Elvis Presley may well have been a great entertainer with a unique style and delivery, but that didn’t mean he was infallible as a performer.
Everyone is subject to an off day every once in a while, and although his domination of the charts and unwavering popularity often placed him above his peers, he certainly wasn’t capable of triumphing in every career move.
For example, some songs are too difficult to sing for certain artists. This might be because they require a different vocal register to be done accurately, and sometimes it’s down to the fact that the original is in a style that doesn’t complement the performer. However, you’d have a fair amount of confidence in someone of Presley’s ability to overcome these stumbling blocks, and if there were issues he was faced with, he would simply be able to make alterations to the track in order to suit him.
However, Waylon Jennings had a minor hit in 1973 with the country song, ‘We Had It All’, and it was later covered by a number of artists who made the song considerably more famous. The best known version came courtesy of The Rolling Stones, who recorded the song for their 1978 album, Some Girls, but other versions from the likes of Rita Coolidge, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton and Ray Charles were also popular. Understandably, given the song’s potential to be a hit, it was proposed that Elvis ought to add his name to the list of acts who had covered Jennings’ song, but it wasn’t to be.
It wasn’t because Presley found the song too much of a challenge to sing, nor was it down to it being out of his comfort zone in terms of genre. Instead, it was down to the fact that ‘The King’ couldn’t successfully make it through the recording process in one piece, and broke down in tears while delivering multiple takes when he attempted to cover the song later in 1973.
The song’s subject matter sees two former lovers in a dialogue with one another, reflecting on the happier times they’d spent together. Considering that Presley had only just recently separated and divorced from his wife, Priscilla, it all seemed to hit a little bit close to home for the singer, and the emotional impact of the song rendered him unable to make it to the end of the recording sessions.
Norbert Putnam, who played bass during the recording session, was stunned by Presley’s reaction, saying that it was extremely out of character for someone who was usually such an immovable force. He would later recall how much of a shock he received at the Stax Records studio in Memphis in an interview, initially thinking that it was some sort of joke.
“Elvis was a very quick study,” Putnam claimed. “He could hear vocals and arrangements once or twice, grab the lyric sheet, and just kill it, but on this particular night, we did four, five, six takes, and he wasn’t getting it. I’d never seen him have problems like that before.”
Additionally, he commented that the track’s producer, Felton Jarvis, said that “he just couldn’t get through the words because he was thinking about himself.”
Elvis, evidently, was also displeased with how the session had gone, and was an emotional wreck by the end of it. “You can put that one out after I’ve been dead 20 years,” was what he exclaimed, according to Putnam, and judging by the fact he’s been dead for almost 50 years, it must’ve truly been awful for it to have not had an official release.