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hooked-on-elvis · 21 days

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ONE NIGHT WITH YOU OF SIN ❤️‍🔥

50s Elvis can't sing something like this!

Well, this is something I just found out. That's why I love listening to Elvis' songs and researching on them. We always can learn interesting things that took place during the recording sessions, which makes EP's songs much, much precious.

I was listening to "Elvis: From the Vaults 50's" album, released as part of the 60-CD set "Elvis Presley: The Album Collection" (2016) — I love the "Elvis: From the Vaults" trilogy to death, by the way — when I crossed something very interesting.

The song "One Night (With You)", that Elvis performed with such passion during the '68 Comeback Special, was recorded by him in the 50s and originally had a slightly different lyrics.

The most known version, the "light" or "family friendly" (per say) version of the chorus of this one song goes like this:

"One night with you is what I'm now praying for."

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The "explicit" version tho, as originally written by Dave Bartholomew and that came to be a R&B hit for Smiley Lewis in 1956, the version of the song Elvis recorded in 1957, actually sounds like this:

"One night of sin is what I'm now paying for."

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I mean, the lyrics is clearly about sex in either words, but why the change in the words actually happened really intrigued me. I, as usually, looked for answers in one of my favorite books, and that's what I'm gonna share with you now.

So, Elvis was recording songs for the '57 Loving You movie soundtrack when the song was recorded. "One Night" was meant to be featured in this soundtrack album but it wasn't. The track went through a long way before it was put out there for Elvis' audience. To give you an idea, Elvis released the Loving You soundtrack album (June 20, 1957), recorded the songs that were featured in the Jailhouse Rock movie (there wasn't an official soundtrack album out for this movie), released one Christmas album ("Elvis' Christmas Album" - October 15, 1957) and the King Creole soundtrack album too (September 19, 1958), all of this before "One Night (With You)" could be finally released in October 1958, moment he was already officially "Private Presley", serving the US Army while stationed in Germany. But... what happened? Why this song wasn't featured in the Loving You movie and its soundtrack album released in 1957? Why the lyrics changed?

LET'S DIG INTO IT:

SOUNDTRACK RECORDINGS FOR PARAMOUNT’S LOVING YOU - JANUARY 15–18, 21–22 (PARAMOUNT SCORING STAGE) AND FEBRUARY 14, 1957 (RADIO RECORDERS, HOLLYWOOD) (...) When Hal Wallis asked for a few more songs for the movie, Elvis and the boys spent some time rehearsing cover versions of Fats Domino’s current hit "Blueberry Hill" and Smiley Lewis’s "One Night (Of Sin)," written by Domino’s musical partner Dave Bartholomew and credited in part to Bartholomew’s wife.

LISTEN TO SMILEY LEWIS’S "ONE NIGHT (OF SIN)":

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So, Elvis first covered this song, and it was recorded in studio, as originally written but the official song he performed had a new lyrics. Let's understand why he recorded the song again before putting it out there for us to listen to.

STUDIO SESSIONS FOR RCA JANUARY 19, 1957: RADIO RECORDERS, HOLLYWOOD (...) Both the Colonel and RCA had serious reservations about the words of the song, but Elvis liked it so much that they appealed to Hill & Range to negotiate with the song’s copyright holder, Lew Chudd of Imperial Records, for permission to rewrite the lyrics.

STUDIO SESSIONS FOR RCA FEBRUARY 23–24, 1957: RADIO RECORDERS, HOLLYWOOD (...) Meanwhile the new, bowdlerized lyrics for the Dave Bartholomew song had been produced as requested; "One night of sin is what I’m now paying for" became "One night with you is what I'm now praying for," and the deal they'd prayed and paid for freed them to pencil the song in for the Loving You album. In the end, the rewrite was a fortunate stroke. The discerning listener might have missed the more direct lyrics of the original, but Elvis's performance on the new version made up for it: Freed from worry about the song itself, he was all intensity and command. "One Night" was so good, in fact, that it was eventually dropped from the soundtrack and picked as a single with "I Beg Of You" for some indeterminate future date.

So, yes, the song needed the change in the lyrics because of its content. It was too sexual, too explicit for Elvis' audience, mainly composed by teenagers. Elvis apparently wasn't bother by this. He liked the song anyway, even with the new lyrics. He liked the idea of releasing this song but although "One Night", as recorded by Elvis in 1957, was considered a fine material for a new single, Elvis was such a perfectionist he used to redo many of his recordings before he considered they were proper to be released. He was the man picking his own singles, so they always needed his approval before they were out. He wanted work some more in "One Night" because he was not satisfied with the result, but other songs came in the way.

One work after the other, there wasn't time to redo this track recording before Elvis became a soldier in 1958. When "One Night" was finally released it was against Elvis' will. It was not about the new lyrics tho, he just thought the song could sound much better than it was. Even so, the RCA and Colonel Parker, his manager, had to make choices without his consent once his main focus was in being a soldier, between 1958-1960. Elvis used to work "by demand", that means if there was a movie to be filmed, soundtrack recording sessions were made specifically for it, if there was a new Elvis album planned to be released, then recording sessions were scheduled specifically for the new album. They didn't use to work on recording sessions to "save" tracks to be future released. Very few songs used to surplus from each recording session and that only happened when some of the tracks originally planned to be featured in one specific release weren't considered good enough, concerning the quality of the material, or due to contractual deals that weren't still set by the time that specific LP (or EP) needed to be released. When Elvis was officially inducted in the US Army, in March 1960, there wasn't enough material for 2 years of future releases and this caused a lack in songs for the RCA and Colonel Parker to work with considering they needed a certain amount of new tracks to fill an album. For 1958 and 1959, there was a certain lack in new recording material to be out but they needed to keep Elvis' name in the spotlights since there was still a huge demand for him and they couldn't miss the chance to make money just because the US Army would keep their golden boy busy to work in his records for the next couple of years, besides Colonel had promised Elvis (and of course it was his interest as well) that when he came back from the Army he would still have a career to linger on. They chose to release "One Night "as a single, the way it was recorded in 1957, even if Elvis himself didn't agree with this. It was needed.

THE RELEASE (1958):

As you can notice, plans change. The same way "One Night" wasn't featured in the originally planned "Loving You" album in 1957, when the song was released as a single the opposite track wasn't "I Beg of You" as planned previously, instead they picked "I Got Stung" as the A-side.

1958–59: GOETHESTRASSE A new single had to be chosen, and both Sholes and the Colonel were still pulling for "One Night" over Elvis’s objections; the publishing company had made a deal for part of the royalties, but the deal depended upon the song’s release as a single and couldn’t be extended past October 31, 1958. The Colonel felt it would be foolish not to take advantage of the deal, and at last he persuaded Elvis to agree. With "I Got Stung" from the June session as the B-side, the new single caused an immediate sensation. DJs clearly preferred the A-side, but both cuts shot up the charts right away, eventually reaching number four and number eight, respectively. Split airplay may well have been what stopped "One Night" from going to number one on the charts, but the single sold several hundred thousand copies more than the last two releases, even matching "Don’t"/"I Beg Of You."

Excerpts: "Elvis Presley: A Life in Music" by Ernst Jorgensen. Foreword by Peter Guralnick (1998)

Singles "One Night" (B-SIDE) and "I Got Stung" (A-SIDE) -- Released October 21, 1958 -- Recorded on February 23, 1957.

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AFTERWARDS:

As far as I know (and I say this because I am still studying Elvis' career and many things can come to my knowledge in the future), ever since released, Elvis performed the song as it was officially out, leaving "One Night (Of Sin)" to be heard only as a posthumous released track, after 1983 as it came out featuring the album "Elvis: A Legendary Performer (Vol 4)".

"One Night Of Sin" and "One Night" were featured together in the 2006 Follow That Dream (FTD) label re-issue of the "Loving You" soundtrack album. On the previous year (2005) FTD re-issue of the same album, there was only "One Night Of Sin" in the album, as it was supposed to be if the lyrics hadn't changed and the song had came out in the album it was meant to be in.

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LET'S DISCUSS IT:

First of all, I totally understand Colonel Parker's fears over the lyrics. "One Night (Of Sin)" would have been a risky song for Elvis in the 50s to perform/release and, the way I see it, the change in the lyrics came as a way of not giving munition to conservative people to "cancel" Elvis, to cause an even bigger fuss on his already pretty "stained" image as a "troublemaker", a "rock and roller rebel", an "imoral young man who's such a bad influence on the America's youth". Let's face it, have a conservative parent heard their kids listening to "One night of sin is what I'm paying for" there would have been "Loving You" LPs being burned in trashes all over the US, a lot more of badmouthing Elvis' name scenes with older folks using this song as an example of Presley's kind of "antics" and "imoral behavior", and maybe even the Loving You movie could have been forbidden if the song was performed in it, suffering boycott fired up by church leaders and all.

I wonder if that song was in fact in the movie tho. The Loving You movie is very, very "family friendly", all cute and sweet. I can't even imagine Deke Rivers singing "One Night Of Sin" onstage, since we know Elvis performed songs using not only his voice but his whole body. I mean, of course he performed "One Night (With You)" with the usual sex appeal inherent of him but the original lyrics would add much more sensuality into the performance, no doubt. I wish I could've watch him performing this son,g with its original lyrics, in the 50s... it would be something else, I tell ya. But it would also be quite scandalous for his image back then. Even so, I can't quite understand how that song was never performed by him the way he recorded at first, "One Night of Sin", during the '68 Comeback Special - or any other Elvis performance. He had no more reasons to try to play the "cool and nice southern religious boy" anymore by then, so why Elvis didn't sing this song the way it was originally recorded? I guess, concerning the '68 TV Special, this time it was a matter of being in television - you know... the sponsorship for the show would probably not agree with such "explicit" lyrics considering it was supposed to be a Christmas TV special, again, family oriented. Maybe he never performed the song with its original lyrics because nobody heard him sing it before since it was only released for the public after Elvis died. Such a shame.

As far as I know, Elvis never performed One Night Of Sin live but it would have been VERY, EXTREMELY suitable for late 60s/70s Elvis. I personally would give almost anything to watch him singing this song in the 70s, really but I guess it is what it is. The timing wasn't what good when this track came to him — or it actually was because, if you think about it, now we have two versions of that song sang by Elvis. What could be better than one Elvis song than two (and hundreds more)?

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You can listen to "One Night (Of Sin)" by Elvis Presley on:

"Elvis: A Legendary Performer" Vol 4. (1983)

"The King of Rock’n’Roll – The Complete 50’s Masters" (1992)

"Loving You" (2005) – FTD (re-issue)

"Loving You" (2006) – FTD (re-issue)

"Elvis: From the Vaults 50's" (2016)

#elvis presley #elvis history #elvis music #50s elvis #one night #1958 #loving you #elvis movies #elvis films #1957 #50s music #elvis the king #elvis fans #elvis fandom #elvis #Youtube

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