Saturday, July 6, 2019

MORE THAN AN OLD ELVIS SONG

By Dominique Paul Noth


Arlo Guthrie whimsy.
Pete Seeger died in 2014 but at his Wolf Trap concert in 1993  before thousands, co-star Arlo Guthrie took the stage after him with one of his fabulous and  typical whimsical side trips mentioning how Pete,  the ultimate song leader, had just  played  about every folk song Arlo knew and then handed him the mike—again! 

The first time, he recalled, was a concert in Denmark right after the Berlin Wall came down when 30,000 fans of himself, Pete and American music flocked to a folk festival.  Somehow the crowd knew all the songs Pete led them in, and he again exhausted Arlo’s handbook before turning the mike over to him. 


So Arlo said he would sing an old song from the king of folk singers, Elvis Presley. 

Risking Pete’s glare– Seeger was a fervent defender of folk tradition – he launched into “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” 

He was blithely inviting the  wrath of the  folk icon who had once yanked the electric amplifier  away from Bob Dylan – but not only did all the fans know the words,  Pete picked up his banjo and proved that he knew it too.

Arlo’s point was that the public determines what is a folk song and maybe like this one it can be about nothing -- unlike “all those we shall overcome songs that once meant something in my country and around the world.”  But more was being said, Arlo continued, by who was singing it and how they were feeling.

What Arlo didn’t mention or probably know, and I suspect
Is this the real father of 'Can't Help Fallin' in Love' . . . ?
Pete did, was this was more than “an old Elvis song.” The melody of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was already famous in France as “Plaisir d’Amour,” composed in 1784 but well established as a popular French folk song.  Though written in the 18th century by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (pictured), the 1961 Elvis release was credited to Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss.  The new words were originally intended to be sung by a woman.


It’s a reminder that the first true superstar of rock n roll may have also been the last rock superstar to rely on songs written by others.  Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, made sure he was surrounded by the best studio musicians but also the pre-eminent songwriters who stockpiled “Hound Dog” type rockabilly but had no problem reaching far and wide for tunes.

Or should it be Elvis?
In music, imitation is often the sincerest flattery, and one early Elvis hit, “Love Me Tender” for his movie debut in 1956, was actually an old American folk song, perhaps chosen to prove to the early doubters that the guy could really sing.

When Elvis went into the Army in Germany in the 1950s, the songwriters remained well stocked with hits to feed his growing popularity. But they also dipped into European sources.  In 1960, it was an old German folk song that provided Elvis with a hit.  Though “Wooden Heart” was credited to  Fred Wise, Ben Weisman, Kay Twomey and German bandleader Bert Kaempfert,   it was based on a German folk song by Friedrich Silcher, "Muss i denn" and originated from the Rems Valley in Württemberg, southwest Germany. 

Way before Elvis, Marlene Dietrich recorded a full German language version

Many of those old songs are just remembered today as Elvis landmarks, but something has memorialized “Can’t Help Falling in Love” into much more after his recording more than 50 years ago.  It is now being sung by classical singers and pop stars. It is popular in many venues, particularly as a wedding song, as enshrined in the hit movie “Crazy Rich Asians” sung by Kina Grannis.  

It  took on a personal “full circle” meaning for me after I decided to write about this song.  A month ago, Louise and I were attending a grandchild’s bar mitzvah in New Jersey when the remaining eight of our grandchildren joined Isaiah onstage to sing us a 50th wedding anniversary tribute. You guessed it:  “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”


About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.