Background
The success of the Christmas television special and its attendant LP the previous year reestablished Presley as a force in American popular music, after being lost for years in the 1960s making films that little represented his true interests or capabilities. It was during the making of that special that he remarked to its producer Steve Binder that he would "never sing another song that I don't believe in, I'm never going to make another movie that I don't believe in." Presley would never again make another musical-comedy-travelogue of the Blue Hawaii / Clambake formula, and decided rather than his usual crew of musicians in his usual settings of Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California or RCA Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee, to do his new album back home in Memphis.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Memphis thrived as a center for both blues and gospel. In the fourteen years since Presley last recorded in Memphis for Sun Records, the town had evolved into a nexus for the strain of music forged as a fusion of those two influences, soul music, the home of Stax Records, Hi Records, and American Sound Studio. Made aware of the latter studio by Memphis Mafia regular Marty Lacker, Presley chose American Sound, started by songwriter and session guitarist Chips Moman, who had assembled a group of house session musicians well-versed in the same kinds of music familiar to Presley: blues, gospel, country, and soul.
For a time, the usual publishing disputes came to the fore, Freddy Bienstock attempting to gain control of "Suspicious Minds" away from Moman, and Felton Jarvis telling Moman that there would be no producer credit and subsequent royalties, just like on any other Presley LP. To the latter, Moman responded to Presley's management and company representatives with "don't ever come back to this studio again," and to the former, Presley himself put his foot down, announcing that he wouldn't let publishing disputes interfere with recording a song he liked. Presley recorded songs regardless of publishing income for these sessions, but he never did return again to American Sound.
Read more about this topic: From Elvis In Memphis
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