Elvis' Short Songs

I got the soundtrack CD of Elvis Presley's "Double Trouble" film today. It's strange but true, and terrible to reveal, but I don't believe I've ever had this album before. I don't know what it is about "Double Trouble," but it's both a film and a soundtrack album (LP, cassette, 8 track tape, and CD) that seemed to elude me.

I got the film then a couple years ago when they released a whole bunch of budget Elvis movies on DVD. Then today, just today, I got the CD. So that took me a long time.

This CD is "Spinout" and "Double Trouble" together. They were put out as "Double Features" some years ago, and this particular CD treats those two together as part of the "Original Elvis Presley Collection," making this one Number 25. So I can't figure that out exactly, since they were much later paired and weren't "original" in the same sense that I normally use the word.

I already had "Spinout" on LP but in no other format, which I had made into MP3s.

Now I have both soundtracks on CD, so that's a good advance, in my opinion.

The thing that first strikes me is the shortness of the songs. They have the timings on the back. There's 18 tracks, and 12 of them are under 2 minutes! That's stunning. It seems like they could've recorded longer versions somehow, even if they only needed a minute or so for the movie. But I guess not.

Speaking of "Spinout," I heard the sessions recordings on this one some years ago, and "Adam and Evil" was tough for Elvis to record. I think they only got one or two good tracks out of around 18 takes. He kept messing up on one part. So with that kind of track record, it might've been tough to record longer versions!

As far as the songs go, I like them a lot. I know it's not a normal opinion to like Elvis' movie songs, but I always do. Of course there are some better than others. "Old MacDonald" isn't a great one. But the others are all good. They just need to be longer.