Show Notes
This week, Justin and Olivia wrap their discussion on the 2005 Broadway musical "All Shook Up" as they take a closer examination of the second act of the show as it flounders in its half-hearted attempts to make social commentary while still surprising with the inclusion of Elvis deep cuts like "Power of My Love," "I Don't Want To" and "There's Always Me" in its narrative. From there, the duo hit their Songs of the Week. Tying in with the musical's lead character Chad, a roving roustabout himself, Justin tackles the brief history behind the title theme to Elvis's 1964 film "Roustabout." Then Olivia goes on a wonderful deep dive into the symbolism and storied history of "La Paloma" as its Spanish composer Sebastián Iradier comes into contact with Cuban music, brings it back to Europe and writes a song that goes on to explode in popularity around the world, becoming a standard in Mexico and also somewhat associated with Hawaii, being brought to the islands by Europeans - leading to its further adaptation as "No More" for Elvis in "Blue Hawaii" and "Aloha from Hawaii." If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.
More from TCBCast: An Unofficial Elvis Presley Fan Podcast
Bec's back this week after an extended illness, and so we're diving into the history behind two classic Song of the Week picks: first up is "Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do," the upbeat boogie-woogie showpiece featured at the beginning and the climactic ending of 1957's "Loving You." Then, Bec climbs her way up to Marty Robbins' dramatic semi-autobiographical "You Gave Me A Mountain," which Elvis famously covered in the film "Elvis On Tour," and the TV specials "Aloha From Hawaii" and "Elvis in Concert," but took influence from Frankie Laine's hit version rather than the songwriter's. The duo also discuss a wide array of miscellaneous topics, including rare live Elvis tracks, Bec plays a round of Elvis trivia, and... it's really finally happening... TCBCast's planned summer 2027 meetup in Memphis. If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.
Hello TCBCast listeners! We took a short break for Justin's birthday, but illness and scheduling conflicts struck, however new TCBCast is incoming ASAP! To hold you over, we wanted to share a bit of some of the great backlog of bonus content exclusive to our Patreon, where we've featured over 50 episodes on a wide variety of similar Elvis-related movies, TV shows, short films, and other programs, including a recently released episode on part 1 of the miniseries "Elvis & Me" from 1988, with more on the way! This archival mini-episode from 2023 features Gurdip and Justin picking right up where they left off with the first and only season of the 1990 ABC TV series "Elvis: Good Rockin' Tonight" starring Michael St. Gerard, Millie Perkins, Billy Green Bush, Jesse Dabson, Blake Gibbons, Kelli Williams and Jordan Williams. Back on episode 85 in 2019, the guys had watched and reviewed the first two episodes, but now have revisited the entire rest of the series with a fresh lens: pondering, in the post-Baz Luhrmann Elvis era, how the 1990 series' slower pacing, more granular focus and acute attention to historical accuracy holds up. And what does Gurdip, who saw the show in its original airing, think of Ronnie McDowell's singing in this series now? Episode 3, "The Locket" is all about Elvis and his fictionalized girlfriend "Mattie," and also depicts Elvis' first appearance at the Overton Park Shell in Memphis. Sadly, since that time, the episodes have been pulled from YouTube and other public-facing streaming services - perhaps now is the time for Elvis fans to collectively demand it finally be released officially! If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.
Justin is joined this week by musician Matthew Zeiss, professionally known as ZEISS, who is also the director of the forthcoming documentary "Moody Blue: Between the Lines," which was announced with a trailer during Elvis Week 2026 and is set to premiere in August 2027. Featuring new interviews with Glen Hardin, Jerry Scheff, Estelle Brown, Larry Strickland, Brent Maher, Layng Martine Jr, Letitia Henley Kirk, Shirley Dieu, archival interviews with James Burton and Mark James, and more yet to be announced, "Moody Blue" the documentary will explore Elvis' creative process in the less-commonly-explored late 1970s, including the abandoned 1977 Nashville session. Zeiss & the TCE band have also recorded new interpretations bringing their own influences and love of Elvis' music to the known demos selected for that session like "Energy," "By Day by Day" and "That's What You To Do Me," as well as covering several studio tracks from the Jungle Room sessions to craft one possible imagined alternate "Moody Blue" album. But come to find out, they would never have undertaken either project to begin with if not for an episode of TCBCast... the guys also talk plenty about numerous songs and demos Elvis was pitched, considered recording, or were written for him, including a fascinating rarely-discussed Mark James song that has also been uncovered by Zeiss, which the "Suspicious Minds" writer had explicitly told author Ken Sharp that he intended as Elvis' first possible disco hit. The duo also geek out about EPiC, mull over future Elvis projects such as EPE's announced hologram show, where tribute acts and AI-generated songs often fail at capturing the soul of Elvis' music despite technical accuracy, and much more. The trailer for Moody Blue: Between the lines is viewable on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbKD6X7Zc3U Moody Blue, ZEISS' album, can be heard on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/album/21XXQzTPXyLNE6SlGnzdEc
Following immediately on the heels of our discussion on Elvis and "Coat of Many Colors," John Michael Heath relates the story behind Kris Kristofferson writing his religious-themed 1973 #1 hit "Why Me Lord." Then, to help us understand Elvis' cover better, explores the relationship between two of Elvis' favorite gospel groups, The Statesmen Quartet and The Blackwood Brothers Quartet, and in particular the friendly rivalry between their respective bass singers, Jim "Big Chief" Wetherington and J.D. Sumner (the latter of whom famously featured on Elvis' live performances of the song) as well as Elvis' admiration of both men. Then for his Song of the Week, Justin ponders the heartwrenching story told within Curly Putman's country classic, "Green, Green Grass of Home," the cinematic inspirations that gave Putman the premise, and of course Elvis' version recorded in 1975, though the song is perhaps most well known to the wider public through Tom Jones' hit 1966 recording. If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.
In this special two-part episode of TCBCast featuring John Heath, Justin and John reflect on the life and music of Dolly Parton, yet their main focus is on the discrepancies between the legendary story of Elvis seeking to record "I Will Always Love You"... and history. Source interviews, articles and books, as well as verifiable facts about how Colonel Parker's music publishing involvement was handled - and subsequently ignored - during the relevant time periods before and after the critical July 1973 Stax sessions, provide corroborating evidence (including from Dolly herself as well as credible accounts within Elvis' circle) that the dramatic story the world has become familiar with and has been repeated endlessly on social media was not as it seems... ..Yet the true story, and the real song Elvis wanted to record, is also much more revealing about how Elvis and Dolly were deeply connected by their real life experiences of extreme poverty, a strong religious background, their generous spirits, and flashy senses of personal style. This episode is being split into two parts, part 1 focuses on this story, part 2 will be Songs of the Week; as you'll understand by the end, there's simply no tidy way to transition tonally from the closing of this part of episode to the accompanying Songs of the Week, and in fact Justin and John took a short couple minutes break to reset tonally so that they could tackle "Why Me Lord" and "Green Green Grass of Home" with as much enthusiasm as possible. Keep an eye out - those will be in your feed soon! The clip of the Elvis-y vocal interpretation of "I Will Always Love You" featured midway through the show is by Torben Otten. Some of our most critical sources for this episode include: Alanna Nash's Revelations from the Memphis Mafia, Peter Guralnick's Careless Love and The Colonel & The King, Dolly Parton's Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, Dolly on Dolly edited by Randy Schmidt, Norbert Putnam's Music Lessons: A Musical Memoir, INTERVIEW magazine (1989), Playgirl (August 1978) and Playboy (October 1978) magazine interviews with Dolly Parton, Alan Fortas's Elvis from Memphis to Hollywood, Elvis Information Network's Ask Marty Lacker column, the ASCAP and BMI repertoire websites, and Keith Flynn's website.