The Last Train To Memphis: A Definitive Elvis Playlist

Trying to Get to You (1955)

The last song he recorded at Sun, a transformative song, a spiritual song despite its secular nature.  Elvis would continue singing it (and singing it well) right up till the end of his life.

I Need Somebody to Lean On (1963)

One of Elvis’s most beautiful ballads. Written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, it is like a dream sequence out of a Gene Kelly film plunked into the middle of Viva Las Vegas.

Mystery Train (1955)

Nothing can compete with it. Nothing could top it. Just listen to the trailing laugh at the end for its note of pure spontaneity and joyfulness. It is the perfect definition of Sun founder Sam Phillips’s counter-perfect credo of “perfect imperfection.”

If the Lord Wasn’t Walking by My Side (1966)

Elvis had many musical mentors, none more so than the Statesmen quartet’s lead singer, Jake Hess. Here we have the closest we will ever get to a duet between the two—though it’s been reduced to more of a “group sing” in the final mix. Still, it is lifted up by the feeling Elvis got from the music, and the inspiration he got from Hess in this jaunty statement of belief.

A Mess of Blues (1960)

An extension of the natural, easy-rocking feel that Elvis first hit upon with “Don’t Be Cruel” four years earlier—as Sam Phillips said of the latter, “Now there is a groove.” What is it? It’s not blues, it’s not really a rocker, and it’s not pop—it’s just Elvis as he has come to know himself, with a stellar Nashville “A-team” accompaniment.

That’s Someone You Never Forget (1961)

This in a sense is the only song that Elvis ever really wrote—even if his principal contribution came from suggesting its title and keening lyrical refrain to cowriter Red West. It’s perfectly clear, though, that he is singing, tenderly and heartbreakingly, about his mother.

My Baby Left Me (1956)

As much as this song can stand on its own as his second hommage to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (the first, of course, was “That’s All Right”), it also points to Elvis’s own rapidly evolving stylistic independence. Here for the first time he makes full use of the studio potential of his band (Scotty and Bill on guitar and bass, with D.J. Fontana on drums, plus a studio pianist), creating a sound both separate from, and an extension of, his Sun recordings. And it points the way to his breakthrough “Hound Dog”/“Don’t Be Cruel” session a few months later, at which Elvis for the first time, and with only one exception pretty much for all time, proclaims himself to be his own producer.

Anything That’s Part of You (1961)

Simple, classic, as beautifully sung as anything he ever did, this is heart-wrenching in a way that Elvis could never entirely achieve in his early recordings. By one of his favorite songwriters, Don Robertson, and, like so many of his best songs, an interpretation. not a recapitulation. The same applies to another Don Robertson song from the same session, “I Met Her Today.”  I can’t choose between them.

Reconsider Baby (1960)

Just a great blues, with Elvis’s own acoustic rhythm guitar providing the intro and a sturdy underpinning all the way through. A real knock-out in which Elvis gets totally caught up (it seems like he just can’t stop), and, like “Mystery Train,” fully realized in a single take.

Long Black Limousine (1969)

If you want to be convinced that Elvis brought something new to the party, just listen to the original country number (it’s great!), and compare it to the towering drama that Elvis imparts to it here. A highlight from one of his greatest albums, the Chips Moman–produced (this is the single non-self-produced exception mentioned above) From Elvis in Memphis.

I’ll Hold You in My Heart (1969)

More of the same, but more so. This was not in any way part of the plan for the 1969 Chips Moman sessions. In fact, with Elvis at the piano, it appears to arise from a purely spontaneous moment, as Elvis gets so caught up in the gospel-infused feeling that he brings to this sentimental 1947 Eddy Arnold “heart song” that he simply can’t let it go. By the end, he is out there almost entirely on his own, as the musicians struggle to keep up.

If I Can Dream (1968)

And to wind up this trilogy of Pentecostal passion, Elvis brings so much feeling to this inspirational (i.e., secular, not explicitly religious, but not far removed either) wind-up for the ’68 television special that you think he could never do it again. And yet if you seek out the outtakes, you will find that he does, again and again. With all the passion and belief at his command—forget the words, the subtext provided by his vocal really does proclaim his hope (and maybe even more than that) for a better world.