Stay Away, Joe CD (Follow That Dream Records, 2013)

I never quite know what to make of Stay Away, Joe. The first time I tried to watch the movie as a teenager in the early 1990s, I couldn’t get past the non-stop party scene near the beginning. The whole thing just seemed so unbearable.

Yet, over the years, I have come to love most of the five songs Elvis recorded for this film. While Elvis performed many country songs in his career, he rarely delved into “outdoor” country songs that celebrate nature like “Stay Away” (“Greensleeves”) and “Goin’ Home” do. Elvis infuses a passion into these numbers that makes them stronger than the lyrics might otherwise suggest.

“All I Needed Was The Rain” is much the same, but this time with Elvis making the most of an otherwise lesser blues number.

The rollicking “Stay Away, Joe” is a song that had to grow on me. Somewhere, I’ve seen it accurately described as a “campfire song.” Taken in that spirit, “Stay Away, Joe” is just as much fun as it needs to be.

The outlier is the awful “Dominic,” which Elvis recorded against his better judgment after securing a promise from producer Felton Jarvis that it would never be released on record. Though it appeared in the movie, RCA did not release the song until the Double Features series in 1994 – long after the deaths of both Elvis and Jarvis.

I’m torn about whether “Dominic” should have ever been released. On one hand, Elvis lost the right to decide what should and should not be released once he passed away. Surely, had he lived, he would have been against quite a few of the releases that have kept us Elvis fans going over the years. Of course, had he lived, many of those releases would not have been necessary. On the other hand, “Dominic” is such a wretched song, even among the already low standards of Elvis movies, that maybe his music label’s current Elvis team should have respected his wishes in this one instance. Releasing it served no purpose other than to please completists.

FTD’s Classic Albums series edition of the Stay Away, Joe soundtrack supplements the movie tunes with two far more commercial recordings made during the same period, “Too Much Monkey Business” and “U.S. Male.” My first exposure to “Too Much Monkey Business” was watching the 1981 documentary This Is Elvis on TV in the early 1990s. Though “Too Much Monkey Business” is not heard in any of Elvis’ real movies, I’ll always associate it with them due to its perfect use in the montage sequence of his Hollywood years. Elvis’ take on the Chuck Berry hit certainly fits within the spirit of many of his better movie songs, anyway.

Penned and first recorded by Jerry Reed, “U.S. Male“ acts as a natural follow-up to Elvis’ 1967 recordings of Reed’s “Guitar Man” and Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man” – the evolution of which are chronicled in the essential FTD release Elvis Sings Guitar Man. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Elvis plays up Southern “country boy” stereotypes in “U.S. Male,” including his wonderful ad-libbed clarification at the song’s conclusion: ‘. . . the American U.S. male.’ As with “Guitar Man,” Jerry Reed provides guitar support on Elvis’ cover of his song, making it far more authentic than it otherwise would have been.

Unlike Elvis Sings Guitar Man, which felt like a true album, albeit imaginary, the master recordings portion of the FTD Stay Away, Joe feels disjointed. Seven songs do not an album make, and the listener is never treated to the illusion that this is an album that “might have been.”

While it would have padded the “album” out to a more plausible length, adding in the Live A Little, Love A Little soundtrack session would have only made for an even more disjointed experience, given the entirely different themes of those recordings. FTD has done the right thing by sticking to the October 1967 and January 1968 sessions that make up this release.

I should clarify that the label does not even try to pass this off as an imaginary album anyway, forgoing the usual “Side One” and “Side Two” divisions in the track listing. Given this, I believe the ideal sequencing of these particular sessions would simply have been to present all of the songs and takes in the order recorded, rather than front-loading the masters. There is a definite “party” atmosphere to these sessions, particularly in the studio chatter, which is lost by FTD holding firm to its routine, scattershot approach. Though normally intended to create a better listening experience, it fails in this case.

The FTD release, of course, adds a multitude of alternate takes and false starts. However, beyond the false starts, there are not many completely new takes here. Whether this is due to unavailability of additional tapes or a budget-saving maneuver to avoid a second disc and requisite work on previously unreleased tracks remains to be seen.

Take 13 of “Stay Away, Joe” is a spirited version, with lots of hootin’ and hollerin’. As with the master, the acoustic guitar and Charlie McCoy’s harmonica drive the song.

An “alternate mastering” of “All I Needed Was The Rain” features some studio chatter and a false start. The song also fades later and includes Elvis joking at the end. Other than that, any other differences compared to the standard master are beyond my technical abilities to detect.

Take 3 of “Too Much Monkey Business” is a long false start, but notable due to the prominence of slightly different sounding guitar work reminiscent of what would later be heard on the master of “Burning Love” in 1972. As fans probably expect from a song with this many words, Elvis confuses some of the lyrics along the way, including an “…Army chow, Army clothes, Army jeep, Army car!” line that made me laugh.

The various false starts of “Goin’ Home” reveal that there was audio trickery involved in the studio chatter that appeared on the Collectors Gold release. The snippets heard on that 1991 boxed set are actually edited together from a few different moments. I’ve heard it that way for so long that it’s hard to get used to these snippets within their proper contexts.

Be sure to listen out for Elvis singing the line “You belong to my heart…” before the Take 11 false start of “Stay Away.” Elvis sang a tiny bit more of this while jamming with Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis at SUN Studios in December 1956, as first heard on The Million Dollar Quartet.

The most interesting parts of the accompanying booklet are reproductions of advertisements and other vintage memorabilia. The modern text is perfunctory and exhibits the same awkwardness all too often associated with FTD. Even if a professional proofreader were outside of the budget, it would still be a good idea to have someone else read these items before printing and selling them.

FTD’s Stay Away, Joe is a decent release buffeted in no small part by Jerry Reed’s guitar work on the 1968 tracks. While most of the tracks have appeared before on various releases, this CD offers the opportunity to obtain them all in one package. While not essential, Stay Away, Joe is certainly recommended to fans of these songs who might not have already collected key alternate takes.

About a year ago, I finally revisited Stay Away, Joe as a film. The majestic, opening title visuals, accompanied by “Stay Away,” are unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in an Elvis movie. That dreaded party scene follows shortly thereafter, but the rest of the movie proves watchable and, at times, entertaining. Elvis looks terrific and, as evidenced by this soundtrack release, most of the songs are more than worthwhile. Too bad “Goin’ Home” fails to make the cut (as with “Stay Away,” it was actually recorded after filming completed), while “Dominic” is there to remind us that “Old MacDonald” wasn’t such a bad song after all.