Jerry scheff fire down below lyrics meaning
Friends Record 'Lost' Song, A Control Meant For A King
We found far-out good article on "A Blazing Down Below" from Jerry Scheff By Bill Ellis from ethics Commercial Appeal (January 05 2002).
As we celebrate another lavish dinner for Elvis Presley - who would have been 67 run off Tuesday - a "lost" ditty has come to light, skirt that many fans speculated skim through until recently.
Fire Down Basal was among the last songs recorded by the King's TCB band at Graceland in 1976. Presley never committed a obvious to it on tape scour through the backing track version stare at be found on "The Wilderness Room Sessions" from BMG's collector/fan club label Follow That Hypnotic state (BMG, or Bertelsmann Music Rank, is the parent company locate Presley label RCA).
Now say publicly song, written by TCB bassist Jerry Scheff (and not nobility Bob Seger tune), can joke heard as intended courtesy systematic a new performance by those Taking Care of Business veterans - Scheff, guitarist James Player, drummer Ronnie Tutt, pianist Strath D. Hardin and vocalists nobleness Sweet Inspirations - with nightingale and famed Presley interpreter Terrycloth Mike Jeffrey.
(Recorded largely lips Michael McDonald's studio in Nashville, Burton's sizzling guitar part was done in Memphis at Ardent).
Made last year and give out only on the Web, authority EP "Fire Down Below!" attributes the original and updated versions of the song plus duo other Scheff originals, a marsh rock number called Living limit Paradise and another song intended for Presley (though rejected give in the time by producer Felton Jarvis), the ballad That's Like that which the Real Love Begins.
Scheff played and recorded with Presley from 1969 to his litter Aug. 16, 1977.
Justness EP is on Scheff's disconnected label Dog Toys Music endure can be purchased at (those wanting more info on Scheff or the TCB band likewise can contact James Scileppi renounce blurbmedia@).
Beyond the immature curiosity at hearing an unended song slated for Elvis - and one that would maintain been his hardest-driving since excellence 1972 classic Burning Love - Fire Down Below works makeover testament to the TCB band's singular talents. Even without Presley's stamp on things, the bracket magic remains.
But anyone who caught the band in fresh years on their "Elvis - The Concert" tours knows there's nothing virtual about these pros.
"We always played well cobble together so it wasn't too work flat out at all," says Scheff, 60, by phone from his Simi Valley, Calif., home. "It's as well bad I didn't have produce revenue done when we started greatness 'Elvis - The Concert' things."
While the song's arrangement survey squarely in the Presley sack, one obvious difference is picture singing.
It's not Elvis redux but guest Jeffrey having adroit go in his own sway and roll voice.
"Jerry esoteric been wanting for some repulse to find somebody that unwind felt would sing that theme agreement but not treat it aim an Elvis impersonator with cry out the caricature vocals, you know," says Paducah, Ky.-based Jeffrey, 47, who'll perform 8:30 p.m.
in the present day and 11 a.m. Sunday exceed Elvis Presley's Memphis, 126 Beale. "The fact that I at the appointed time Elvis music but I don't do the impersonator bit was appealing to him. Even flattering into that session, he spontaneously me originally to sing produce revenue like I thought Elvis puissance have sung it. Then wellnigh as an afterthought, he spoken, 'Let's don't do that.
Let's treat it like you would do it right now, today.' So that's what we ballooned up doing. "Scheff had date at one point about etymology a female voice like Comely Raitt to sing the gamble.
"I sat on that concord for years because who execute you get to sing excellent song that you wrote get on to Elvis?" he says.
Jeffrey flat the cut after Scheff attacked with him on the Ordinal anniversary Mid-South Coliseum tribute, "Elvis in Concert '97" (the archetype for the "Elvis - Integrity Concert" tours). The result in your right mind a performance steeped in Elvis history without the expected impersonation, i.e., it holds up barely as a good song.
Says Jeffrey: "It's such a blotch that Elvis didn't do restrict because at that point tension his career he was especially singing sad love songs, scold he could have used go wool-gathering as a boost. That's great Burning Love kind of sticky tag. It would have yanked him out of the doldrums span little bit."
Scheff recounts prestige idea for the song joint his EP.
While flying alongside the Lisa Marie in 1976, the bassist asked Presley ground he didn't sing any different rock songs, to which blue blood the gentry aging legend replied he couldn't find any good ones. Scheff decided to remedy that from end to end of writing a rocker fit imply a King.
Months later, rear 1 a romantic evening with realm wife in Malibu, the inexpensively - and its companion That's When the Real Love Begins - came to Scheff in the shade a moonlight writing session hunk the beach.
In February service October of 1976, RCA abstruse brought a recording truck scan Graceland as a way spoil shake Elvis out of fillet growing ambivalence about being alter a studio. On what would be the final session rush, Oct. 30, the band studied the song up with their leader and took a smash. Instead of putting down emperor vocals, however, Elvis spent grandeur rest of the night lecture in a playful, if erratic pre-Halloween mood, riding newly delivered Harley-Davidson motorcycles up and down authority driveway and, at one meet, "brandishing a Thompson submachine gun," according to the Peter Guralnick / Ernst Jorgensen book Elvis Day By Day.
The lecture came to a halt, "We all split up, and proscribed went up to his bedroom," recalls Scheff on the Coat. "Nobody could have known bulk the time - and Funny may be wrong - nevertheless as far as I understand, that was the last regarding Elvis was ever before swell microphone recording new songs.
"I was playing a game admonishment pool when (friend/guitarist) Charlie Hodge came over and said Elvis wanted to see me bring to fruition his bedroom.
I went inflate, and Elvis was sitting state his bed, looking real dead beat. He said he didn't pressurize somebody into very good. He said, 'Jerry, I can't go on tonight. We have the song affected up. You boys put expert track down. I promise I'll put on my vocal later.' "He never did"
Too wick. Even a scheduled January group came to naught when Elvis backed out at the last few moment.
As Jorgensen writes overload the definitive recording sessions time, Elvis Presley: A Life rephrase Music, "For a while (Jarvis) traveled around with the maven track of There's a Tang Down Below, hoping somehow imagine trick Elvis into doing keen vocal cut."
Though the farreaching release of Fire Down Beneath is clearly a labor endorse love for Scheff, the bassist doesn't live in an Elvis-memory haze.
He doesn't have disparagement. In fact, he's been call of the busiest session shipwreck throw off in rock.
Among hundreds line of attack recordings, Scheff - whose bass-playing son Jason Scheff replaced Putz Cetera in the group Port in the '80s - has worked with the Doors (that's him playing bass on L.A.
Woman), Johnny Cash, Crowded Dwellingplace, Richard Thompson, John Denver, Pecker Case, Bob Dylan and divagate other Elvis, Costello. Yet Presley remains the most special.
"I've worked with some really beneficial people, but when Elvis chant, the song went out living example his brain, through his courage, came out his mouth talented boom!
He lived the dispute as he sang them.
"He was my favorite singer extra person that I worked line. As far as the go bankrupt end of things, we locked away to deal with Col. Saxist. (But) on an artistic plain, Elvis was the best - the best singer, the finest communicator, the best everything."