A friend recently came back from a trip to Memphis.

He went with a family group who mainly wanted to do the Elvis/country thing - but OF COURSE diverted them to the Stax museum for a mooch around.

This morning he emailed me as follows:

Mark

Just out of interest I was doing a bit of digging about Elvis's relationship with Stax (If there was one) Our tour guide never mentioned anything about Elvis recording at Stax...but. It turns out Elvis recorded two sessions at Stax, I say recorded, the first session was abandoned due to Elvis's "mental state" supposedly Stax set up a Christmas tree in the studio, (to add atmosphere) which Elvis demolished... kung fu style.

The second session was more successful due to RCA importing an army of technical people to assist Stax and Elvis, as you can imagine both occasions were late in Elvis's career.

Is that correct and if so does any recorded material still exist.

I am definitely having one of those "Well I never knew that!" moments.

MB

He recorded material at American Sound Studios in Memphis with Chips Moman (who was associated with Stax) but at Stax itself??

does any recorded material still exist.

He did two sessions at Stax Studios, the first in July 1973 and the second in September 1973.

These recordings can be found on three of his albums - "Raised On Rock" (1973), "Good Times" (1974) and "Promised Land" (1975).

Edited February 24, 200916 yr by Sebastian

Quick answer........... got to dash...

Elvis recorded at Stax 926 East McLemore in both July and December 1973.

Sean

Quick answer........... got to dash...

Elvis recorded at Stax 926 East McLemore in both July and December 1973.

Sean

Elvis's first visit is well documented in Rob Bowman's book on Stax. If memory serves he also visited in the late 60's/early 70's as the Stax studio staff were told to not be there, except for Steve Cropper and a few others. Seeing that Steve left stax around 1970, it must have been before that.

The name of the documentry about Stax is called "only the strong survive" so conection there.

are you sure?

are you sure?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308672/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308672/

Maybe a bit of a push to call that a Stax doco though. Respect Yourself comes to mind more as a doco about Stax & I thought you meant to say that but were getting your soul films confused. Carry on.

That is very interesting to hear Elvis doing some like soulful music. how much more could we find of non soul artists doing stuff more soulful then we thought.