title is half the song...

(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...


TOPICS: History; Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: elvispresley; marksteyn

1 posted on 01/05/2025 2:48:14 PM PST by Twotone
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To: Twotone

“...shingle...”
?????


2 posted on 01/05/2025 3:08:24 PM PST by Repeal The 17th (Get out of the matrix and get a real life.)
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To: Repeal The 17th

(shingle)

Kamala did the proofreading

🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴🥴

Not enough ☕☕☕☕

Could be my phone 📱 with autocorrect 🤣🤣🤣


3 posted on 01/05/2025 3:27:36 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ....... as it was in the Days of Lot; They Ate, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: SaveFerris; Twotone

Don’t blame Twotone.
It is spelled that way in the article.


4 posted on 01/05/2025 3:36:11 PM PST by Repeal The 17th (Get out of the matrix and get a real life.)
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To: Twotone

Thanks for posting these! They are great fun to read. I did know “love me tender” is “aura lee”, both are good. It really is a lovely tune!


5 posted on 01/05/2025 3:55:03 PM PST by jocon307 (DEMOCRATS DELENDA EST)
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To: Twotone

I’ve read dozens of books on Elvis and most of this was entirely new to me. It is absolutely amazing the depth of Steyn’s knowledge of musical history of the last 200 years in Britain and The US.


6 posted on 01/05/2025 5:10:31 PM PST by Sicvee (Sicvee)
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To: Repeal The 17th

No I understand that

I’m saying that they didn’t proofread it before publication


7 posted on 01/05/2025 5:28:30 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ....... as it was in the Days of Lot; They Ate, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: Sicvee
I’ve read dozens of books on Elvis and most of this was entirely new to me. It is absolutely amazing the depth of Steyn’s knowledge of musical history of the last 200 years in Britain and The US.

Same here, been a fan of Elvis since the '50s and this was quite a revelation. Very interesting article.

8 posted on 01/05/2025 5:56:05 PM PST by Inyo-Mono
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