Elvis Presley - Almost - From First Take to the Master

Throughout all of Elvis’ feature films it is very difficult to find genuine touching moments, and much of this is due to the type of movies that Elvis found himself in. Of his first four, two were dramas and the other two were more about the musical content, which was exceptional, than the plot or storyline itself. The sixties movies, Flaming Star, Wild In The Country, Charro! and Change of Habit apart, are generally described as musical comedies and again hardly lend themselves to contain the type of scenes where such a moment would occur, and even with the more dramatic roles the scripts did not contain any scope for such scenes. The musical comedies often found Elvis’ character singing to his lady by way or serenading her, and although this is archetypal of most musicals of the time, particularly comedies, it is almost impossible to portray genuine emotion in such scenes as the musical nature of the scene tends to strip any realism from the moment. There are two glaring examples of genuinely touching moments, with the first taking place during the final scene of “King Creole“ as Danny Fisher’s father finally comes into the nightclub to see his son perform despite the knowledge that it was partially Danny’s fault that he had ended up badly injured in hospital. The second and probably the most touching moment in any Elvis movie is during the penultimate scene of his 1968 feature “The Trouble With Girls“ where Walter Hale (Elvis) is consoling himself by singing “Almost“ at the piano just at the moment that Charlene (Marlyn Mason) walks by in the process of leaving. This moment is so well done in that whilst Charlene stands looking at Walter with obvious tears in the back of her eyes he is completely unaware of her presence and this together with Mason’s excellent performance without having to say a single word and Elvis’ beautiful vocal in this scene is what in my opinion makes this the single most touching scene in any Elvis movie, The song “Almost“ itself was recorded by Elvis at United Recorders In Hollywood during the early hours of 24 October 1968 and over three hours took a mammoth thirty one takes to produce a master take. The undubbed master was used in the movie but for commercial release overdubs were added over two days with the strings on 7 May 1969 and the brass the following day at American Sound in Memphis during a session which also saw overdubs added to Suspicious Minds. The biggest problem with the song is purely that it is too short and seems to end just as it was starting to motor!! As with all of these videos, to get the most out of the re-edited audio, I highly recommend you use ear /headphones and turn the volume up as much as you dare!