May
26, 1966 was the first Elvis session for David Briggs, a young
piano player from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He had been called to
sit in for the first three hours for the second evening
recording sessions until Floyd Cramer arrived. He later told
writer Peter Guralnick how nervous he was coming in for the
session: "Normally Elvis didn't come in until late, but as it
turned out, he came in early that night, ready to go to work."
Elvis began the evening by sneaking up behind Briggs at the
piano; then he gathered everyone around the piano for the
customary gospel sing before getting down to work. "The first
song he wanted to do was
"Love Letters,"
which is all piano," Briggs recalls. "So I had to play on it. I
had just met him, and five minutes later I was sitting on a
stool beside him at the piano." Engineer Jim Malloy was watching
Briggs from the control room; like Felton he was impressed with
the young man’s playing and was delighted he was on the session.
Jim noticed how anxious Briggs was, he had red blushes all over
the back of his neck, but the new keyboard player had no trouble
with gospel, having recorded with the Statesmen just weeks
earlier. By the time they got to
“Love
Letters”
David was in full swing.
"Love Letters"
was released in June 1966, reaching only number nineteen without
selling even half a million copies.
This version came from
"Love
Letters From Elvis"
rerecorded June 07, 1970 prompted by pianist David Briggs’s
desire to improve on his performance, but Elvis wasn’t into it,
and the new version lacked all the understated charm of the
first. The same version was also released on
"That's The
Way It Is Special Edition." |
