PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (20)
By:
September 8, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Country Music of the Fifties (1954–1963)! Series edited by Josh Glenn. Qobuz playlist here.
ELVIS PRESLEY | BLUE MOON | 1956
On August 19, 1954, Elvis Presley went into Sun Studios with Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass) and one of the sides they cut was the Rodgers and Hart standard “Blue Moon,” a standard that seems to reenter public consciousness at predictable intervals, more like a comet than a natural satellite. It had been a hit for various singers in the ’30s and ’40s, recently for Mel Tormé in a feather-light arrangement that was a hit in 1949, but Elvis and the boys transformed it into a drover’s lament, something sung while steering livestock across yawning valleys and through open plains.
The clippity-clop rhythm instantly conjures an image of a cowboy on horseback moseying to the horizon, and Elvis’ voice, cloaked in slap-back echo, floats straight up to the stars. Throughout the song, Elvis does something otherworldly that he’d never do again in quite the same way in the next 23 years of his singing career, jumping an octave to an eerie falsetto that is almost but not quite under his control. It sounds like an electrical current more than the singer’s impulse, a force that is switched on and takes over. If this were a five-minute record, that falsetto might take him to a place that causes real harm, but given the side’s two-minute-and-forty-second length he manages to keep it together. It was unreleased in the year he recorded it but landed on his self-titled debut album on RCA in 1956.
In a strange way, the unearthly howl in “Blue Moon” as Elvis’ career was just getting underway reminds me of a very different one he’d return to repeatedly on his final tour, when he had only months to live. At the end of “Unchained Melody,” the showstopper from his 1977 shows that he performed alone at the piano, he’d reach for a final note at its earthshaking climax that he often couldn’t hit, leaning on backup singer Sherrill Nielsen to fill in when he came up short. In his prime, Elvis did things with his voice and body that seemed impossible. His unimpeachable command as a performer in his best work makes his flaws that much more interesting, those times where he seems to be reaching for something just beyond his grasp. On “Blue Moon,” he was too green to execute the falsetto perfectly, and by the time of “Unchained Melody,” the years had inflicted too much damage.
PATSY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn. Nadine Hubbs on Marty Robbins’ EL PASO | Elizabeth Nelson on Dave Dudley’s SIX DAYS ON THE ROAD | Lynn Peril on Jean Chapel’s WELCOME TO THE CLUB | David Cantwell on Porter Wagoner’s MY BONFIRE | Will Hermes on Johnny Cash’s RING OF FIRE | Mimi Lipson on Loretta Lynn’s I’M A HONKY TONK GIRL | Charles Hughes on Roger Miller’s YOU DON’T WANT MY LOVE | Eric Weisbard on Lefty Frizzell’s THE LONG BLACK VEIL | Steacy Easton on Jean Shepard’s A SATISFIED MIND | Josh Glenn on Johnny Cash’s THE REBEL — JOHNNY YUMA | Carlo Rotella on Buck Owens’ CLOSE UP THE HONKY TONKS | Annie Nocenti on Patsy Cline’s THREE CIGARETTES IN AN ASHTRAY | Douglas Wolk on Lucky Starr’s I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE | Will Groff on Ray Price’s NIGHT LIFE | Jonny Auping on Willie Nelson’s CRAZY | Brian Berger on Ernest Tubb’s THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS | Jason Grote on Bill Browning and His Echo Valley Boys’ DARK HOLLOW | Peter Doyle on Willie Nelson’s FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY | Sam Glenn on Johnny Cash’s BIG RIVER | Mark Richardson on Elvis Presley’s BLUE MOON | Adam McGovern on Elvis Presley’s BLACK STAR / FLAMING STAR | Chris Spurgeon on Ricky Nelson’s BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAY | Stephen Thomas Erlewine on George Jones’ WHITE LIGHTNING | Devin McKinney on George Hamilton IV’s ABILENE | Annie Zaleski on Patsy Cline’s WALKIN’ AFTER MIDNIGHT.
ALSO SEE: DOLLY YOUR ENTHUSIASM (25 of our favorite Country records from 1964–1973) | & more Country at HILOBROW, including short appreciations of Gene Pitney, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, George Jones, June Carter Cash, Charley Pride, and many others.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!