Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick

Author:Peter Guralnick [Guralnick, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Individual Composer & Musician, Music, Rich & Famous
ISBN: 9780316206723
Google: eqk_FH7oB7IC
Amazon: B005ALNQHS
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

THIS WAS THE ATMOSPHERE that twenty-five-year-old Kathy Westmoreland came into when she joined the show as high soprano Millie Kirkham’s replacement on Sunday, August 16. Kathy had agreed to take three weeks out of her busy L.A. session schedule to replace Kirkham, the Nashville backup singer who had come out at Elvis’ request strictly for the filming. Upon her arrival, she was met by Felton Jarvis, who welcomed her to the show, introduced her to Colonel Parker (who in turn presented her with a straw hat), and gave her a huge stack of records to allow her to familiarize herself with the repertoire. She watched the show that night, with Millie still in it, and was shocked at the behavior of the fans. A classically trained musician whose father had appeared in The Student Prince and The Great Caruso with Mario Lanza, she had “never seen anything like that in my life, and I doubt if I ever will. These women, fully dressed in these glamorous evening gowns, literally running down the tables in their high heels, knocking over champagne bottles, stepping on other people’s steaks.” She was also overwhelmed by the music and “by the transformation of the man I’d just met downstairs into this gorgeous, just grand charismatic person.”

She was terrified when it came time to go onstage the following night, but Elvis reassured her in her dressing room. “He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it, just relax and have fun. Remember, we’re just here to make people happy.’ But then he winked and said, ‘But when I point at you, you better sing something, kiddo.’ So—great!”

Despite her nervousness, Kathy fit right in. Looking somewhat prim in her dark brown pants and blouse beside the relatively unrestrained Sweets, she was more than open to learning from their rhythmic improvisations and intricate vocal harmonies. “I had a separate dressing room, but I would always go down to theirs and sit with them before the show. We really developed a strong, strong friendship; they made me feel really comfortable even though we were from such totally different backgrounds, and we would work out the most incredible harmonies and sounds, syllables I couldn’t even emulate today if I attempted to recall them. They were so advanced in their rhythms and harmonies and just thinking in one mind.” The Imperials, too, she found completely professional, “very polished, tight, and very, very precise in their vocal projection,” and even if the overall choral effect was sometimes a little ragged, with the nine voices and disparate musical backgrounds occasionally failing to mesh, there was enough give-and-take that the overall feel came through—“it did create a musical impression which really affected people. There was something for everybody.”

Most of all, though, it was Elvis she was intrigued by: his ambitions, his aspirations, his personality. She got to know him at first because he was always running in and out of the Sweets’ dressing room, laughing and joking and just hanging out. After a while he started talking to her about the music.

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