Review: Elvis Presley - Blue Hawaii (1961)

Tracks: 1) Blue Hawaii; 2) Almost Always True; 3) Aloha Oe; 4) No More; 5) Can’t Help Falling In Love; 6) Rock-A-Hula Baby; 7) Moonlight Swim; 8) Ku-u-i-po (Hawaiian Sweetheart); 9) Ito Eats; 10) Slicin’ Sand; 11) Hawaiian Sunset; 12) Beach Boy Blues; 13) Island Of Love (Kauai); 14) Hawaiian Wedding Song.

REVIEW

The more I listen to this record, meaninglessly shortening my life span, the more I am convinced that this was indeed the point of no return. Quite a few people, even some of those who do not worship every inch of ground ever trod upon by the King’s august boots, view Blue Hawaii — both the movie and the soundtrack, or at least just the soundtrack — as a pleasant, relaxing, and charming fantasy, a perfect little vehicle for sweet escapism that took people’s minds away from the Bay of Pigs like nothing else. That may be so, and it would be inconsiderate to deny the people the right to cotton-candy entertainment, at least as long as they do not get used to cotton candy as a natural foundation for all sorts of entertainment. There’s just one question, though: why did it have to be Elvis Presley?

Before Blue Hawaii, Elvis movies in general weren’t all that bad. None were masterpieces of cinematography, though King Creole at least came really close to becoming a bonafide classic in its own right; however, the scripts felt relatively intelli­gent, and the characters played by Elvis could display psychological depth and a degree of realism. Similarly, the music written for the movies was generally no different from Elvis’ usual music — lots of energetic rock’n’roll in the Fifties, plenty of catchy pop stuff in G. I. Blues and Flaming Star. Apart from a tiny bit of added conceptuality (like the martial and German themes in G. I. Blues, etc.), the soundtracks did not contrast too sharply with the regular LPs in terms of quality, impact, and purposefulness.

Blue Hawaii, on the other hand, does sound like a wholesome soundtrack — a conceptual soundtrack, put together as one big love song to a carefree world of blue skies, endless beaches, mindless fun, and plenty of cuddly Austronesian stereotypes to amuse and delight middle-to-low class white audiences. Putting aside inevitable, but pointless accusations of «cultural appropriation», there is nothing particularly offensive about exploiting those stereotypes (the short humorous ditty ‘Ito Eats’, an anthem to mindless gluttony, is probably the lowest point here, but its main problem is that it is simply nowhere near as funny as it would like to be). It’s just that, when put together, they all give out such a strong vibe of shallowness and superficiality that I find it impossible to «give in» to the music — it would be the equivalent of «giving in» to an episode of Candid Camera or something like that.

All the usual culprits had been assembled to write songs for the soundtrack, with the lion’s share going to Ben Weisman (three songs on Side A) and the hack-o-rama pair of Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett (all but two songs on Side B). The idea was simple — to give the world their usual pairing of Romantic Elvis and Rock’n’Rolling Elvis, but with steel guitars and ukuleles to capture the oh-so-realistic spirit of Hawaiian Paradise. The quintessential expected result is something like ‘Rock-A-Hula Baby’, which sounds like a typical Elvis rockabilly number but with all the sharp angles smoothened and Scotty Moore’s kick-ass electric guitar jolts replaced by buttery steel guitar twangs. Perhaps if taken squarely on its own terms, the song could pass for lightweight self-parodic fun; the problem is that Blue Hawaii consists of such songs in its entirety — and aspires to be a modestly serious artistic statement, rather than pure, intentionally self-ridiculing comedy.

It is highly symbolic, I think, that the title track — and the name of the movie itself — was taken directly out of 1937’s Waikiki Wedding, a similarly sweet romantic fantasy for Bing Crosby that did a great job of relieving the minds of movie-going American audiences from the severe twist the Depression took in 1937. Technically, both singers do the usual great job, but musically, both versions are just generic cotton-candy ("lovely you and blue Hawaii / with all this loveliness there should be love" is one of those lines you can stare at all day and still not understand how it is able to co-exist in the same world with Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, and string theory); worse, the Elvis version is arranged in such a way that it demands from you to pay attention to how many delightful and delicious layers of cotton-candy the arrangers have gone out of their way to wrap around its lazyass, super-brittle musical skeleton. Purring lap steel, tinkling pianos, cooing backing vocals, gently tapping bass, subtle marimbas, and, of course, the King’s ability to glide that deep baritone in the smoothest way possible across your back. Sexy! Seductive! Sensual! The perfect soundtrack for an erotic massage parlor.

And speaking of erotic massage parlors, Blue Hawaii, of course, cannot forget that the image it creates of its prime hero should not be completely wholesome and dedicated to nothing but proper family values. Hence the ideally calculated ‘Almost Always True’ — Weisman and Wise achieve here an ideal compromise between «faithful lover» and «naughty boy», captured both in the song’s title (gotta love the juxtaposition of always and almost!) and its middle-o’-the-road melody, which kinda sounds like it rocks in a mischievous way but is really quite tame as far as the tone and energy levels of all instruments are concerned. A perfect offer for Elvis’ ever-growing audience of bored middle-aged housewives who, too, would probably all stay true to their husbands but if ever a hunk like Elvis came along... oh boy!

After this quintessential «Hawaiian ballad» and «Hawaiian rocker» the two sub-styles continue to alternate without any major revelations, with songs like ‘Moonlight Swim’ and ‘Hawaiian Sunset’ epitomizing the former and ‘Rock-A-Hula Baby’ and ‘Slicin’ Sand’ the latter — needless to say, most of them are basically just rewrites of older Elvis ballads and rockers with a few lazy twists thrown in here and there to avoid plagiarism suits. On tracks like ‘Slicin’ Sand’, it almost hurts to hear Presley’s formerly exciting rockabilly stunts turned into diet shadows of their former selves — if you can listen to ‘Treat Me Nice’ and ‘Slicin’ Sand’ back-to-back, recognizing the similarity but refusing to acknowledge the tremendous aesthetic difference between the two, I’d say — mildly enough — that we have a problem, Houston.

Even worse, some of the songs make no sense whatsoever outside of the context of the movie: the already mentioned ‘Ito Eats’ is one, as is ‘Beach Boy Blues’, whose clumsy refrain ("now I’m a kissing cousin to a ripe pineapple, I’m in the can") can only be understood properly when watching Elvis’ character sing the tune from behind bars. (The "kissing cousin" thing somehow lingered in the backs of the minds of Elvis’ courtiers all the way up to 1964, when it would become the central theme of yet another movie and its title track). Musically, it’s just a bombastic piece of blues vaudeville and if that kind of joke level is up your alley, go ahead, but for some reason, Elvis as a source of humor never did much for me even in the good old pre-Army days, much less so in the shiny happy days of leis and luaus.

The less said about the «authentically Hawaiian» numbers on here, the better. The rendition of ‘Aloha ’Oe’, arranged in an exaggeratedly reverential fashion, is obviously included as a polite tribute to that «funny little native culture»; if you are interested in authentic Hawaiian art, there are dozens of more authentic renditions one could probably check out (and no, I’m not talking Bing Crosby or even Lilo & Stitch), and if you are interested in Elvis, you don’t need to hear him croon his way through the (admittedly fairly simple) Hawaiian phonetics to become convinced of his versatility. As for ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song’, I suppose it can work if you’re planning a Hawaiian wedding. If you don’t, might as well just settle for The Bridal Chorus without making too much of a fuss.

All of which leads us to the burning question: can Blue Hawaii really be so bad in the final run if it includes ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, which is, like, the ultimate Elvis Presley love ballad? How can one go wrong with a song that, according to a recent survey, 10.48% of people (Americans, I assume) choose as the soundtrack for the first dance on their wedding day? Well, the thing is, it might not be a total coincidence that the initial association of ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, no matter how much of a life of its own it would go on to acquire, is with the first hundred-percent corny movie in Elvis’ career — because the mood of the song ideally fits the mood of the movie.

Let’s just put this thing into context and remember that ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ is a carefully crafted Hugo & Luigi remake of Jean-Paul Martini’s ‘Plaisir D’Amour’, a romantic ballad that goes all the way back to 1784. In the first half of the 20th century, it was mildly popular in the world of «light classical» entertainment, with multiple orchestrated and chamber versions recorded by French and American artists alike; then in 1961, merely a month before Blue Hawaii, it was amicably introduced into the world of folk revival by Joan Baez on her second album, who helped make it into a standard of folk and baroque-pop (with later covers by The Seekers, Marianne Faithfull, Judy Collins, the list is endless). At about the same time, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore (the «Sam Cooke team»), joined by George David Weiss, were working on remaking the ballad into a more contemporary pop framework — inspired, perhaps, by the smashing success that Elvis had had with all those remakes of old-timey Neapolitan songs.

Once you know it, it is all but impossible to avoid comparisons between the Joan Baez recording and Elvis’ hit, released on the market within months of each other. While the songs are not completely identical — ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ omits the verses, replacing them with a different bridge section — the main chorus hook is, of course, the same; but the biggest difference is that the original ‘Plaisir D’Amour’ is a tragic lament on the fleeting nature of love ("Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment, chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie"), while the lyrics of ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ have been completely expurgated from any feelings of sadness, and Elvis’ vocals, accordingly, are pure wild honey. What used to be a moderately complex combination of tenderness, nostalgia, pain, and disillusionment, cleverly morphed one into another over the course of the melodic chorus, has been simplified and straightened out for the sake of pure, if admittedly powerful, romance. I mean, you’re in Hawaii, man. Who the heck would come up with the stupid idea that "the grief of love lasts a lifetime" in frickin’ Hawaii, of all places? Aloha!

I don’t want to say that this «emotionally lobotomized» reinvention of ‘Plaisir D’Amour’ is a bad song. The original melody is a stroke of catchy marvel and it stays that way, and out of the millions of covers of the rewrite there is not a single one that could compare with Elvis’ once-in-a-lifetime vocal delivery. But there is still a nasty, sugary aftertaste it leaves behind, especially if you compare it with Baez or, for that matter, almost any random Elvis love ballad from the pre-army days. Much of this also has to do with the arrangement, meticulously calculated for one of those «Disney Magic» moments: the fairy godmather chimes, the angelic backing vocals, the smoothly cooing style of the «Hawaiian» lead guitar — at least they refrained from adding swooping strings, but even without strings the song still sounds overproduced. But ultimately, I guess, criticizing it is a bit like criticizing Mendelssohn’s Wedding March: you can poke it, you can prod it, you can make fun of it or parody it, but it’s still up there, laughing at you, and you’re still down here, powerless in your sarcasm.

The bottomline is that ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ is not an exception from the field-of-corn rules of Blue Hawaii, it simply raises the level of corn to such levels where it is no longer in dangerous reach of your criticism. But still it remains an integral part of the album’s philosophy — creation of a rose-colored fantasy that is completely removed from any contact with reality. And, true enough, from here on Elvis would be forever confined to a world all his own, a King confined to the comforts of his palace and permanently out of touch with the universe outside those windows. Meanwhile, the world outside would, of course, go on to be divided into the monarchist and anti-monarchist camps — those who kept on going to the movies and those who sold their souls to the Beatles instead — and I’m fairly sure that Blue Hawaii, both the movie and the album, was extremely instrumental in the creation of that division.

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