Oldies Oasis

Oldies Oasis Run by fans who live for classic country music. Not a news media outlet, nor connected to any official artist or record label.

Content is published for enjoyment, reflection, and music history education.

Elvis recorded "Just Pretend" on June 6, 1970, at RCA's Studio B in Nashville. Guy Fletcher and Doug Flett wrote it. The...
10/05/2026

Elvis recorded "Just Pretend" on June 6, 1970, at RCA's Studio B in Nashville. Guy Fletcher and Doug Flett wrote it. Then it sat for five months before coming out on November 11 on That's the Way It Is, an album that mixes studio tracks with live ones. So a quiet ballad cut in a small Nashville room ended up on a record full of Las Vegas crowd energy. I like that contrast, and I'd play the ballad first, then the live songs 🎹
💖 The song in the comment👇

January 14, 1973. Honolulu International Center. Elvis steps out in the white American Eagle jumpsuit with a 30-piece or...
10/05/2026

January 14, 1973. Honolulu International Center. Elvis steps out in the white American Eagle jumpsuit with a 30-piece orchestra behind him, and an estimated one billion people watching worldwide, beamed to 43 countries by satellite.

One of the songs he sang that night was "What Now My Love."

It started life in France as "Et maintenant," written in 1961 by Gilbert Bécaud with lyrics by Pierre Delanoë, and it became one of the biggest-selling singles in French history. Carl Sigman wrote the English words, and by 1973 it was a true standard.

Elvis was 38, and he took on that drama with total command. The performance runs just 3:15, yet it stands out in a show full of big moments. Aloha from Hawaii later went to number one on the Billboard album chart
🌺🎵 Elvis Presley - What Now My Love💖 The song in the comment👇

Elvis recorded this on October 23, 1968, for MGM's "The Trouble with Girls," a comedy set in the 1920s. The lyric even i...
10/04/2026

Elvis recorded this on October 23, 1968, for MGM's "The Trouble with Girls," a comedy set in the 1920s. The lyric even includes "armchair quarterback," a term that didn't exist until television sports came along, so it's a funny anachronism for the era. 🎬
It was written by Mac Davis, who also gave Elvis "In the Ghetto" and "A Little Less Conversation," together with Billy Strange. The film was shot after the '68 Comeback Special, so Elvis was still riding that wave when he cut it.
Out of everything from the film, it was the only song released to go with it: a 1969 single with "The Fair Is Moving On" on the B-side. It wasn't on any studio album at the time. The song is a laid-back, bluesy shrug that tells a nosy neighbor to tend to his own business.
🎵 Elvis Presley - Clean Up Your Own Backyard💖 The song in the comment👇

Fred Wise and Ben Weisman wrote "As Long as I Have You," and Elvis recorded it on January 16, 1958, for the soundtrack o...
10/04/2026

Fred Wise and Ben Weisman wrote "As Long as I Have You," and Elvis recorded it on January 16, 1958, for the soundtrack of King Creole. Weisman's name turns up on a lot of Elvis records, but this is the one where he and Wise got to hear him sing softly. After the shouting of the early rock and roll years, a ballad like this shows a singer with a lot more in the tank than people credited him for. I'd play it right after "Jailhouse Rock," just for the contrast 🎶
💖 The song in the comment👇

Originally a 1959 blues classic written and recorded by Jimmy Reed, this song carries a genuinely curious quirk, the act...
10/04/2026

Originally a 1959 blues classic written and recorded by Jimmy Reed, this song carries a genuinely curious quirk, the actual phrase "baby what you want me to do" never once appears in Jimmy Reed's original recording. The real lyric was "baby why you wanna let go," but later cover versions, including Elvis's, swapped it to match the now-famous title. 🎸

Elvis's own history with this song became unusually deep. Rather than just performing it once, he kept returning to it throughout his legendary 1968 NBC special, now remembered as the "'68 Comeback Special," using it almost as a recurring touchstone across the sit-down segments. One retrospective on the special suggested the song's lyrics may have even taken on a private, defiant meaning for Elvis at the time, a subtle message aimed at his famously controlling manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who had kept Elvis locked into forgettable Hollywood films for years before this show marked his return to real artistry.
🎵 Elvis Presley - Baby, What You Want Me To Do💖 The song in the comment👇

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" in 1957 for Jailhouse Rock. At the session, b...
10/03/2026

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote "(You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care" in 1957 for Jailhouse Rock. At the session, bassist Bill Black walked out in frustration, and Elvis picked up the electric bass himself. It's one of the very few recordings where he plays it. So the man everyone watched at the microphone was also holding down the bottom end on this one. I'll take a lead singer who covers for a missing band member over a perfect take any day 🎸
💖 The song in the comment👇

Norman Taurog directed Blue Hawaii in 1961, and it starred Elvis Presley with a soundtrack album that went along with it...
10/03/2026

Norman Taurog directed Blue Hawaii in 1961, and it starred Elvis Presley with a soundtrack album that went along with it. It became one of the biggest commercial successes of his film career. Elvis had just come out of the army and was spending the early 60s moving away from the darker dramas toward lighter musicals, and this was the one that showed where that road led. Plenty of people first heard that title song in a movie theater, not on a record player. I'd say the beach scenery did half the selling 🌺
💖 The song in the comment👇

This song came directly on the heels of one of the biggest hits of Elvis's career. After Otis Blackwell's "Don't Be Crue...
10/03/2026

This song came directly on the heels of one of the biggest hits of Elvis's career. After Otis Blackwell's "Don't Be Cruel" became a smash No. 1 single that summer, RCA was eager for more material from the same songwriter, so Steve Sholes commissioned "Paralyzed" specifically for a September 1956 session meant to produce Elvis's second RCA album and a new single. 🎸

The title itself nearly kept the song off radio entirely. Blackwell later explained the controversy directly, "The story I got was that because of the word 'paralyzed' a lot of organizations got down on the thing, so they wouldn't release it as a single." Instead, "Too Much" was chosen as the actual single, and "Paralyzed" ended up tucked onto the "Elvis" album and a companion EP instead. Even without a proper single release, it still managed to chart on the Billboard Top 100 for seven weeks in early 1957, hitting No. 1 in Vancouver and reaching the Top 10 in multiple US markets like Cleveland and Worcester.
🎵 Elvis Presley - Paralyzed💖 The song in the comment👇

Elvis Presley was only 19 when he recorded “Good Rockin’ Tonight” for Sun Records in 1954, but the song itself already h...
10/02/2026

Elvis Presley was only 19 when he recorded “Good Rockin’ Tonight” for Sun Records in 1954, but the song itself already had history behind it. Roy Brown wrote and recorded it in 1947, and Wynonie Harris cut his own version soon after. Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black pushed it toward something leaner, faster and more restless. That connection between rhythm and blues and country is what still makes this early Sun period so fascinating to me. You can hear a young singer figuring out exactly how far he could push a song.
💖 The song in the comment👇

"Let It Be Me" started life as a French song, "Je t'appartiens," by Gilbert Bécaud. The Everly Brothers made it famous i...
10/02/2026

"Let It Be Me" started life as a French song, "Je t'appartiens," by Gilbert Bécaud. The Everly Brothers made it famous in English, and Elvis picked it up for his February 1970 run at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. That live take ended up on On Stage. Then in 2016 the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was added behind him for The Wonder of You. So a French love song went through two brothers, one Vegas showroom and an orchestra, and it still sounds like it's being sung to one person 🎤
💖 The song in the comment👇

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