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Competitiveness is about capital much more than labor
Besides justifying labor-hostile monetary policy, unit labor costs are often trotted out to blame unreasonable wage expectations for troubled economies' "lack of competitiveness". For example, here's a chart published last year by Paul Mason (ht Paul Krugman):
It is a common trope that labor costs in the European periphery have grown to unsustainable levels, while in the prudent and virtuous North, costs have been contained.
But the chart is misleading. Let's take a look at the same information presented a bit differently, from a wonderful Levy Institute working paper by Jesus Felipe and Utsav Kumar, "Unit Labor Costs in the Eurozone: The Competitiveness Debate Again":
Rather than lazy Mediterraneans demanding high pay for little output, what has happened since 1980 is a convergence to prudent German norms. Workers in Southern europe are now paid roughly the same amount per unit of goods produced as their counterparts in Mitteleuropa. This is macroeconomics, so the meaning of a "unit of goods produced" is a fuzzy and contestable. But to the degree that unit labor cost statistics capture what they claim to capture, what they tell us is that European workers, North and South, have come to earn roughly equal pay for equal product.
Southern European workers do earn less overall, simply because they produce fewer or lower-value goods and services than their Northern neighbors. Unit labor costs are not the problem at all: it is the scale of aggregate output. And what determines the scale of aggregate output? Is it the laziness of workers? No, of course not. We all know that when residents of poor countries emigrate to rich ones, the same weak bodies and flawed characters that produce very little at home suddenly explode into economic vigor. The difference is "capital depth", broadly construed to include all the physical equipment, business organization, public infrastructure, and governance that collude to enable two small hands and a broken mind to accomplish outsize things. Workers' pay level is not the problem in Southern Europe. It is deficiencies in the arrangement of capital, again broadly construed, that have left Greece and Spain unable to produce value in sufficient quantity to compete with their neighbors.
One might argue that since "capital" is in some sense a scarcer factor in Southern Europe than in Northern Europe, unit labor costs "should" be lower in the South, as a "marginal unit of capital" adds more value than another hour of labor. I have to use the scare quotes though, because there really is no such things as a marginal unit of good institutions, and to the degree that's even coherent as an idea, it has no relationship at all to financial returns on invested cash. If governance fairies came to Greece and demanded workers surrender some fraction of their per-unit wages in exchange for the institutional capital that enables German levels of productivity, that might be a good deal. (Perhaps Angela Merkel thinks of herself as just such a governance fairy. I don't think a disinterested observer of her priorities and demands would agree.) In the real world, there is little consensus, with respect either to institutional development or deployment of physical capital, on how, in the context of a tradables glut from its neighbors, Southern Europe could increase its output of tradable goods and services. Looking backwards, with a converging European price level, restraint in unit labor costs relative to the European norm would have meant increased returns to financial capital, and financial capital was emphatically not a scarce factor in Southern Europe prior to the crisis. On the contrary, financial capital was abundant and enthusiastically misdeployed. That misdeployment, the tsunami of bank-mediated money that found its way into real estate and consumer loans rather than the production of competitive tradables, was the primary and proximate cause of Southern Europe's diminished competitiveness.
In their role as borrowers, some Southern Europeans were complicit in this process. But, as always, it is creditors rather than borrowers who we must hold accountable for bad lending, if we want incentives consistent with good aggregate outcomes.
In their role as workers, Southern Europeans were victims rather than beneficiaries of the wave of malinvestment. Recall that unit labor costs can be decomposed into two factors, the price level and labor's share of output. Let's take a look at some more graphs, again from Jesus Felipe and Utsav Kumar:
In all countries other than Greece (including the rest of the "PIIGS"), labor's share of output has been declining. Rather than winning unreasonable victories, workers have been receiving an ever smaller fraction of the output that they help to produce. The rise of unit labor costs in Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain have only partially compensated for the steeply rising prices that have attended European convergence.
Felipe and Kumar also estimate "unit capital costs" along the lines I described in the previous post. (See Table 1 of the paper.) For all countries other than Greece, payments to capital providers per unit output have been growing faster than payments to workers.
So what's does all this mean? Two things:
There's a common narrative of the European crisis that pins the blame on workers. It is said that during the "good times", when rivers of money flowed from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean, workers in Southern Europe were able to extract exorbitant wage hikes, forcing prices up and rendering their products uncompetitive in global markets. To put it gently, there is no evidence to support this narrative except perhaps in Greece. In the other PIIGS, unit labor costs failed even to keep up with the rising price level. Workers received a smaller share of the value they helped produce in 2007 than they took in 1980. Southern Europe's unit labor costs converged with Northern Europe's because the price levels of the two regions converged, not because Mediterranean workers took a greater share. If Southern Europe lacks competitiveness, the part of the cost structure that needs to be reformed has to do with rents paid to capital rather than the sticky wages of workers.
We should beware reductionist accounts that put the blame for the periphery's misery on inflated relative prices. Though one can tell an alarmist story looking at relative rates of change of unit labor costs, in terms of levels, the periphery's labor structure looks competitive. Nor can we blame the problems in the periphery on a mere absence of capital. Prior to the crisis, there was plenty of capital available. The European periphery was rendered uncompetitive by toxic patterns of capital allocation, for which both Northern Europe's financial institutions and Southern Europe's regulators ought to be held accountable. Altering the relative price of labor between Northern and Southern Europe would not fix these problems. Real devaluation might provide temporary relief in terms of domestic employment, and that might provide breathing room for developing better policy ideas than accepting capricious capital flows and hoping they sustain asset bubbles. But breathing room is all that devaluation can provide. It cannot substitute for better policy. Mediterranean Europe already had much lower relative labor costs than the European "core" prior to the recent convergence. Look how that worked out. The PIIGS should work to avoid falling into a kind of macroeconomic "Groundhog's day", cycling between low relative costs, convergence, and crisis.
Even though devaluation is no panacea, the nations of peripheral Europe might still wish to consider dropping the Euro. But the case for that is not, ultimately, about relative prices, but about sovereignty and bargaining power. As the MMTers correctly emphasize, control over money is essential to the sovereign power of a state. For now, the nations of the Eurozone have ceded a significant part of their sovereignty to European institutions. That would be fine, if those institutions could be trusted to look out for, or at least give fair weight to, the interests of the states which have surrendered sovereign powers. If I were a citizen of Portugal or Greece, Spain, Ireland, or Italy, I would conclude that European institutions have unduly little concern for my interests and unduly much concern for a transnational financial system and Northern European taxpayers. If that continues, I'd want my government to retract the sovereignty it had ceded, so that it has the freedom to maximize the forward-looking welfare and growth of my nation without hobbling itself in the interests of claimants to past loans that ought never have been made.
An obvious corollary to all this is that "internal devaluation" is absolutely idiotic. It's one thing to accept chemotherapy when the disease is cancer and the pain might do some good. But if the disease is not cancer, chemotherapy is just eating poison. Peripheral Europe's problem is an incapacity to produce tradable goods and services in sufficient quantity to pay for its import bill. That is a structural deficiency. The wages workers are paid for the goods and services they do produce are in line with the rest of Europe's. Lower wages might help create incentives for new investment to resolve the structural deficiency. But that hasn't worked in the past when the periphery's labor has been unusually cheap. The clear and present miseries of "internal devaluation" should not be allowed to rest on so slim a reed.
Update History:
- 26-Feb-2012, 2:05 a.m. EST: Dropped superfluous sentence "Patterns matter." Corrected "Norther Europe" to "Northern Europe". Reorganized awkward and oververbose sentence beginning with "In the real world…" to a still awkward and oververbose sentence. No substantive changes.


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Act 1: The Color Purple, black women, and art as worship
When in NYC I make sure I to make time to see my daughter and to see a show. Bonus points if she and I can go together and this time it was to see and listen to Cynthia Erivo and Jennifer Holliday in "The Color Purple". The final show is January 8 so if you have the time and $$ to see the show, do it. It's worth it.
Despite #oscarssowhite, Hollywood and Broadway and creative spaces in between remain predominantly white spaces. Universal stories are portrayed through the acting, voices and creative direction of white people. Yes, it's changing. Yes, I've heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda. Yes, I've also heard of Shonda Rhimes. Yes, it's changing AND there is A LOT of catching up to do.
When I am in new public spaces I tend to look around and observe who is and isn't in the room where I happen to be. Unlike some people, I am not colorblind so I took note that the audience for the matinee was diverse with as many, if not more, people of color in attendance. Why does that matter? Because it's easier to stereotype POC as being poorer, less-educated, less likely to attend musical theater, etc. than to ask "Why are not more POC making it a priority to see live theater?" when n reality it's much more complex.
Back to the musical. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of the staging of a story I had first seen on the big screen, but in the end I was left with the experience of having been at church. Some attendees were there for the spectacle of it all (like the white man seated on the main floor, center orchestra, who whipped out his cellphone to take a photo or video of Ms. Erivo singing like no one was going to notice. Ms. Erivo noticed, called him out publicly, and went on without missing a beat. Did the man not read the program or understand the announcement?) while others were there hungry to connect.
If you aren't familiar with the story, you can read the book or watch the movie. I highly recommend it because as we creep towards inauguration day it's a good reminder of what history has demanded of black women – their strength, perseverance, bodies and hearts. I sat there thinking of the black women in my life who have graciously shared their lives with me IRL and through social media. The Color Purple isn't a story about the magical negro who comes to save and touch the life of a white person. It's the story of black women being themselves – happy, loving, angry, confused, hopeful, faithful, petty, and fully human finding themselves in their own skin and soul.
And it was in the voices of Celie, Nettie, Sofia and Shug Avery I went to church, which was important for me because it has been a long summer/fall without consistently being at church. The irony and subversive nature of non-black audience members giving the all-black cast a standing ovation for singing and dancing about the pain and beauty of post-slavery life in the South weeks before DJT was elected as #PEOTUS (#notmypresident) should not be lost. It's exactly that tension that has made attending church regularly such a losing struggle as of late, but there I was, on Broadway, in church wrestling with God about injustice, violence against women, love, sisterhood, motherhood and the silencing of women, particularly black women not only in the church but in history.
If musical theater can communicate good news, what is the Church missing in its gospel expressions?
Act 2: Hamilton, white women, and subversive art
At a much higher price point was seeing "Hamilton" in Chicago with the family as part of our Christmas gift. As the children are in their teens and 20s stuff is less prominent on their wish lists. They don't want toys. They want gas money. They want money for an extra plane ticket. They want a dog. They will never get a dog so we are now in the second year of going to see live theater together as part of Christmas. Lucky for them I sat patiently on two computers, one phone and one iPad to get through the online ticket queue.
The audience was less diverse though I suspect the commercial success of this production lends itself to its broader appeal in terms of ethnic/racial diversity and age. There were many, many more younger audience members who wanted to see U.S. history via rap battles and F-bombs. Other than pure commercial success drawing a whiter and younger crowd is my theory that Alexander Hamilton's story, though actually one of an immigrant, bastard, son of a whore, is considered more universal than that of Celie's. I would argue both tell important "American" stories through a specific social locations and constructs that are equally important, but a diverse cast that also includes white people rapping, stepping, and pirouetting is an easier sell even to my teen sons.
But again, I was drawn to the women. I wanted to know more about Eliza and Angelica – their sisterhood, their strength and resilience. I wanted to know how a woman forgives her husband not only for encouraging stupidity (the duels) but also for adultery. It also made me think of how ridiculous our collective sense of morals actually is as we saw the show after Nov. 8 and after the US watched Hillary Clinton be held accountable for her husband's infidelity while Donald Trump's three marriages and comment about sexual assault went broadly ignored.
I also loved Lin-Manuel Miranda's subversiveness – casting of diverse actors to embody historically "white" people, using hip hop and rap to teach U.S. history, and choreography that includes classical, modern and hip hop dance to move not only people but inanimate objects (note "The Bullet" if you go see this show). Art is not just something to consume for comfort, and if you really consider this show it should bother you because it is beautiful and profane. It puts a mirror up to our telling of history and essentially tells us we are fooling ourselves.
Act 3: Allegiance, Asian American women, and Asian American art
There was an Asian American actor in Hamilton, but it wasn't until the final musical theater experience of the year where my family saw a full stage/screen of faces that looked similar to mine. We took the boys to see a filmed production of the stage musical "Allegiance" at a local theater. Again, this is part of our commitment to our children to give them experiences and exposure to the arts, especially when the story is told by and through the lens of other Asian Americans.
The Japanese Internment isn't a lesson I recall spending much time on in U.S. history, and my children remember learning about it but briefly. It's taught in a similar manner as the genocide of Native Americans and slavery. It was a very bad thing that happened but it's over so let's get over it. Surely the U.S. government and its true citizens would never let something like genocide, slavery or the incarceration of its own citizens because they looked like the enemy ever happen again…unless it was absolutely necessary.
But until there is some sort of guarantee there will not be a Muslim registry ever, ever, ever there are a lot of lessons in Executive Order 9066. If you think about it, the internment/incarceration was a little bit like taking the things we should've learned from genocide and slavery but didn't and then creating this new thing that waves its hand at the past from the train platform. If you look like the enemy it's perfectly legitimate to demand you give up everything, including your humanity, for the greater good. You lose your home, your businesses, your humanity in order to prove your worth. And while you are at it, you will work for nothing with no promise of freedom.
And we will call it "camp" so it doesn't sound so bad. I hear a lot of people really love going to camp.
This is why we took our children despite their lack of enthusiasm. We do not assume they will learn these things at school, connect these dots and apply them to our current situation. My husband and children are American-born citizens. Birthright citizenship for non-whites didn't matter in the 1940s. That's why seeing this mattered now.
My dear white readers, you cannot know the power of seeing the big screen full of people who look like you and your family when that is all you know. Hollywood and television. Children's story books. Cartoons and super heroes. All white, though slooooowly changing, even when it's a universal story about "America". Television now has "Fresh Off the Boat" but there really hasn't been anything on the big screen since "The Joy Luck Club" where our stories were also universal stories.
"Allegiance" is written, produced, and acted by Asian Americans and for me it was powerful because again it was the women – the story of Japanese and Japanese American women, whose stories have disappeared into the background, who kept the families together as well as organized and resisted despite being incarcerated with no due process. It was Kei, played by Lea Salonga, whose ghost connects the past life before and during the Japanese incarceration to the present where her brother Sammy, played by Telly Leung and George Takei, pushes away the memories. Kei lives in the generational and cultural gap by honoring her family while still learning to be the nail that sticks out in order to honor & protect her people and ultimately it is her choices that sets in motion an opportunity to remember and forgive.
And as we are days away from Christmas where my fellow Christians and I celebrate the birth of Jesus, I am once again reminded that women and our stories cannot be relegated the background. We are part of the narrative.

subset: commoncrawl


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1 John 3:16-18
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Elburn Community
Center Gym,
525 N. Main Street,
Elburn, Illinois
Dates & Times
Drop off – Nov. 30
10 am – 7 pm
Swap – Dec. 1
9 am – 3 pm
Open to ALL!!
What is a Swap Shop ?
Swap Shop is a chance for moms to swap out
things they no longer need for things they do.
If you wouldn't be ashamed to give it to a friend,
then we'll accept it.
All items not swapped will be donated to charity.
Nothing to swap? Please come anyway and
be blessed with God's provision.
Who organizes the Swap Shop ?
This event is hosted by Authentic Moms, a local Christian mom's group.
Our desire is to follow 1 John 3:16-18
– to love with actions & truth, not just words.
Would you like to volunteer for a chance to pre-shop?
Or do you have other questions? Contact – email@example.com
Items our swap includes:
– Baby items
– Gently used clothes & shoes
– Children's Toys
– Furniture
– Books, Games & School Supplies
– Household & Kitchen Accessories
ALL Items are for SWAP, not SALE
Follow them on facebook


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Wykoff, NJ
The Top Pressure Washing Experts in Wyckoff
Keeping your home or office's exterior clean is a part of owner maintenance. It can be a challenge, however, because some of your harder surfaces are difficult to wash. Concrete, brick and stucco are unyielding and tend to hold tightly to stains and other contaminants. As dust is baked on and things like rust, grease and oil seep deep into the material's pores, you are left with unsightly scars on your beautiful property.
When you need effective and thorough Wyckoff Power Washing services for your hard exterior surfaces, call the pressure washing experts at Softwash Ranger. We are the leading exterior surface specialists in Wyckoff. Our East Hanover Power Washing Contractors are professionally trained and possess the skills and tools necessary for roof cleaning, gutter cleaning, Siding Cleaning or any surface, no matter what has stained it. Our methods work because we combine both controlled pressured water and powerful cleaning solutions. That is why we are the number one choice in Wyckoff for pressure washing service.
Whether you have persistent rust or grease stains in your concrete or your brick home is covered in algae, our pressure washing service will get deep to the core of the grime and flush it out, revealing a pristine clean underneath. By using our equipment in a precise manner we are able to ensure your property is thoroughly cleaned safely without causing any undue damage.
We can pressure wash your home or business, offering washing service for driveways, parking lots, walkways, sidewalks, patios, porches, apartment buildings and more. No matter what your surface or what your stain, we can get it clean.
Softwashing Services That Protect Your Wyckoff Exterior
Not all of your exterior surfaces are hard, but that doesn't make them any easier to clean. Roofing shingles, painted wood and other delicate materials require a different approach to getting an effective clean. At Softwash Ranger, our softwashing service gets to the root of any mold, mildew and other contaminants and dissolves them at their core.
To softwash your delicate surfaces, we use a powerful cleaning solution that is environmentally safe and contains no acids. We hand mix our solutions on site, determining concentration levels based on the material we plan to wash. This ensures a custom clean every time. When we mix our solution, we apply it, let it soak into the material and break down the offending stains or growth and then rinse it away.
No water pressure is used so your delicate surfaces are not damaged, but the softwashing solution strips away the grime and gets your exterior sparkling clean. Our softwashing technique is perfect for roofing, softwood decks, painted wood, wood siding, awnings and many other exterior elements.
We provide the following services to Wyckoff
- Siding Cleaning
- Power Washing
- Window Cleaning
- Roof Snow Removal
- Tennis Court Cleaning
- Rust Removal
- Sidewalk Cleaning
- Graffiti Removal
- Roof Cleaning
- Fence Cleaning


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- Whittingham's own pork breakfast sausage recipe
- 2 lbs. per 1 box
We are offering FREE local home delivery on orders over $75.00. A $9.95 shipping fee will be added to orders that do not meeting that requirement.
We do not offer same day order fulfillment. A local order placed before 3pm will be delivered or ready for pick-up the following day. Orders placed on Saturday and Sunday will be ready for pick-up/local delivery on Monday.
Don't hesitate to call us at the shop with any questions and thank you for choosing Whittingham Meats!


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RMA reform an attack on Kiwi values
- 27/12/2013
Analysis of the Government's RMA reforms by Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC points to an alarming attack on the nation's recreational and environmental values.
"Few people better understand the RMA than Sir Geoffrey, one of the original architects of the Act," says Fish & Game NZ chief executive Bryce Johnson.
"In his report for the New Zealand Fish and Game Council, Sir Geoffrey's expert analysis clearly shows that the Government's proposed changes 'will significantly and seriously weaken the ability of the RMA to protect the natural environment and its recreational enjoyment by all New Zealanders'.
"From the outset Fish & Game has been concerned that the Government's so-called moves to 'simplify and streamline the RMA process' was a Trojan Horse for major changes to the Act to enable greater exploitation of New Zealand's remaining finite natural resources. Our fears have been confirmed."
Mr Johnson points out that while the RMA is often demonised by the Government and corporate industry for "creating delays", Part 2 of the Act is a critically important foundation principle of "sustainable management" – it protects New Zealand's recreational values, the environment, and the economy by underpinning the '100% Pure, clean green' brand.
"Like any party involved in RMA processes, Fish & Game supports moves to shorten timeframes, improve planning processes and simplify planning documents, which can be achieved through the Government's proposed process-orientated reforms, however it is totally unacceptable that National is using this as an excuse to attack the core principles of the Act, effectively lowering environmental standards.
"As Sir Geoffrey points out, many of the 'process issues' identified by the Government can be rectified without tampering with the environmental protection provisions.
"The question has to be asked: What is the Government's motivation for taking the wrecking-ball to the environmental safeguards in Part 2 of the Act? Where is the analysis to justify this attack on Part 2? And is the Government representing the best interests of all New Zealanders, or a select minority of resource hungry corporates?
"Sir Geoffrey couldn't find any justification for the Government's proposals in his thorough analysis. In fact, he notes that 'changes to Part 2 of the Act… are largely unnecessary and will lead to greater uncertainty and cost'."
Mr Johnson says the unnecessary meddling with this prominent piece of legislation, combined with a woefully inadequate public consultation and submission period, is an assault on our environment and economy.
"The Government's proposed changes to Part 2 of the Act will wreck existing case law and introduce massive uncertainty, put at risk an economy progressively built on the foundation of a '100% Pure, clean green' brand now worth $14 billion; and a major concern for environmental and recreational interests is that it will effectively allow small streams to be turned into farm drains."
A full copy of Sir Geoffrey's analysis is available on our RMA resource page here.
Summary of key points in Sir Geoffrey's analysis:
3. b. – "The proposed changes to Part 2 will significantly and seriously undermine environmental protection under the RMA. These changes are largely unnecessary and will lead to greater uncertainty and cost in the application and interpretation of the RMA."
8. a. – "A number of the changes will substantially limit the ability of submitters to put forward evidence as to the environmental impacts of proposals…"
8. b. – "Proposals for greater central government intervention [are] inconsistent with the central principles of the Act."
12. – "Core environmental values that currently have status as 'matters of national importance' will be diminished to mere 'matters', including: the preservation of the natural character of the coastal natural environment; the protection of outstanding natural features and landscapes, and areas of indigenous vegetation and habitat; and the maintenance and enhancement of public access to beaches and waters. Other central environment factors, such as amenity values [recreation], the intrinsic value of ecosystems, and the maintenance and enhancement of the quality of the natural environment will no longer be considered at all."
13. – "The environmental principles that remain will be significantly weakened… These changes might seem small but they have serious implications…"
14. – "The proposed new section 6(n)… has the potential to exclude the environmental impacts of activities on small streams and waterways – despite the critical roles these play in the ecological integrity of river systems as a whole…"
15. – "The changes themselves are largely unnecessary… No research findings are offered in support of the policy contention made…"
16. – "[Government] concerns… not supported by fact…"
16. b. – "Courts and other decision makers under the RMA already routinely take account of social and economic considerations… These considerations have specifically included the national benefits of infrastructure, provision of affordable housing, and the value of making land available to meet future housing needs."
16. c. – "Only a tiny number of resource consent applications are declined… 90 per cent of significant infrastructure projects successfully progress through the RMA…"
18. – "… the changes are unlikely to deliver the Government's central stated objective to 'make the system easier to use, increase its certainty and predictability, and reduce unnecessary duplication and cost'… Much of that case law will now be redundant, leaving decision-makers without guidance, and thereby increasing cost and complexity…"
19. – "These risks are exacerbated by the proposed new section 7… and can be expected to be the basis for considerable future litigation."


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Ernst Jorgensen talks about mastering the music of Elvis Presley
Source: Record Collector
September 8, 2006
From his highly praised work on the loving restoration of Elvis' entire catalog to his studied expertise co-producing the definitive career box sets, The King of Rock 'n' Roll: The Complete 50's Masters, From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential 60's Masters, Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential 70's Masters, Elvis: Live In Las Vegas, Elvis: Close Up, Platinum: A Life in Music, and recent global blockbusters, Elvis: 30 # 1 Hits, and 2nd To None, Jorgensen, along with partner Roger Semon, has been the true keeper of Elvis' musical legacy. Jorgensen, Grammy nominated reissue producer, dedicated archivist, seasoned researcher and acclaimed author (Elvis Day By Day, Elvis: A Life in Music) has dedicated his life's work to the careful preservation, graceful restoration and crafty revitalization of Elvis Presley's musical output.
Since the Nineties, Ernst Jorgensen has meticulously treated Elvis' musical legacy with immense care, respect, scholarly integrity and historical perspective and insight. He's also proven to be a wily detective as well, unearthing treasure trove after treasure trove of released and unreleased Elvis recordings.
Elvis couldn't have a better champion in his corner than Ernst. Quite simply he has set the bar for how one should protect, maintain and nurture an artist's catalog.
Having recently overseen the Elvis: # 1 Singles box, and continually producing an array of officially sanctioned Elvis projects for Sony/BMG, Ernst also runs the celebrated Follow That Dream (FTD) label, which issues a remarkable series of Presley live recordings, outtakes and deluxe album and soundtrack reissues. He is also working on an exciting new endeavor for Presley acolytes, a book chronicling Elvis' seminal Sun Records career. I spoke with Ernst who offered illuminating insight behind the landmark music of Elvis Presley.
How did you first come to hear Elvis' music?
I heard him when I was very young. But it didn't really register with me until like 1961 when I heard 'Little Sister' on the radio and thought that was pretty cool. I started buying records by Elvis and other artists. I think where my interest in Elvis became much more was around '65, '66, '67. That's when I got so curious about why every other Elvis album wasn't very satisfying and then between there would be great records. I thought that was really weird. Then I started investigating Elvis' music and, as you know, I've been investigating ever since (laughs). I normally use the simple example of 'How do you explain that Elvis' recording of 'Old MacDonald' came out at the same time of his recording of 'Big Boss Man'? How do you get these two to be part of the same artistic development?' That was hard to understand for a fairly naeve young guy.
When you listen to session tapes of Elvis singing a throwaway song like 'Do The Clam' to something more meaty like his cover of Bob Dylan's 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time', could you sense Elvis put his heart more into the 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time' material or was he plainly just a professional who attacked the material with as much passion as he could muster?
Well, not all the in between banter was on the session tapes.
The engineer would often stop and start tape machines so you wouldn't know in all cases what Elvis' dialogue is. But I think it's fair to say it shows at the recording sessions the way he's performing and in between takes whether he liked the song or not. Whether that shows in the final recording is subjective but on most of the recordings he did a professional job. Dylan's song was done in a couple of takes. But there were songs where you hear him just enjoying himself and where it does show in the final performance. 'Too Much Monkey Business' is a good example of that. That session in January of '68 is not a happy session for Elvis. Songs are not there and I think there's some debate over the whole issue of recording but you can hear it on the outtakes of 'Too Much Monkey Business' that Elvis is having a ball recording it.
Your work as a reissue producer and archivist is impeccable. No one besides you and your partner, Roger Semon has ever approached Elvis' music in such a studied and respectful manner.
I'm not sure that's completely true but I know what you're saying. Remember the review by Peter Guralnick in Rolling Stone of From Elvis in Memphis. That's a review that really goes beyond the surface and digs into the real nature of the record. That was very educational writing. To me, here was a guy who by writing a review of a record made you so desperately want to hear it. Remember at the time, the media in the Sixties and early Seventies considered Elvis old hat in a way. Whether he was successful or not, he was part of an earlier generation. Everybody liked to be an intellectual in those days and Elvis maybe didn't fit into that. Elvis had a lot of critics saying, 'Why don't you do a rock and roll album?' First of all, the guy was in his mid to late thirties. Is rock and roll the same thing to you when you're a grown-up? I don't think so.
Working on the Elvis catalog for Sony/BMG and the series of FTD (Follow That Dream) limited edition releases of Elvis material, the live soundboards, outtakes, deluxe classic album and movie soundtrack reissues, you've had to become a real detective in terms of tracking down material in and outside of RCA's vaults.
I loved detective books when I was a kid so that's where my interest and passion lies. At the same time I studied history at the University Of Copenhagen so I was always curious of what was behind anything, whether it was political, musical or anything else. I think that may have come through the school system of always being told to find out what was behind what people said and did. And it was made further intriguing to me when I was old enough to start having those kinds of considerations. We were in the mid to late Sixties and on everybody else's records you could see who was playing and where it was recorded. I simply got intrigued by the mystery of it all because none of that info was included with the Elvis records. Quite frankly at the time, I listened more to the Doors first album than I did Elvis' Double Trouble album, I can assure you that. I still prefer the Doors album to Double Trouble (laughs). Early on, my friends and I found out that we actually knew more about Elvis' recordings than most people did. Then it took on its own life. This helped create an inner drive to keep going to find out more because I already knew more than most.
Here's a hypothetical question. Elvis very rarely gave interviews during his lifetime.
If you had an hour with Elvis today, what would you ask him?
That's difficult because it would have depended on when I met him. Had I met him when I was the closest, which was in '76, I would have asked the same questions that everybody else would have asked, because I wasn't smarter than anybody else, not then, not now. I would have asked, 'Why don't you do a blues album? Why don't you record this song?' 'Why don't you record with these musicians?' And obviously I would have been on the wrong foot with Elvis from the start. I'm doing this book on Elvis' Sun career; what I would have asked him today was which songs he recorded back then that we don't know of and which songs he sang live onstage that he never recorded. Like everybody else I would have loved to have been Elvis' closest friend in relation to music discussing which songs to record, which musicians to use and where to record them. You can dream but that never would have happened. He would have been far more advanced in his musical development than any of the rest of us who were gonna try and catch up with him.
What can you tell us about your Sun Records project?
The important element about Sun is what he musically created in combining all the music he knew from his past into a form very easily explained by listening to 'That's All Right, Mama'. Nothing sounded like that before or for that matter even after. That is the magic of it. You see creation happening before your eyes in that eighteen month period he was with Sun going from 'That's All Right' to the ballads he did on the first session. It's always intriguing to see a star being born. That is the fascination of the Sun period. The other fascination of it is it's probably the only period of Elvis' career that hasn't been documented to death, especially from a photo and fact point of view. If you take the calendar concept that Peter (Guralnick) and I did on our book, Day By Day, and expand it dramatically finding missing elements, coming up with additional stories.
More than anything, we've found hundreds of photos that people have never seen that puts Elvis in a different light. It's principally a deluxe book with brilliant printing. There will be a lot of rare stuff and obviously there will be some element of music to it. But the driving element is the stories told and the photos shown in the book. There will be CDs and they will summarize that period. But a lot of that material is available already so it won't be a ton of great rarities. There will be a few things to listen to that people haven't heard before but nothing shocking or revealing, at least what we've found yet.
Any plans on a release date?
When it's finished, yeah, absolutely (laughs). Was that vague enough? It will start off as a Follow That Dream (FTD) book project like Rockin' Across Texas, Flashback or The Way It Was that we've already done.
When Elvis talked about the Sun music on stage in the late Sixties he'd remark that it sounded 'weird' to him. Elvis didn't understand the greatness of his Sun Records period?
Don't take Elvis' self ridicule seriously. He always had that element of charming self mockery. At an early stage Elvis said that he stumbled across his style but I don't buy that. Obviously he might have preferred to be a ballad singer but this musicality was in him and he could do it. The minute he found it he knew not to let it go. Like any other artist, you look back at your career and you feel a little embarrassed about the simplicity of your earlier work. I don't think he necessarily felt that these were bad records. He sang 'That's All Right, Mama' a lot on stage in the Seventies. He did 'Trying To Get To You' in his later career. He sang 'Baby Let's Play House' on the rehearsal part for the film, That's The Way It Is. He was having fun with that. He never sang 'Good Luck Charm' or 'Devil In Disguise' and very rarely 'Return To Sender'. He never sang 'If I Can Dream' or 'Always On My Mind' onstage. The point is an artist has a personal relationship with his songs that is obviously different than your take and mine on something like 'Good Luck Charm'. Some songs he chose to sing because he loved to sing them and some he'd get bored with. The artist will pick whatever they like themselves. I don't know that 'I Just Called To Say That I Love You' is Stevie Wonder's greatest favorite of his own but millions bought it. There's always that distance between the artist and the audience in that you record it and either people like it or they don't like it irrespective of whether you do yourself.
An example would be 'Burning Love', it was one of Elvis' biggest latter day hits but one he reportedly did not enjoy and didn't perform often.
A reverse example easily could be, Elvis loved the song 'I'm Leaving' and you can hear that while he's recording it but it didn't become a hit. I agree with Elvis and think it's one hell of a song and he loved to perform it live.
Back in the mid Seventies, the first person inside Elvis' inner circle you connected with was his late producer, Felton Jarvis.
I was awestruck. My only hope that he would talk to me was two years earlier he corresponded with me through his wife, Mary. I had written him a long letter about Elvis recording sessions. I got back a long letter from him and Mary with all the details I wanted including all the songs for the Promised Land album that weren't even released yet. As a person, he was such a nice man, incredibly helpful and as enthusiastic as any of us who really appreciated Elvis' music. He'd just done these sessions down at Graceland and he couldn't stop talking about the recording of 'Danny Boy'. He was kind enough to invite my wife and I down for some mixing sessions for the From Elvis Presley Boulevard album, which unfortunately we couldn't make. He died fairly young but I maintained a relationship with his wife Mary all through the rest of her life. She was the same heartwarming, helpful and intelligent person.
How do you view your role in the preservation of Elvis' recorded legacy?
That's a very difficult question and I'll be doing a bit of hat swapping here. If we look at the main label, the Sony/BMG label, what we did in the Nineties was restore the original material to CD for the separate releases and the box sets. In my mind I call the Nineties 'the historical period'. The great successes of this decade have been # 1 Hits, 2nd To None, Elvis By The Presleys, the Love Songs compilations, the Gospel compilations. It's not the historical element which is driving the main label. And it shouldn't be because we've been there and we've done it. We need to attract new people as main customers by making different types of albums.
And you succeeded with the chart topping 'A Little Less Conversation'.
That was a little bit of a miracle. You can't plan on things like that. It happened because JXL's remix was a fantastic record and it had all the right elements of promotion to go with it. It's not something you can just go in and make a carbon copy of. I take that totally outside of the regular work with the catalog. The only thing I had to do with that is I found the acetate of 'A Little Less Conversation' that was used for it. It's not the real movie recording, it's a different version. But that's the difference between the Nineties and the early part of the 21st Century. But if you go back to the Follow That Dream (FTD) label you're back in the historical division of releasing soundboard recordings from as many tours and Vegas engagements to document that part of history. It's also a question of releasing the original albums in deluxe form so they will be available forever since retail will never be able to carry an Elvis catalog of sixty original albums and all then all the compilations on top of that. There's no way we can get that into record shops anymore.
The FTD label does more than release soundboard live recordings and reissues. There have also been exceptional releases with outtakes and alternate versions.
The Follow That Dream label is basically for the real collector. That's why we don't sell it at retail. It's sold through fan clubs. If you don't have the complete Elvis collection in the first place, why would you want to listen to outtakes and goofing around and the somewhat inferior quality of the soundboards?
It is rarities for collectors. One of our first releases was based on outtakes from Elvis' session at The Jungle Room in Graceland. These were recorded in his house. They did not have the overdubs that were on the real records so they had a much more naked sound. People loved the idea and they felt much better about those '76 recordings than they did on the original album. We've also tried to make them thematically with movie songs. We've done a very successful one called Memphis Sessions that has outtakes from that. It's all based on a rarity driven concept. We release the soundboard live shows to basically demonstrate how Elvis' career developed during the Seventies through his concert tours and Vegas stays. On top of that we create books where we bring together stories, photos, and music that makes a uniform picture like The Way It Was. That book was rarity material from the film, That's The Way It Is and included over a hundred thirty pictures to help support the story. We're not really limited in the Follow That Dream thing because we're not selling a lot and we don't need to sell a lot. We sell a lot of the Sony/BMG releases. With the Follow That Dream releases we try and aim as precisely as we can at the completist. Those who want to have everything. But that doesn't mean that other people wouldn't get a great kick out of listening to some of those releases. I would recommend the outtakes albums more than the soundboards because if you're just an average consumer you're going to think that the sound on the soundboards is a bit dull.
Tell us about Loving You, the recent FTD release.
Last year we upgraded a much improved sounding version of the album and reinstalled it into the catalog with bonus songs. But for Follow That Dream we go beyond that. There are more tracks. We found some better tapes that even had a handful of alternate takes that nobody's ever heard before. Disc two includes all the takes of 'Loving You' that Elvis recorded. As he worked on the movie soundtrack it gives people a good idea how Elvis worked in the studio. They can follow the progress of the material from the first to the last takes.
Elvis was the producer of his sessions.
Steve Sholes was never listed as Elvis' producer. But he was RCA's liaison. Steve wasn't a producer per se. He was there to help things happen and also to oversee the commercial aspects of releasing the records. When Elvis left Sam Phillips he was basically on his own. There were situations where he had a lot of help in the studio like with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller or Felton Jarvis, but at the end of the day it was what Elvis wanted that counted. I remember Leiber and Stoller saying that after a number of takes on a song they felt they had it but Elvis decided they could do better. They kept going until Elvis was satisfied, not Leiber and Stoller.
Just recently Sony/BMG issued an Elvis: # 1 Singles box set.
It's a very nice box with the replicas of the original singles. There's 20 CDs in there of his number one records. They have the original front and back covers. Singles sales these days are nowhere to what they were. We re-released a single of 'Heartbreak Hotel' on the 50th anniversary of its release and it went straight to number one on the sales charts. But people don't look at sales charts anymore. It's all about radio charts. That's what you read in Billboard and it's all for good reason because singles sales are down. It's a little sentimental to see Elvis back on top of the charts fifty years later with 'Heartbreak Hotel'. But what you get in the box is a wonderful piece of memorabilia that can play. That's not so bad.
Detail the detective work you've had to execute for Sony/BMG and your FTD releases to locate Elvis released and unreleased material.
In the early '90s, I got to know exactly what tapes were in the RCA vaults. And that is still the most fascinating story because nobody knew. There were two things they didn't know. They didn't know what they had and they didn't know what they had lost. So when we eventually established what they had we went in to examine what was lost. There was a guy named Bruce Hailstalk who ran the tape vault, and he was the keeper of the vault in New York. There were vaults in other places, in Nashville, in Indianapolis and in Los Angeles. He was one of those people who kept everything. He had shipping paperwork going way back. He was the one who had to break the news to me that in 1959 the president of RCA Records thought he'd save some money on warehouse spending so he dumped literally ten thousand tapes including the tapes with the outtakes of most of Elvis' Fifties repertoire and even some of the masters. Just to save a buck. That was one headache. Another thing I did with Bruce, even after he left, was to meticulously go over and find every trace of paperwork about tapes that were once at the company but no longer there. I'd try to find out when their paper trail stopped, which would indicate when it got lost and where it could have gotten lost. Sometimes you'd find some stuff at the other vaults. I also had to go outside of the company and find people who were involved at the time. Eventually you find people who knew something about somebody and some of the tapes would turn up again.
What were some exciting finds outside of the company's vaults?
The first generation master tape of 'Heartbreak Hotel', the outtakes for the Elvis Is Back album, the outtakes for the Viva Las Vegas soundtrack were some of those that were fantastic finds. But the other thing was there were tapes that never seemed to have landed at RCA.
For instance?
There were certain Sixties soundtracks where we only received the master and somebody forgot to send us the outtakes. We had to go back to the movie companies and in some case we were successful and they had two sets instead of the one that they naturally would have had. There were other movies where so far we haven't found those reels like Roustabout. Had we had the tapes we would have had the other version of 'Roustabout' that we put on 2nd To None. What we have on 2nd To None is derived from an acetate, not from a tape. It was originally called 'Roustabout' because it was the original title song, but Hal Wallis, the head of the movie studio didn't like it so they commissioned a new song to be written under the same title. When we released it, to differentiate it from the two, we changed the title to I'm A Roustabout. We found the Fun In Acapulco soundtrack tape under some strange numbers and a few of the others. What was more charming was on some tapes where we thought we knew what was on them; suddenly in the middle of it you'd have Elvis jamming away on 'I Can't Stop Loving You' in 1969 at the Memphis sessions that produced 'In the Ghetto'. That was unmarked. You sit here and go through take after take and suddenly the tape goes in a completely different way. There's a great story that apparently at a session they were running out of tape and they turned the tape around. Nobody ever checked what was on it going backwards. That's where we found Flatts & Scruggs' 'A Hundred Years From Now' done as a jam by Elvis. Then during the same dates we were sitting there listening to what was supposed to be Elvis recording 'Tomorrow Never Comes' and he started it up and sings the first two lines of 'Running Scared' by Roy Orbison. Just for that split second, we thought, 'Oh my God, we've found Elvis singing 'Running Scared!' Then the tape cuts it off and you almost died!
A lot of people not familiar with Elvis' music believe it begins and ends in the Fifties, that what followed in the Sixties and Seventies was sub-par. But that's not true.
The decade issue is very understandable along the lines with how you described it. If you don't care for an artist like that then you may have a simplistic view of it. If you want to look into the Fifties, Elvis started making records on Sun and nothing sounded really the same when he came to RCA. He changed styles and created, with a number of people, what we know as rock and roll. Rock and roll could be anything from Chuck Berry's tales of teenage life to Little Richard stomping ahead and Elvis' 'Hound Dog'.
But Elvis wanted to be a ballad singer. By the way he also recorded gospel music, just to give an idea of the complexity of what Elvis did in the Fifties. In the Sixties you can look at the movies and disregard them. But remember when you disregard them you ignore at least three songs that everybody knows. The world's most famous love song, 'Can't Help Falling In Love', is a movie song. 'Return To Sender', just about everybody knows and that's a movie song. Most people also know 'Viva Las Vegas' and that too is a movie song. But at the same time he did R&B, he did country, he did gospel, all through the Sixties. The box set, From Nashville to Memphis, is a fantastic overview of what he did in the Sixties. The only thing that's not on there is his gospel and Christmas music. If you add that to it, it becomes even more staggering.
In the Seventies, Elvis had two parallel careers.
There was the studio side and then there were the live performances. Especially when we get to the Seventies nobody's even questioning Elvis' right to do whatever he wants anymore. That's exactly what he does. The Vegas show is everything, from R&B to pop to almost operatic singing to gospel. To accept Elvis' own musical vision in the Seventies rather than come up with what he should have done if he'd have been the singer in Eric Clapton's band, you can get to appreciate the Seventies music. I think it peaked with the movie, That's The Way It Is. But it certainly was brilliant when he started up in '69 and there was brilliance after that as well. We all know that he got sick and he died and it took its toll on his health in the later years. There were bad shows, there were not so good shows but there were still great shows in between.
As for unreleased material being released, some speculate Elvis may not have liked material he didn't approve to come out yet he did approve of some releases while he was still alive like the Legendary Performer series which did included unissued material, unreleased live performances, etc.
We could never know exactly what he felt about it. He accepted it when they released 'One Night' in 1958 because he didn't think that should be released. Obviously when you get to an album like Elvis For Everyone in 1965, that's put together from leftovers going all the way back to Sun. I think he didn't have that view of albums and releasing records that came with the beat generation. That's why it becomes absolutely crazy when you want to compare The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan with the kind of artist Elvis was. It makes sense in the way that you understand the differences. But the differences are enormous. Elvis didn't write his own songs. He was a singer; the others were songwriters who sang, not because they were the best singers in the world. But they had a very legit reason to sing and they wrote the songs themselves.
Did Elvis have a favorite album and do you know if he would ever listen to his own music?
We know from books written by people who really knew him that it wasn't popular if you went to a party at the Presley house to put one of Elvis' records on the jukebox. Elvis didn't appreciate that. Artists will always have a different view on the music than for us who love it and buy it. They may have pride. I'm sure Elvis was proud of 'How Great Thou Art'.
Can you comment on some of Elvis lesser appreciated material starting with 'Devil In Disguise?'
That was a great record. In my little home country that song was number one for thirteen weeks, which was incredible. It was potentially the biggest chart hit he ever had here. But again if you put yourself in Elvis' place in 1970, in song structure and in lyric it was a dated song. I don't think it would have been tempting for him to perform it. LeAnn Rimes and Chris Isaak did a very very good version of it on the Elvis Lives TV special. A lot of Fifties and Sixties songs would seem somewhat immature by the songwriting standards of the Seventies. It was from another era, a more simplistic time. It's a good point you raise here. You have a band that plays in a certain way to a certain type of audience and maybe the transparent beauty of some of those recordings was difficult to duplicate. Personally I will say that Elvis may have sung 'All Shook Up' from 1968 and through the rest of his life but never in any live version did he come anywhere close to the magic of that original recording. There are other songs that he performed live that he did better than the studio versions. For example, Elvis' version of Roberta Flack's big hit, 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face', the Ewan MacColl song. The studio version is very stiff. I'm not saying his live version can compare with Roberta Flack's but it's more charming and more elegant than the studio version.
Some of Elvis' late Sixties, early Seventies material found him exploring new directions. 'Don't Cry Daddy' was a huge hit that also took on a personal meaning for Elvis.
'Don't Cry Daddy' was a million seller throughout the world. It came on the hot streak of 'In the Ghetto' and 'Suspicious Minds' as the third Memphis single. To me it was a very sentimental song. It was written by Mac Davis who had actually submitted more songs for those sessions that were just as sentimental and Elvis chose not to record them. I think it's a balance with 'Don't Cry Daddy'. It's a little like Are You Lonesome Tonight? The lyrics are so sentimental that only a truly great singer will get away with singing them without getting too sugary or too overblown. It's certainly not one of my favorites but it's beautifully sung and it's a very sincere and well crafted song. That's where Elvis excelled. He could take songs that nobody else would get away with and make them believable.
Another solid late Sixties track, 'Edge Of Reality' is memorable for its dramatic and evocative sound, cinemascope orchestral arrangement sound and Jimmy Webb inspired songwriting.
This is the short period where Billy Strange got involved with arranging and A&R-ing a few sessions on Elvis. This song has a written arrangement and it's obviously a long way from rock and roll or anything Elvis had done. You can say it sounds like Jimmy Webb and that it's hip or you can also make fun of it and say it's the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band's 'Canyons Of Your Mind', those type of lyrics that we had in the late Sixties. 'Edge Of Reality' was a hit in Australia or somewhere else. The song is very different. It was also something in writing style and arrangement that Elvis abandoned as quickly as he embraced it. Elvis tried to do a Brazilian style of music on 'Almost In Love' and on the movie soundtrack for Live A Little, Love A Little, which includes 'A Little Less Conversation', the songs were very different. He was searching for a style. I think Billy Strange, with his background of working with Nancy Sinatra and others, was trying to produce Elvis. You could argue that Elvis almost jammed all his records. Nobody came prepared but Elvis and the musicians just started trying out how to do the song on the spot. Billy was working with a lot of the artists who were successful in that period, acts like The Association and The Fifth Dimension whose songs were much more arranged than what rock groups were doing at the time.
'The Next Step Is Love' found Elvis branching out artistically once again. The song sports a circular Beatlesque melody and the use of a mellotron a la 'Strawberry Fields'.
I think it's a song Tom Jones could have recorded. I like 'The Next Step Is Love'. It is a little different for Elvis. You end up liking it a lot when you see That's The Way It Is where you see Elvis and his band rehearsing it. It was not a very typical song for Elvis. It wasn't a roots based song deriving from a country, blues or gospel type of writing. I think to some extent it came in because the input to Elvis' sessions was also partly up to Freddie Bienstock. He had started working in England with English songwriters for Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck and wanted to bring those types of songs into the Elvis repertoire. The song's writer, Paul Evans, had written 'I Gotta Know' which Elvis recorded back in 1960. So he wasn't part of that new generation of English writers. It was a song that was crafted as straight pop and most of Elvis' repertoire wasn't.
Elvis' movie soundtracks from the Sixties are routinely written off as filler by many but there were some gems that deserve further investigation.
The Viva Las Vegas material is good. It was better than so many of the other soundtracks. It's a shame that it wasn't recorded in proper stereo. It's recorded in this funny three track way of having Elvis on one channel, the backup singers on another one and then the whole band on another track. That band that's playing on that material, especially the title song, is really cookin' there. That's a fantastic track. If I were to look for rare gems on the movie soundtracks of the Sixties I'd cite 'Doin' The Best I Can', the doo-wop song that Elvis sings on G.I. Blues. It's a fantastic recording. The lyric is full of self pity but he sings it incredibly well. But there are great songs on Girls, Girls, Girls. There are good songs on almost every soundtrack album but there are also bad songs on most of the soundtrack albums as well. The strongest Sixties soundtrack is Blue Hawaii, there's nothing that even comes close.
It's been said that said that Elvis did his best work when he was challenged. For example, the '68 Comeback TV special or his initial return to performing in Las Vegas in 1969.
I think how long he lived has to do with the health he was in. You can't sing, you can't record on the same level as you can when you were feeling good. That's the bottom line. Several of Elvis' friends told me that Elvis got bored very easily and that's part of the problem. But for an artist the challenge has to come from within.
Elvis' late Sixties work with Chips Moman on the album, From Elvis To Memphis and the singles, 'Suspicious Minds', and 'In The Ghetto' is considered among his best. Can you explain why he didn't he do any further recording with Chips after the success of such songs?
Certainly somebody within the Presley camp and Chip Moman's had a falling out with each other. When From Elvis to Memphis first came out it didn't get good reviews in spite of what everybody thinks. It got some fairly poor reviews in many places. It's true that those singles were miracles and the album sold well. But the other thing that's very important is to realize that Chips Moman didn't think the sessions went well. He thought there was a lot of crap recorded during those sessions. He didn't finish the album, Felton Jarvis did. Chips didn't like the way the album turned out and he certainly hated 'Suspicious Minds'. Not the idea of it or the early recordings but what they did to it. So it's a very complicated issue and since we can't ask Elvis you're not gonna know. Also, you can't have two A&R guys with different visions working with Elvis in the studio. Chips and Felton were not the same type of people. All of them felt there was a lot of compromise in those sessions and that made it unattractive to go back.
As an archivist and seasoned researcher, does much exist on Elvis in terms of unseen footage, photos and recordings?
Well, footage and photos, there is a lot out there that nobody has ever seen. But as for recordings, I don't know, A few years ago nobody even knew that 'I'm A Roustabout' had survived. So there is certainly room for hope. There's no reason to think that a lot of recordings are going to surface. There's not a lot of recordings missing. But there is an enormous wealth of footage and photos out there. I know some of the collectors and what they have and it's mind boggling.
Do you have your own personal holy grail for Elvis footage and recordings?
Yes. I'd like to find the audio outtakes from Elvis' movies. Roustabout is an example.
The most interesting thing to me would be to find recordings from the radio back in '54 and '55 when Elvis played on the (Louisiana) Hayride and he played all these songs he never recorded like The Platters 'Only You', Bill Haley's 'Rock Around The Clock', 'Sixteen Tons', 'Fool's Hall Of Fame'. They haven't surfaced and they may not exist but they are very likely attic finds. Somebody taped them back then, didn't think much of it, and put them in a box and they're still there.
Have you located any good quality Elvis live shows from 1956 and 1957?
I've found '56 shows that are passable and can be restored and are very enjoyable but not like a true professional live recording. Back then Elvis only played for about a half an hour. He'd play the hits and from time to time he'd throw in 'Fool's Hall Of Fame', which was rumored to be sung at a few shows. Elvis would also sometimes do 'Blueberry Hill' sitting at the piano.
Are there any worthy books left to be written about Elvis?
The factual research that is for what Peter Guralnick and I have done and a number of other people, it comes to the point of 'Do I need to know any more?' It's always interesting to see a book written by someone who really knew Elvis. I know that Elvis' long-time friend, Jerry Schilling, has written a book to be released soon. That will be interesting because Jerry really knew Elvis. Maybe some of those stories will be about the normality of his life as opposed to the sensational side. He's someone who really knew Elvis and has a take on him personally.
Characterize what's been your greatest challenge as an Elvis producer/archivist?
I think my greatest challenge was an element that we were facing when we started the whole Elvis program around 1990. It was to get Elvis reestablished as a significant and important artist and not just a stupid joke in The National Enquirer because there was a tendency in the media to treat him like that. I think fifteen years later that has been achieved. Today it's very simple. The biggest of all pop records, I don't think any of them in combined sales on greatest hits albums and singles sold a hundred million. But what are we, six, seven billion people today? I mean, every producer's basic mission is about getting new people to listen and get as excited as you are.
Select a song or two that you'd like people to rediscover of Elvis.
It depends on who that person is because Elvis made so much different music. If you like roots music it would be a shame if you never heard Elvis' studio version of 'Reconsider Baby'. And if you think that gospel music is not for you, you should definitely listen to Elvis doing 'How Great Thou Art' just for the instrumentation and the sheer musical energy. If you haven't heard Elvis singing Willie Nelson's 'Funny How Time Slips Away', it's a masterful version of a country song. It's a combination of the blue from the blues and it's country and it's masterfully sung. There are all of these album tracks that you don't find on the greatest hits compilations that you really miss. It would be easy to take every hit Elvis made and put it next to a lesser known track and everybody would go, 'Yeah, that's about as good as the hit record he made.' So there is a lot for a lot of different tastes in Elvis' music. I appreciate that problem but there's so much Elvis music that it's difficult for the regular fan who's not a completist to figure out where to start. That is why putting out Elvis records today is more abut thematic issues like a country album or a Christmas album because it's an easier way of describing to people that this is Elvis and that might be the kind of music you like.
What's your take on Elvis' manager, Colonel Tom Parker?
The Colonel was a master of management. But I think like Elvis he faded in the later years. He wasn't as sharp on what would be the right thing to do. But he also worked with an artist who got more and more out of control as we went through the Seventies. There's a lot of little things and big things where you go, 'I don't think that was very smart.' Some is 20/20 hindsight, other decisions you may have even questioned at the time. How much do you want to know about The Colonel as a general person? If you really want to know, read (Peter) Guralnick's books (Last Train To Memphis, Careless Love), the plot is there. There's another side to it, which was, 'Who was The Colonel?' and you'd have to talk to the people who knew him. There's a lot of people who worked closely with The Colonel who didn't know. Then there's also lot of people who worked with him that adored him. He's a complicated man like Elvis. To understand any person, especially if you want to make a judgment about him, to understand the Colonel, it's a picture of so many nuances. You can argue would Elvis have ever become what he was without the Colonel? I say he might not have but he still might have been somebody. It's very difficult to say because Elvis was a success weeks after he started on a small level and that small level kept growing. The Colonel was part of making it grow but he was only one of the people. Sam Phillips was responsible, Bob Neal (early Elvis manager) was responsible. Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black developed it. D.J. Fontana helped to develop that when he joined the band. I think it's fair to ask these simple questions but there are no simple answers.
Ernst Jorgensen and Roger Semon are the driving force behind the Follow That Dream Official Elvis Presley Collectors Label.
Interviews with Ernst Jorgensen
Interview : Q and A with Ernst Jorgensen about Prince From Another Planet
Ernst Jorgenson Talks About Elvis 75 Release 2009
Ernst Jorgensen Interview 2002
FTD Press Conference with Ernst Jorgensen and Roger Semon 2002
Ernst Jorgensen Interview 2001
The Elvis Hunter : On the Trail of the King with Ernst Jorgensen
Interview With Roger Semon
Ernst Jorgensen talks about Elvis Presley and the On Stage: Legacy Edition
Books by Ernst Jorgensen
Elvis Day By Day (Deleted)
Elvis : A Life In Music (Deleted)
More Interviews
Interview with Larry Muhoberac
Interview with John Wilkinson
Interview with Michael Jarrett, songwriter, I'm Leavin'
Interview with James Burton
Interview with James Burton Sydney Australia 2006
James Burton : First Call For The Royalty Of Rockabilly
Interview with Ronnie Tutt
Interview with Ronnie Tutt #2
Interview with Jerry Scheff
Interview with Glen D. Hardin
Interview with Terry Blackwood & Jim Murray
Interview with Tony Brown
Duke Bardwell
Interview with Scotty Moore
Bill Black
Interview with D.J. Fontana
Interview with Charlie Hodge
Interview with Ernst Jorgensen
Elvis Presley & the TCB Band
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Tupelo's Own Elvis Presley DVD
Never before have we seen an Elvis Presley concert from the 1950's with sound. Until Now! The DVD Contains recently discovered unreleased film of Elvis performing 6 songs, including Heartbreak Hotel and Don't Be Cruel, live in Tupelo Mississippi 1956. Included we see a live performance of the elusive Long Tall Sally seen here for the first time ever. + Plus Bonus DVD Audio.
This is an excellent release no fan should be without it.
The 'parade' footage is good to see as it puts you in the right context with color and b&w footage. The interviews of Elvis' Parents are well worth hearing too. The afternoon show footage is wonderful and electrifying : Here is Elvis in his prime rocking and rolling in front of 11.000 people. Highly recommended.
Tupelo's Own Elvis Presley DVD Video with Sound.


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"Richard Anthony case study – Terry Lewis – Jaques Samuel Pianos Widely considered to be London's leading piano retailer, Jaques Samuel Pianos has grown considerably from its humble beginnings in the front room of Mr Samuel's home in Notting Hill. They are now internationally recognised and have provided pianos for high-profile clients like Queen and […]"
Terry Lewis – Jaques Samuel Pianos
"Richard Anthony: 'a super-star firm' MT Finance is a property finance lender, specialising in bridging loans and auction finance. They assist numerous property professionals, business owners, and individuals with their finance requirements and specialise in short-term asset-based lending. Founder and Director, Tomer Aboody, knew that as an asset-based lender, the business would require an expert […]"
Tomer Aboody – MT Finance
"A family fairground success story The Botton family have been running a traditional fairground, arcade and amusement park in the heart of Skegness since taking over the Pleasure Beach in 1965. Jim, the Director of the company, took over from his father and now heads day-to-day activities and administration. He said: "The Pleasure Beach is […]"
Jim Botton – Pleasure Beach (Skegness)


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Sometimes, you may need to do more than just giving solid or liquid medication to your sick dog. Depending on his condition and symptoms, you may also have to provide other kinds of nursing care, such as giving enemas. Below is an effective way to use this procedure:
The use of enemas can be beneficial for dogs that has the following conditions; constipation, during fasting, dehydration, excessive vomiting, bowel irritation caused by bone fragments or the presence of spoiled food or garbage in the digestive tract.
Before administering this procedure, make sure that you only use pure water that is warm but not hot (test it on your wrist to make sure). Use about two tablespoons for a small dog and up to a pint for a large dog. Add a few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice to the water and administer the mixture with a plastic or rubber syringe for about 2 to 3 minutes. For large dogs, you can use and enema bag and a nozzle.
Here is how to do it: You must lubricate the end of the syringe with vegetable oil. Have someone help you hold the dog gently while he stands in a tub or on the ground. Insert the nozzle carefully into the rectum. Using gentle and consistent pressure against the anus (to prevent the fluid from leaking out), slowly fill the colon. If the solution does not flow in easily, pull back on the nozzle or syringe and slightly adjust the angle. Expect a bowel movement to begin within a few minutes. You may administer the enema once or twice a day for a couple of days.
In many cases, dogs that are dehydrated are simply retaining the fluid. This occurs when the colon absorbs the fluid which the body needs. Therefore, enemas are an excellent way to administer fluid therapy. Under these circumstances, administer the enema about every four hours or until fluid is no longer retained.
If a dog is having difficulty keeping water in his stomach due to heavy vomiting, an enema can help introduce the fluid and salts that are needed to replace those lost through vomiting. Using the solution as described earlier, add a pinch of sea salt plus a pinch of potassium chloride. The same solution can also be used to help a dog suffering from prolonged diarrhea. In this case, administer the enema every four hours or until fluid is no longer retained.


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Last week we covered diodes, specifically thermionic and PN junction diodes. But oh, there are more; and they're special!
One of the the most commonly used 'specialty' diode would have to be the metal-semiconductor junction diode. Since metal has a lower work function than semiconductor crystal, electrons tend to flow from the metal to the crystal and a diode can be made. These Crystal Rectifiers actually predate both the silicon and thermionic diode, and at one point were very commonplace. So much so, that old schematics identify diodes as 'CR' rather than 'D'.
Crystal rectifiers are still used today, albeit in much smaller quantities. Although they are generally poor at their job, these diodes have a very low voltage drop and absolutely no reverse recovery time. This makes them well suited for RF applications; things like Class-C amplifiers and radio detectors. In fact you'd be hard pressed to find a radio without one of these guys right after the tuning capacitor.
That said, point-contact crystal rectifiers are all but completely useless for large signals and HF rectification. Luckily for us there is a modern equivalent which can preform these tasks; the Schottky Diode.
Operationally these diodes are no different than Crystal Rectifiers, but modern manufacturing techniques allow us to directly bond a metal cathode to silicon, creating a larger contact area than a pointed needle could ever hope to achieve. As a result, we get all the low voltage goodness of a crystal rectifier combined with all the high current fun of a PN junction. Rectifying 200 amps at 150kHz? No problem.
But what if even these aren't fast enough? 1Ghz just isn't enough! Well, there's always the Tunnel Diode.
Tunnel Diodes aren't all that different from PN diodes, in fact they are PN diodes. Unlike a normal rectifier, tunnel diodes are doped very, very heavily and as a result have a very small bandgap –and a very small capacitance and recovery time.
Tunnel diodes are tricky little beasts. As you increase the diode's forward bias electrons begin to tunnel through the barrier, but as the voltage increases further less electrons will flow and a negative resistance is established. By increasing the voltage further, normal diode operation is established.
This negative resistance region allows the diode to not only rectify microwaves, but generate them too. With the right LC tank it's possible to make a microwave generator with a tunnel diode, or a microwave amplifier if you're really daring. Albeit they are not wonderful oscillators, they do work.
There is a better diode for that job though, but that one comes next week…


text: Inspired by styles worn by top Nike Golf athletes, this polo has a bold contrast collar and sleeves for immediate impact. Dri-FIT moisture management technology ensures cooler, drier performance. Design details include a self-fabric collar, contrast three-button placket with dyed-to-match buttons and open hem sleeves. A metallic silver Swoosh design trademark is on the left sleeve. Made of 5.2-ounce, 100% polyester Dri-FIT fabric. Modern fit is slightly tailored through the chest, arms and waist.


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Video: Open-Source Oximeter Prototype Is Bluetooth Connected
March 15, 2013
Do you know how much oxygen you have in your blood? You may not be worried about knowing since you're alive and thus can infer you have enough. But, visiting high altitudes can be made safer, and implementing a new workout regimen can be made more effective, with an oximeter.
These devices can be pricey and offer little to no customization. So, the people at SmartMaker decided to make an oximeter following the open-source model to achieve low cost and an endless potential for modification.
The resulting device -- the SmartPulse -- is a working prototype that is low power, and has an embedded microcontroller for creating the necessary spectrometry wavelengths, reading data, calculating parameters, and generating the output. It includes a Bluetooth 4.0 interface that makes it very simple to link the device to a plethora of others. The SmartPulse can run on two AAA batteries or on 3.7V Li-ion batteries.
The best part of the device is the potential for work and modification using many platforms. The SmartPulse can be used with Linux, Apple, and Windows as long as you have a Bluetooth adapter compatible with UART capabilities. Libraries will be created to mod the SmartPulse using Raspberry Pi (model B), Arduino, and the Electric Imp with Bluetooth adaptor.
The readout from the device can be shown on a free Android (Gingerbread 2.3) or iOS (iOS 5 or higher) app. The device seems to include a readout screen in case you do not have your smartphone handy, but it also offers support for OLED or LCD displays.
The way this devices works is very similar to other oximeters. It uses photo detection, or spectrometry, to send light of two different wavelengths through a thin layer of skin like an earlobe or a fingertip (it is not affected by most nail polishes). The photo-detector then measures the change in the amount of light absorbed due to oxygenated hemoglobin in arterial blood, that can be turned into a reading of oxygen levels in blood.
Apart from Oxyhemoglobin, the device can also detect levels of deoxygenated hemoglobin; abilities that can be tapped into using the peripheral hardware mentioned above and the SmartPulse API. The device also provides the heartbeats per minute of the user.
The company is looking for more funding from private investors to finish out this first prototyping phase. They want to hire a professional to design a shell for the SmartPulse that can be 3D printed, and developers to write APIs for additional platforms. Funds are also needed to produce a mass quantity of prototypes to conduct field tests on a large sample of users.
Once this stage is complete, SmartMaker will open up a Kickstarter campaign, offering SmartPulse oximeters for around $40. The ultimate price for the device is expected to be around $50.
Using the SmartPulse, healthcare facilities could create low-cost networks for real-time data access and storage to monitor patients, and athletes could have custom-made apps to achieve optimum levels of aeration to their muscles.
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It's Bach to Brooklyn!
Five churches in Bedford-Stuyvesant will be featured in this year's Bach to Brooklyn Organ Tour, on Saturday, Sept. 8.
A progressive tour that highlights the churches and synagogues in one of the borough's diverse neighborhoods, the annual event is organized by the Brooklyn Chamber of the American Guild of Organists, Brooklyn Chapter.
Noted tour guide Andrew Dolkart, author of Landmarks of New York City, will return by popular demand to present a talk on architectural and historic points of interest for each church and the surrounding neighborhood. The tour includes a demonstration of the pipe organ at each of the featured churches.
The 2012 Bach to Brooklyn will include visits to Brown Memorial Baptist Church (which straddles neighboring Clinton Hill); St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church, and the Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church.
St. Philip's Episcopal Church on MacDonough St. was founded in 1899, and the new congregation achieved parish status in 1926. The parish serves a large Southern and Caribbean community.
Brown Memorial Baptist Church marked its 90th birthday during 2012. Ground had been broken on May 14, 1921, and on March 22, 1922, the cornerstone was laid. The new Brown Memorial Baptist Church was dedicated on March 25 and the first service was held on Sunday, April 4 of that year.
In 1944, the congregation of St. Philip's moved to its present building at 334 MacDonough St. This neo-Gothic edifice, which accommodates 900 people, was designed by Arni Delhi in 1899 — the year St. Philip's was founded—for Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. The church is within the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District, which was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1971.
Neighbor to St. Philip's Church, at 583 Throop Avenue near MacDonough St., is Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church. This parish was established in 1868; and the current Our Lady of Victory Church building was dedicated on October 20, 1895, with Bishop Charles E. McDonnell presiding. Thomas Houghton was the architect.
St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, now at 1227 Pacific Street at Bedford Avenue, had its origins in the late 19th century as a mission chapel called St. Luke's. They built a chapel, which was destroyed in a February 1886 fire. A newer chapel was built over the site and opened on Christmas Day of that year. In May 1887, the congregation was incorporated as St. Bartholomew's Protestant Episcopal Church.
The Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church, 277 Stuyvesant Avenue, was founded in 1818 as an intentionally-multiracial congregation of former slaves and free men. The current real estate was purchased in 1938.
The oldest portion of the building, a simple gable-roofed chapel seating 600, dates from 1890. The congregation outgrew that building. Brooklyn architects Woodruff Leeming and Chester Hughes Kirk, designed the new church to incorporate the earlier chapel in the new, larger building, The Bridge Street African WME Church received a Landmarks Conservancy Grant in August, 2012 to help underwrite the roof replacement over the sanctuary.
The tour runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., on Saturday, Sept. 8, with a starting point of Brown Memorial Church at 484 Washington Ave., between Fulton St. and Gates Ave. Transportation will be provided between the churches. For admission prices and to register, visit the Brooklyn Chapter's website.


text: Eating more olive oil could help prevent ulcerative colitis, according to a new study co-ordinated by medical researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Presented today at the Digestive Disease Week conference in New Orleans, the findings show that people with a diet rich in oleic acid - which is present in olive oil - are far less likely to develop ulcerative colitis. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid found in olive oil, peanut oil and grapeseed oil, as well as in butter and certain margarines. The researchers, led by Dr Andrew Hart of UEA's School of Medicine, studied more than 25,000 people aged 40-65 living in Norfolk, UK. The volunteers were recruited to the EPIC study (European Prospective Investigation into Diet and Cancer) between 1993 and 1997. The participants, none of whom had ulcerative colitis at the outset, completed detailed food diaries which were later analysed by specially trained nutritionists working in Cambridge. By 2004, 22 participants in the study had developed ulcerative colitis and the researchers compared their diets with those who did not develop the disease. They found that those with the highest intake of oleic acid had a 90 per cent lower risk of developing the disease. "Oleic acid seems to help prevent the development of ulcerative colitis by blocking chemicals in the bowel that aggravate the inflammation found in this illness," said Dr Hart. "We estimate that around half of the cases of ulcerative colitis could be prevented if larger amounts of oleic acid were consumed. Two-to-three tablespoons of olive oil per day would have a protective effect," said Dr Hart. Ulcerative colitis is a distressing disease affecting 120,000 people of all ages in the UK and 1 million in the US. It is characterized by inflammation of the lining of the colon or large bowel, which causes abdominal pain, diarrhoea and weight loss. Similar work in other countries is now required to determine if these results are reproducible there, before the link can be said to be definite. If it is confirmed that oleic acid is truly protective, dietary modifications should be considered to prevent colitis. Additionally, the use of oleic acid supplements should also be assessed in the future as a possible treatment for colitis sufferers. Source: Simon Dunford University of East Anglia


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Many kinds of ants can become a nuisance in homes and other buildings. Most indoor ant problems originate from outdoor locations. Once they enter a building they may establish colonies in wall voids, behind baseboards, and even in hollow doors. Often however, ants are living outdoors and only entering buildings to forage for food. The key to controlling ants is understanding how they live, how they behave, and what they need to survive.
Life cycle
Ants are social insects. They live in colonies in which one or more queens produce eggs. The eggs hatch after a few days into small larvae that are cared for by workers. After a few weeks the larvae spin a cocoon to pupate. The pupal stage is when the ants change from their larval form to an adult. When they emerge from the cocoon, most will be workers. Normally after a colony is several years old, some of the new adults will have wings. These flying ants are called swarmers. Swarmers fly away from their home colony, mate, and find a suitable location to begin new colonies. Ant swarmers can be found throughout the year when temperatures are mild, but usually they are observed in the spring and summer. Unfortunately, ant swarmers are sometimes confused with termites. Winged termites are also often referred to as swarmers. Swarmer ants and termites can be easily told apart by looking for a few obvious characteristics pointed out in the diagram.
Ants enter buildings in their search for food. Most ants fed on the same foods that humans do. Some types of ants are attracted to greasy foods, while others prefer sweets. Whichever type they are, when one worker locates the food their colony likes, they will lay down a chemical signal as a trail for other workers to follow to the source of the food. This is why large numbers of ants can be observed in the same spot.
Effective ant control requires a multi-faceted approach that includes a combination of habitat alteration and toxic baits or sprays.
Habitat alteration means changing the environment so that it is less appealing to the worker ants. This can include simple changes like keeping food in sealed containers, keeping fruit in the refrigerator, and keeping dirty dishes and counter tops clean. Other changes may take more effort like caulking around windows and doors, having adequate screening, and reducing outdoor sites where ants can have colonies.
Toxic baits and sprays are good tools to use for ant control. Ants sprays applied to cracks and crevices will help control ants for a short time. Entire floors, walls, counter tops, inside drawers, or cabinets should never be sprayed. The most effective control will be achieved with the use of toxic baits designed for ants. Worker ants will feed on the bait and take it back to share with the rest of their colony. Because the baits are slow-acting, the workers have enough time to return to the colony to feed others before they die. Ant baits are available in small stations and can be purchased from most discount and grocery stores. Place ant bait stations where you see ants, but away from children and pets. Bait stations should not be sprayed or moved when ants are feeding.
Originally published 08/98


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Luke Combs Invited to Join the Grand Ole Opry
Luke Combs will be the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry. The "Beer Never Breaks My Heart" singer was invited on Tuesday night (June 11) by Opry members Craig Morgan, John Conlee and Chris Janson.
Watch Combs' emotional response to the invite in the above video, shared by the Opry. The 29-year-old becomes the second inductee under age 30 this year. Kelsea Ballerini was just 25 years old when she was invited in March. Video shows Morgan leading the conversation, but all three existing members ask the "Hurricane" hitmaker together.
After the invite, it's nearly a minute of solid applause and emotion from the North Carolina native. In fact, it's not even clear he actually accepts the invitation — but who doesn't?
Combs was clearly surprised by the honor, one that's come relatively early in his career. His next studio album will be his second on Sony Music Nashville, but he already has several No. 1 hits and a headlining tour planned for the fall. Last Friday he dropped a new EP called The Prequel.
Here's a Country Newcomer To Keep An Eye On In 2019:
Grand Ole Opry membership has always had more to do with commitment to the Opry than chart success, however, and clearly, the institution feels Combs belongs. He's the third member invited in 2019, following Ballerini and Mark Wills. In 2018 just two artists were invited, including Janson. Three were asked in 2017.
When Craig Morgan became a member in 2008, John Conlee did the honors.
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