"Witchcraft" !

[Juan Luis]

The Spiders' 1955 recording of "Witchcraft" (D.Bartholomew / P.King), was covered by Elvis Presley on May 27, 1963, at RCA Studio B, Nashville.
It was the single B-side to "Bossa Nova Baby", and on its own reached #32 on the pop charts.
The credited producer was Steve Sholes and engineered by the great Bill Porter.

Apart from Elvis, the standout performance is done by Boots Randolph with a blistering solo on saxophone!

I first heard this song around 1975 when I was gifted the Long Playing album "Elvis' Gold Records Volume 4". And I have loved it ever since! Elvis shows for me, a restrained vocal approach, as if he is ready to rock out but doesn't. This sense of urgency made it very appealing to me.

Enjoy Elvis's "Witchcraft"!

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[r&b]

I liked it better than the A side when I bought this single in 63. Elvis is a little subdued, but it all works. One of Boots finest solos. Got a lot of radio time competing with BNB

[jetblack]

I was never a fan of 'Witchcraft' as a child back in the 1970's.

It is a different story today as It is a very catchy tune which Elvis made light work of in 1963, getting the master in just 3 takes.

It appears on one of my favourite albums too.



Andy

[Juan Luis]

I was never a fan of 'Witchcraft' as a child back in the 1970's.

It is a different story today as It is a very catchy tune which Elvis made light work of in 1963, getting the master in just 3 takes.

It appears on one of my favourite albums too.



Andy

Thanks. Forgot about being on that album. I imagine a different mix.

[colonel snow]

Elvis sung a portion of the Frank Sinatra version on the Timex TV show (original version recorded by Frank Sinatra on 20 may 1957 and released on Capitol 5366).
Here's the version by Frank Sinatra.


colonel snow


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[jetblack]

Thanks. Forgot about being on that album. I imagine a different mix.

You are correct, my friend.

Engineer was Rick Rowe and mastering by Jack Adelman who worked on various Elvis albums around the same time like 'Reconsider Baby'.

Andy

[drjohncarpenter]

I liked it better than the A side when I bought this single in 63. Elvis is a little subdued, but it all works. One of Boots finest solos. Got a lot of radio time competing with BNB

This 1963 cover is interesting. It isn't the fabulous ballad "Witchcraft" written by Carolyn Leigh and Cy Coleman, and released by Frank Sinatra in 1957. Presley chooses to dig into the New Orleans rhythm and blues of the Spiders, and the classic songwriting team of Pearl King and Dave Bartholomew. That it comes from Elvis' last big time pop studio session for over FOUR years is also worth noting.


RCA Studio B, Nashville: May 26-28, 1963

Echoes of Love
Please Don't Drag That String Around
(You're The) Devil in Disguise
Never Ending
What Now, What Next, Where To?
Witchcraft
Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers
Love Me Tonight
Memphis Tennessee
Long Lonely Highway
Western Union
Slowly but Surely
Blue River
Ask Me


Sadly, most of the selections are safe, unadventurous, and far from rock 'n' roll. The abandonment of his craft would put his career in a ditch until the TV special in 1968 brought him back to life again.

That said, Elvis sings very well on his Nashville recording of "Witchcraft," if with perhaps less abandon than he might given it just two years before. The wonderful release of Elvis Sings Memphis Tennessee, a Follow That Dream DELUXE 2xCD package, has "Witchcraft" kicking off the studio album that might have been, way back when. The FTD title is highly recommended.

For the curious, the super original by the Spiders made it to #5 in the 1956 r&b charts:



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Spiders "Witchcraft" (Imperial 5366, October 1, 1955)
Billboard Rhythm and Blues "Most Played by Jockeys" #5, February 11, 1956
B-side was "Is It True?"

The quintet started out in gospel, then moved on to secular music, "Witchcraft" was released around the same time actor James Dean was killed in a California auto accident, and Elvis about a month away from leaving Sun for RCA.



"Witchcraft" was also tackled by Elvis' old band mate, Bill Black, in a jaunty 1962 arrangement:



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Bill Black's Combo "Witchcraft" Movin' (Hi Records HL 11005, May 26, 1962)
Recorded in Memphis at Royal Recording Studio.
"The Untouchable Sound" ...



Did Elvis hear this snazzy instrumental, released about a year before his Nashville session happened? I'll wager he did.

620526_Hi Records HL 11005_01.JPG

620526_Hi Records HL 11005_02.JPG

[Fabbe]

I like the song and how Elvis sings it. The sound of the instrumentation is a bit too pop / light for me. With a sound like he had in the 50s and higher key it might have bee even better. But, overall I like it- yes.




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[fn2drive]

Great track all around and some great insights here. Another example of Elvis’ ability to dig into his musical memory and make gold.

As a PS, the Spiders version reminds me a lot of The Cadets Stranded in the Jungle.

[FRENCHGUY]

drjohncarpenter wrote : Sadly, most of the selections are safe, unadventurous, and far from rock 'n' roll.

I totally disagree with this statement. Since everyone is entitled to his opinion, here is mine.
First, I see only 3 songs you may call unadventurous : Finders keepers, Losers weepers, What now, What next, Where to ? and Western union. Unpretentious doesn’t mean bad : I appreciate to listen to them occasionally because of the legendary studio B sound and the warm and glorious richness of Elvis’ early 60’s voice which lifted up all he touched then.
Secondly, to speak of abandonment of craft is irrelevant, to say the least. Elvis sings more rock and roll during this session than he did in the Something for everybody or Pot luck sessions ! And some of it is tremendous. Devil in disguise proved with good reason to be the hit of the session. His cover of Memphis Tennessee is very convincing and I find it better than the remake of january 64. It would have provide a terrific single with It hurts me as planned previously. Witchcraft and Slowly but surely are outstanding. Please don’t drag that string around and Long lonely highway are solid and enjoyable up tempo songs. And I have to confess, I literally adore Blue river, an inoffensive and unpretentious little rocker which contains all the Elvis’ tricks from the early sixties.
No real smash hit ballad wise, but Never ending (sounds to me as it could have been recorded during the Pot Luck session), Love me tonight ( a lovely Don Robertson input), Ask me and even Echoes of love provide great listening pleasure if you agree to accept that you can’t bring an Are you lonesome tonight or Can’t help falling in love each time you enter a recording studio.
To sum it up, the problem here is not the material, but the way it was scattered as bonus songs on movie soundtracks. The great FTD Memphis Tennessee album says it all.

[Fish]

I do not consider these songs as not being rock and roll and therefore inferior. I think the best songs from these 63 sessions are superior to those of 62. Long, Lonely Highway, Devil, Witchcraft, Love Me Tonight, Slowly But Surely, and Memphis Tn, all great songs and would have been excellent album songs. Adding Never Ending, Please Don't Drag, It Hurts Me and Blue River would make such an album only stronger.
There is some weak material, Western Union or Finders, Keepers but on the whole I would have seen a Spring 64 album containg the above mentioned cuts, as a step up from Pot Luck, not a step down.

The main fault lies in the preference for soundtrack albums and not changing strategy to making albums and including the hit singels, which should have been done already with Something For Everybody (just imagine how strong that album would have been had it included Little Sister, Mary, Feel So Bad, Good Luck Charm and Anything That's Part Of You...).

Btw, I love Witchcraft, it would have been a top five hit for sure had it been released as an A side single.

[drjohncarpenter]

I do not consider these songs as not being rock and roll and therefore inferior. I think the best songs from these 63 sessions are superior to those of 62. Long, Lonely Highway, Devil, Witchcraft, Love Me Tonight, Slowly But Surely, and Memphis Tn, all great songs and would have been excellent album songs. Adding Never Ending, Please Don't Drag, It Hurts Me and Blue River would make such an album only stronger.
There is some weak material, Western Union or Finders, Keepers but on the whole I would have seen a Spring 64 album containg the above mentioned cuts, as a step up from Pot Luck, not a step down.

The main fault lies in the preference for soundtrack albums and not changing strategy to making albums and including the hit singels, which should have been done already with Something For Everybody (just imagine how strong that album would have been had it included Little Sister, Mary, Feel So Bad, Good Luck Charm and Anything That's Part Of You...).

Btw, I love Witchcraft, it would have been a top five hit for sure had it been released as an A side single.

If one is brutally honest, and savvy to the best music out there in late May 1963, these are the only tracks that measure up to his talent, and previous standards:

(You're The) Devil in Disguise
Witchcraft
Memphis, Tennessee
Long Lonely Highway

And Elvis himself decided that the Chuck Berry cover needed to be re-done, it sounded too out-of-date, and it stayed on the shelf.

It's clear that three years of conveyor-belt soundtracks were impacting his studio work at this point, from the weak material to his investment in that material. Some of these songs actually sound like pedestrian soundtrack submissions. Had they been as powerful as you suggest, exceeding the March 1962 studio visit, there is no way RCA would have scattered them on multiple titles.

We do know that Elvis gave a teen-ager a preview of the May 1963 material, and she was mightily unimpressed, making her the focus of his ire. He didn't want to hear that the music was boring.

Personal affection for any part of his career is fine, but I'm discussing his work as a major artist, and this session falls very short. Some can separate the two, and some cannot.

[fn2drive]

I do not consider these songs as not being rock and roll and therefore inferior. I think the best songs from these 63 sessions are superior to those of 62. Long, Lonely Highway, Devil, Witchcraft, Love Me Tonight, Slowly But Surely, and Memphis Tn, all great songs and would have been excellent album songs. Adding Never Ending, Please Don't Drag, It Hurts Me and Blue River would make such an album only stronger.
There is some weak material, Western Union or Finders, Keepers but on the whole I would have seen a Spring 64 album containg the above mentioned cuts, as a step up from Pot Luck, not a step down.

The main fault lies in the preference for soundtrack albums and not changing strategy to making albums and including the hit singels, which should have been done already with Something For Everybody (just imagine how strong that album would have been had it included Little Sister, Mary, Feel So Bad, Good Luck Charm and Anything That's Part Of You...).

Btw, I love Witchcraft, it would have been a top five hit for sure had it been released as an A side single.

If one is brutally honest, and savvy to the best music out there in late May 1963, these are the only tracks that measure up to his talent, and previous standards:

(You're The) Devil in Disguise
Witchcraft
Memphis, Tennessee
Long Lonely Highway

And Elvis himself decided that the Chuck Berry cover needed to be re-done, it sounded too out-of-date, and it stayed on the shelf.

It's clear that three years of conveyor-belt soundtracks were impacting his studio work at this point, from the weak material to his investment in that material. Some of these songs actually sound like pedestrian soundtrack submissions. Had they been as powerful as you suggest, exceeding the March 1962 studio visit, there is no way RCA would have scattered them on multiple titles.

We do know that Elvis gave a teen-ager a preview of the May 1963 material, and she was mightily unimpressed, making her the focus of his ire. He didn't want to hear that the music was boring.

Personal affection for any part of his career is fine, but I'm discussing his work as a major artist, and this session falls very short. Some can separate the two, and some cannot.

Your contributions to this thread are spot on. You call out the tracks that were consequential here. All personal favorites including Devil In Disguise which is where my Elvis journey began.

[drjohncarpenter]

I do not consider these songs as not being rock and roll and therefore inferior. I think the best songs from these 63 sessions are superior to those of 62. Long, Lonely Highway, Devil, Witchcraft, Love Me Tonight, Slowly But Surely, and Memphis Tn, all great songs and would have been excellent album songs. Adding Never Ending, Please Don't Drag, It Hurts Me and Blue River would make such an album only stronger.
There is some weak material, Western Union or Finders, Keepers but on the whole I would have seen a Spring 64 album containg the above mentioned cuts, as a step up from Pot Luck, not a step down.

The main fault lies in the preference for soundtrack albums and not changing strategy to making albums and including the hit singels, which should have been done already with Something For Everybody (just imagine how strong that album would have been had it included Little Sister, Mary, Feel So Bad, Good Luck Charm and Anything That's Part Of You...).

Btw, I love Witchcraft, it would have been a top five hit for sure had it been released as an A side single.

If one is brutally honest, and savvy to the best music out there in late May 1963, these are the only tracks that measure up to his talent, and previous standards:

(You're The) Devil in Disguise
Witchcraft
Memphis, Tennessee
Long Lonely Highway

And Elvis himself decided that the Chuck Berry cover needed to be re-done, it sounded too out-of-date, and it stayed on the shelf.

It's clear that three years of conveyor-belt soundtracks were impacting his studio work at this point, from the weak material to his investment in that material. Some of these songs actually sound like pedestrian soundtrack submissions. Had they been as powerful as you suggest, exceeding the March 1962 studio visit, there is no way RCA would have scattered them on multiple titles.

We do know that Elvis gave a teen-ager a preview of the May 1963 material, and she was mightily unimpressed, making her the focus of his ire. He didn't want to hear that the music was boring.

Personal affection for any part of his career is fine, but I'm discussing his work as a major artist, and this session falls very short. Some can separate the two, and some cannot.

Your contributions to this thread are spot on. You call out the tracks that were consequential here. All personal favorites including Devil In Disguise which is where my Elvis journey began.

Thanks very much. Your first favorite is a pretty good single from Elvis.

[rlj4ep]

Thanks Juan. I remember when I was a kid and hearing "Witchcraft" on the radio and just loving the song. I recall how the softly sung verse and then how it became more up-tempo with the chorus appealed to me even as a kid. A nice arrangement for a nice song. Still a favorite of mine.

I agree with you Juan about the saxophone, which sounds great. Over the years and looking back, I always felt this should have been the "A" side of the single. I actually liked it (and still do) better that "Bossa Nova Baby." I suspect that the "B" side reached the Top 30 in the charts speaks for itself.

rlj

[jbgude]

The intro and rhythm for Elvis' version, I think was lifted from Louis Prima/ Keely Smiths " That old Black Magic".... for long I thought that was the inspiration for the writers, untill I saw the version from the Spiders.

[drjohncarpenter]

The intro and rhythm for Elvis' version, I think was lifted from Louis Prima/ Keely Smiths " That old Black Magic".... for long I thought that was the inspiration for the writers, untill I saw the version from the Spiders.

Glad you enjoyed it. So many of the singles from the Imperial label back then were really terrific.

[r&b]

The intro and rhythm for Elvis' version, I think was lifted from Louis Prima/ Keely Smiths " That old Black Magic".... for long I thought that was the inspiration for the writers, untill I saw the version from the Spiders.

Louis had one of the best sax players in the world in Sam Butera. His 1956 album, The Wildest, is among my favorites and has some great sax solos. Jazz and rock and roll rolled into one. Features the famous Just a Gigolo later remade by Van Halen

[Juan Luis]

There's some magic to be found in Elvis`s version of Witchcraft, although it does feel quite contained. But it's lifted by superb saxophone playing and an infectious rhythm that has elements of jive in its blood. Elvis sings well, although, as mentioned, some abandon in his vocal would have been welcome. And this would have been a good addition to his live set lists in 1969 or 1970. Especially with Elvis on such energetic form. I've always liked this recording, though.

That's what oddly I liked on first listen. It feels like a lion ready to get out of cage or horse to a track. Would have been a great studio album opener followed by an all out rocker.

[poormadpeter2]

As much as it pains me, I have to agree with the Doc about the selections from these sessions being safe and unadventurous. There seems to be little effort here to do anything but fill a quota of recordings that were needed. Frenchguy lists Finders Keepers, What Now and Western Union as the only ones that were unadventurous - but what about Echoes of Love or Please Don't Drag That String Around, Blue River, Slowly But Surely and Love Me Tonight? All of them are retreads of songs that had come before.

Long Lonely Highway is notable because of the darkness of the lyrics, although it's easy to miss them as Elvis really doesn't SOUND suicidal. Devil in Disguise, of course, has the stop-start motif which provided Elvis with a challenge and provided the public with a memorable new pop song. Never Ending has Elvis heading in slightly new territory, here doing his best Sam Cooke impression - although it's worth noting that the verses of the song itself (the material) are let down by the rather mundane chorus. And Memphis Tennessee is OK, but not as good as the remake (and, even then, I think both are somewhat over-rated). The results of the session are pleasant enough, perhaps even more of a fun listening experience than Pot Luck, but the material is often weak and the recordings themselves are very much music-making by numbers. Eight of the songs were dealt with in five or less takes. That tells us a fair bit. The occasional song in a session recorded with just a few takes doesn't say much, but eight of them? This was just a job for Elvis, and he seemingly just wanted it out of the way.

In many ways, though, Witchcraft is the most interesting of the bunch, because, as with some of the Sun recordings, Elvis takes an old song, dusts it off, and reinvents it into something really quite different from the original - something he had been doing less and less over the years. The rhythmic figure that underpins the song has been changed completely, and Elvis's version has free-flowing feeling that is completely missing in the original. It's similar to what he does with I Want You With Me, where he took the rather clunky Bobby Darin version and showed how a rock 'n' roll record really should sound. Even so, Elvis's Witchcraft is really quite restrained as others have noted, and one can only think that a more exciting record could have been achieved here. But at least Elvis was engaged, as demonstrated by his reworking of the song, and not on autopilot as he was for most of the other songs.

What this session shows more than anything, is that the movies were not wholly to blame for Elvis's dip in quality. Here he is in a studio, able to record what he wanted and how he wanted, and this was the best he could do. Here was an artist who was lost BEFORE the Beatles came to America, and the following year he did the obvious thing - take time out from non-soundtrack sessions, go away, find a new direction, and then regroup.