Talking About Elvis: Red West

Hello big audience





This interview was done by Trevor Cajio (TC) for "The Man And His Music"-Magazin. It was first released in issue 22/23 1994














TC: lf we could begin by talking about the songs you wrote or co-wrote for Elvis: the first one was That's Someone You Never Forget'. Elvis and yourself are listed as the writers. Is there a story behind that song?





RW: Yes. Elvis gave me that title. He was thinking about one of his girlfriends at the time - I won't say which one - but lt was a good title, so I went away and wrote the song.





TC: 'You'll Be Gone' credits Elvis, Charlie Hodge and yourself...





RW: Yes - and that's got a little story behind lt. Elvis was doing 'O Sole Mio' - 'lt's Now Or Never' - and songs like that, y'know - he had a wish to sing just about anything he could, and he was as close to opera as he could get with those type of songs. So he said he'd like to take the melody and change the words to 'Begin The Beguine'. So I wrote that to the melody of 'Begin The Beguine', and then the writer of that song Cole Porter - he was still alive and he said that we couldn't change the lyrics to his song. So Charlie Hodge came in and gave me two chords 'F' and 'C' - and that's what lt has - two chords that was his contribution.











TC: Can you remember writing a song called 'We're Gonna'Have A Good Time'?





RW: No. Y'know it's kinda' funny - I get my royalty statements from all these different labels and there's three or four songs I don't remember writing! I know I wrote them - but I don't remember that one!





TC: The information we have is that it's a song you wrote with Charlie Hodge. Elvis never recorded lt, but some of the lyrics were used in a song he recorded for the 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' movie called 'Plantation Rock' - that's a Giant, Baum & Kaye song. I presume they 'borrowed' some of your lyrics and put them in their song...





RW: Okay, I am familiar with that now - but it's the other way round. They wrote their song and Elvis liked the melody, but he wanted different lyrics - so I changed the lyrics. I didn't take credit for it - I just wanted to get the song done because he liked lt so much. So we went in - had a big session added to do that song - and he did it with my lyrics in there. They didn't put my name on it - I just did it as a favour. Yeah, now that you've brought that up I remember it well. lt was still their song -Giant, Baum & Kaye - but I changed some of the lyrics.











TC: You wrote 'lf You Think I Don't Need You' for 'Viva Las Vegas' with Joe Cooper. Who was he?





RW: Cooper was one of the Shindogs on the 'Shindig' TV show. He and I wrote a lot of songs together. 'lf You Think I Don't Need You' - we tried to get a Ray Charles feel on that one. He sang that to Ann Margret in the movie - trying to get her attention, trying to get back in her 'good graces'! Glen Campbell played lead guitar on that.











TC: Is there a story behind 'lf Everyday Was Like Christmas'?





RW: I wrote that by myself. We were at a movie one night and it was gettin' close to Christmas... lt was one of the all-night movie sessions with Elvis, and for some reason I just didn't feel like watching the movie that night. So I got up, left and went home and wrote that song in about thirty minutes.





TC: And you had it out on a single yourself the year before Elvis did it...





RW: That's right.





TC: Your version came out recently on an Elvis bootleg CD and Elvis is listed as singing background on it - would that be correct?





RW: No, he didn't sing on it. My version was on Brent - that's a label I had which was named after my oldest son. I pressed up 2,000 and took them around Memphis - we didn't have any real promotion on it so it didn't really do anything. But I knew lt was good for Elvis, so I slid lt under his door and said, "Listen to this". He did and he liked it. But when he recorded it ... we went to Nashville and he had a cold or something and he stayed in the hotel. So I went down with Felton Jarvis and all the musicians and I sang the track - sang along with the band. Elvis put his voice on it later, but when you listen to his record of it you can hear my voice leak through at one spot.








TC: In May 1971, Elvis recorded two songs you wrote with Glen Spreen - 'Holly Leaves And Christmas Trees' and 'Seeing Is Believing'...





RW: Yeah, Elvis was doing a Christmas and Gospel session and I'd written these two songs... In fact I was in the other room writing these songs while he was recording... And Glen Spreen was there - he had worked here in Memphis for Chips Moman, arranging all the strings and stuff. I said, "Glen, help me here - play the piano". I finished the songs and had to give him half writers credits just to play the song with this girl to teach her how to sing the songs (demos) live for him (Elvis). That's how that came about. He didn't write any of either song, but I gave him half the credit.











TC: After that you wrote 'Separate Ways' with Richard Mainegra...





RW: I knew Richard from back when I was working with Chips Moman here in Memphis. I was trying to produce records, write songs and I was running a publishing company. Richard came in 'cause l'd let it be known that I wanted to see anyone who had a song or could sing - and boy, there were plenty of them! Richard was one of them. He came in and played me one of these little demo tapes he'd made. I didn't like the song he was doin', but I liked his voice. I signed him up as a writer and I tried to produce some things on him.











TC: So had you written 'Separate Ways' a long time before Elvis recorded it?





RW- Not too long - maybe a year or so. I was writing it for him. I had the same feeling about that one as I had about 'If Everyday Was Like Christmas'. I knew it was a good song - I knew it was going to do well. And I just waited for the right opportunity to present it to him. When he and Priscilla split-up I gave him it - I also gave him 'Always On My Mind' which friends of mine wrote - Johnny Christopher and Mark James.





TC: There's always been different stories about those songs. People say he recorded them because of the situation he was in with Priscilla and some say it was purely because he liked the songs...





RW: I gave him the songs 'cause I knew the time was right. And when he saw them he said, "God, you guys are trying to kill me!". But he loved the songs... I never thought they'd release them back-to-back as they did.











TC: Is there a story behind 'lf You Talk In Your Sleep'?





RW: Not really. Johnny Christopher and I were just sitting around one night trying to come up with something and that just popped into one of our minds. I don't know ... it had a good hook 'lf you talk in your sleep, don't mention my name". And then when we'd wrote it and it came out, someone sent me some sheet music with an old, old song titled 'lf You Talk In Your Sleep'. There was no similarity between the two just the litle was the same.





TC: What about your involvement with some of Elvis' sessions? For example, you're singing on 'Beyond The Reef'...





RW,. Yeah. At every session, when all the musicians had their break, Elvis loved to sing, so Charlie (Hodge) and I would just sit down and keep on singing. It'd be stuff we'd sing at his house, up at Graceland, or even in Germany... We made some tapes - I wish I still had them. That's how 'Beyond The Reef' came about - I was singing the lead on that with Elvis singing above me and Charlie singing tenor. The guy in the control room just flipped on the machine while we were just goofin' around.











TC: Can you recall any other occasions when you sang a 'guide' vocal - like you did on his version of 'lf Everyday Was Like Christmas'?





RW-. No...well, nothing important... When he first hit back in the '50s ... it was a New York session - him, Scotty, Bill and DJ .... I remember I picked up a tambourine and just started playing it and they put it on the track. lt was one of those rock n roll things he did... Might've been 'Rip It Up'.





T C: That was cut in California. Could it have been 'Shake Rattle And Roll' or...





RW: 'Shake Rattle And Roll', 'Flip Flop And Fly' - one of those things, yeah.











TC: Do you get many people calling you for interviews about the music?





RW: Most people want to talk about the other stuff. Most people don't know I contributed to the music. I did quite a bit. I found quite a few songs for him. I'll never forget I wanted him to record that country song Tom lones did...





TC: 'Green, Green Grass Of Home'?





RW: Yes. I first heard that by Jerry Lee Lewis on an album and took it over and said, "Man, this is a great song!". He listened to it and maybe it was something to do with him and Jerry Lee, I don't know, but he said he wasn't interested in it. A year or so later Tom Jones came out with it - he heard it on the radio and said, "God! That's a great song!". I said, "Elvis, I brought that to you a year-and-a-half ago!". He said that he didn't rernember. I said, "Well I do!". Then I brought 'Always On My Mind' to him and quite a few other things. I suggested other songs to him as well, because I was really into the music part of it.











TC: Were you disapointed with the material he was recording for the movies in the '60s?





RW: I'm gonna' tell you a story that hurt me. I just knew what Elvis thought of these movie songs. He'd say, "Damn, these songs are killing me. I'm singing to a bull in this one! This is not my music!" Then he'd say, "But I've got a contract and I've got to sing this crap". We were at MGM one day and it was my job to pick the good ones from the bad ones - the best for each situation in the movie. I had a huge package of demos that I listened to and they were just terrible! There was nothing in there worth a damn! So I put them all in a big manilla envelope, sealed it up and wrote "Shit!" on it! I sent it back to The Colonel and that was not the thing to do. From then on it was downhill for me. Elvis wouldn't stand up to The Colonel at certain times when he should have.





TC: I'll never understand why he didn't just reject all that junk he was given to record...





RW: No, he just went on and did it. I guess he was afraid he was going to make a mistake. He wouldn't listen to anybody on things like that. But I was trying to get a message across 'cause I knew how much it hurt him to have to sing these songs after he'd done so many good things. That's why he felt so good about going back and doing those sessions in Memphis when he did 'Suspicious Minds' and 'In The 'Ghetto' - great songs.











TC: But it wasn't long after that he slipped back into a rut again and recorded what I consider to be some very bland material...





RW: Okay. I'll tell you another story. All the great writers - Leiber & Stoller and people like that, the guys who wrote the great songs, The Colonel got to saying that Elvis had to have a third of the publishing on anything he did. So all the great writers said, "Well, we'll see you later!". They stopped writing songs for him and all the sub-standard songs came in. That's what happened there. The good writers who were capable of writing for anybody refused to give up a third of their songs. That's what happened in the later years.











TC: lf we could go right back to the beginning... When did you first meet Elvis?





RW: I met Elvis in the seventh / eighth grade 1949.





TC: And when did you start going on the road with him?





RW: I was still in high school. Elvis had just had his first hit in Memphis and I was going to get on a bus... I was in a football team and ... he pulled up in this little ol' green car he had - he was just coming out to visit - and I yelled at him to come over. So he came over and said that he was going off on the road somewhere in Mississippi - and did I wanna' go with him. I said "Yeah!". I guess he thought he may have some trouble with people or whatever... So while I was still in high school I started travelling with him. I was a senior - he'd already graduated. So I travelled around with him down in Mississippi, Arkansas, 'The Louisiana Hayride' - all over the place.





TC: What would your job have been at that time - security, driving?





RW: Driving mainly. I drove a lot. Back when he was on the Dorsey shows in New York - they would go in and do those once a week and then fly out to Florida - well I drove from New York to Florida. I'd drive all the instruments down there. They'd have instruments for the show and then their own instruments down where they had to be next. I'll never forget that trip that's quite a drive.





TC: lt must've been quite frightening in 1956 when he really broke through...





RW: lt was. I'd just stand back in the wings and watch all the screaming girls ripping coats off and fighting their way through. lt got a little 'hairy' sometimes. I remember one time in Texas at a nightclub there, a fight broke out and there were people swinging beer bottles and throwing punches, and girls were trying to get autographs. The show stopped, Scotty and Bill grabbed their instruments and I was trying to guide them through all these people who were just goin' crazy. lt was ... er ... quite interesting!











TC: You were drafted into the Marines at one point - when was that?





RW: I joined the Marines with other high school buddies of mine. I'd also finished football ... I played one year of college football - I played in the junior Rosebowl in Pasadena. Well I hurt my neck and some of the guys I'd went to school with, they got in an all-Tennessee platoon, and Elvis had gone to Hollywood to make his first movie and I felt a little left out there for some reason, so I joined the Marines for a couple of years.





TC: Presurnably you'd see Elvis when you were home on leave...





RW: Yeah. There's pictures of us playing football in Marine khakies. That was when I was home on leave. I also was home when he was making 'King Creole' and he flew me out to Hollywood and I rode on the train with him, Aaron Spelling (Carolyn Jones' husband), Carolyn Jones and Nick Adams. Elvis didn't like to fly in those days, so they booked a train from Hollywood to New Orleans. I was there for four or five days and he was getting ready to go into the Army at that time - just as I was about to get out of the Marines.





TC: Would you say the Army changed him much as a person?





RW: Well, he was more aware of what he had going when he got out. I guess he didn't realize until he got drafted - and he missed it. He really had some down times in Germany. That's why it was good that Charlie (Hodge) and I were there - that's when he met Charlie, in the Army. We'd sing in the hotel, then at the house. He had a piano and we'd sing gospel or whatever. We had a recorder there and we did record some of those things, but I've no idea where those tapes are now. But I came back early - after eight months.











TC: Can you recall the titles of any of the songs you'd sing together in Germany?





RW: Well yeah, 'Beyond The Reef' was one of 'em ... and 'Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing' was another one we did...





TC: And things like 'Danny Boy' and 'I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen'?





RW: Yes.





TC: Did you ever get into discussions about any of Elvis' contemporaries? People like Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent and Little Richard...





RW: He loved everything Chuck Berry came out with - he was rock n roll all the way. He'd talk about Gene Vincent sounding like him, or trying to - like many others that came out at that time. What really got him was Fabian being so popular and replacing him - supposedly. Everybody was saying that Fabian was replacing him. I know Fabian - I met him years ago and he's a nice guy. But he couldn't sing a lick! lt was all promotion. He was a good-looking kid and they promoted him. But that really ate at Elvis - he wasn't able to retaliate with a record, y'know, being stuck in Germany. That was his objective when he got out - to come back fast and strong.











TC: We hear so many varying reports regarding Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. How did they really feel about each other?





RW: They were very cordial when they met. I know Jerry Lee's son - I have an acting school here in Memphis and his son was one of my students before they had to go and live in Ireland. But Jerry Lee at that time...I guess he was downing too much of the 'grapes' or whatever, but he'd do some pretty wild things. Elvis would just talk to him to keep from having a scene. But when they met and Jerry was sober and straight, they got along great.





TC: It always seemed such a shame to me that Elvis had no contact with the likes of Jerry Lee and the rest of the Sun guys - Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash - later on, towards the end...





RW: Nobody did at that time. Elvis became like a hermit. And I'll tell you why all this came about. Elvis couldn't understand why he couldn't come to Europe, Australia, Japan and all these places. Instead of that he played in Ashville, South Carolina and Hampton Roads, Virginia over and over - the same towns. And he mentioned this to The Colonel, said "Look, there's a whole world out there - I want to go to Europe, I want to go to England, I want to go everywhere". But The Colonel said he couldn't because security would be too much of a problem. I knew there had to be something wrong somewhere. When we had business to be signed in Germany, The Colonel never came over - he always sent someone else. I said all along that he was an illegitimate son who didn't want it known, or something like that. lt turned out after Elvis died - it came out that he was an illegal alien. He couldn't leave the country 'cause he wouldn't be able to get back in. I always suspected something, but any time I wanted to talk about something like that... well, I learned to bite my tongue. So Elvis became despondent playing the same places same this, same that - and he just withdrew from everything.





TC: Do you think Elvis had any real friends?





RW: Yeah, I know he had one in me - he sure did. A lot of people wouldn't think that after the book - but that was a try, an attempt to try and make him wake up. Yes, he had friends. It's hard to say in his position who the true ones were. I know there were very few - you could count 'em on one hand.





TC: Who would he confide in? Would he confide in you?





RW: Sometimes he would, but he mainiy confided in his cousin, Billy Smith, at the end - after I was gone. Billy Smith was the guy he always wanted to talk to. And I understand he was gettin' ready to get rid of some of the other guys around him, and he asked Billy if he thought he could run the operation and everything. He talked to Billy a lot - Billy was a good kid. He confided in some of the wrong people too, but I don't want to bring that up.











TC: We have this great photo of the football team you guys put together - Elvis Presley Enterprises. There's a whole load of guys in there that I've never heard of before names like Del Dean, Larry Bell and James Elam...








RW: Okay, Del Dean ... these guys were a little ahead of us in high school, and me being an athelete, I looked up to these guys. Del Dean was a tough, rough guy from a place called


Lamar Terrace - that's a housing project over in another part of town. We all lived in different housing projects. I lived in Hurt, Elvis lived in Lauderdale Courts... These guys were good atheletes - football players and boxers. Larry Bell and his brother, they went to Humes and they were my idols in junior high school. Then later on, they came to us and told us they had a football team and they wondered if Elvis would sponser them. So he sponsored the team, and then we started playing too. They were some of the best times we ever had.











TC: One of the guys in the picture looks like a gangster - Pretty Boy Moore...





RW: (laughs) Oh yeah, Pretty Boy Moore! Yeah, I don't know how great an athelet he was!





TC: A tough character?





RW: Yeah. All these guys were rough! The main athletes were Elam, the Bell brothers, the Dean brothers and Alan Fortas - God rest him - he died not long ago. He and I played nose-to-nose. He played for Central and I played for Humes. He'd always remind me that he had to sip soup through a straw a week after he played us, 'cause I played a little dirty! (laughs).





TC: lf we could turn to Elvis' movies; 'Wild In The Country' was probably the biggest one from your point of view...





RW: Oh yeah, playing his brother... I was real proud of that. lt was one of my first parts and I was a nervous wreck! (laughs). But it turned out well.





TC: It was certainly one of the better ones. I got sick and tired of counting how many times you got killed in 'Harum Scarum'!





RW: Yeah! (laughs). I've still got the scars to prove it!











TC: You usually turned up in a fight situation...





RW: All the time. Always. I'd double somebody or I'd be myself... In 'Tickle Me' I had a mask on. I can sit and watch those old movies and, of course, I can spot myself, but I'm usually doubling someone else. In 'Wild In The Country', just as we finish the fight scene at the beginning where he hits me with the milk-stool, then it cuts to Elvis running - well that's me!





TC: Most of the fight scenes in his movies were very realistic...





RW: Yeah, we were adamant about that. Stuntmen have certain ways to swing - 'roundhouse' swings and all that... We went for a more natural kind of thing. We'd choreograph them, work 'em out and try to make them look a little more real and it payed off.











TC: Obviously there's a million and one questions I could ask you about the years you spent with Elvis, but we'd be here all night. So, just a couple of amusing things... Can you remernber that time in February '73 when some guys tried to get onto the stage?





RW: At the Hilton? Oh yeah, I dream about it!





TC: So what's the full story?





RW: Okay. A bunch of these foreign guys were sitting down front, right by the middle of the stage - a strange lot. I don't know where they were from... But one dude was sitting there with a cane and a big white hat and suit on... One of their girlfriends got up on stage and we let her go. We were real cautious about people coming on stage - but girls, well, we figured they were okay. So she came up and Elvis gave her a kiss. Then one of these dudes - he had a few drinks in him - started to come up on stage. Well that was a definite no-no. No guys were allowed on stage. Well Elvis had his back turned - he was looking at the orchestra or something - and this guy started coming up behind hirn. I came flying out of the wings and nailed him just before he got to Elvis - I ran him right off the other end of the stage. In all the commotion, I turned around and there's Elvis kicking another guy off stage, J.D. Sumner's throwing another off the stage... So I handed this dude to a security guard and ran back out. We were knocking guys off stage right and left! We found out that the guy with the cane, well the cane was a sword - inside the cane! So they escorted those guys out of town quickly! I'm sure the guy was just being a jerk but he had no business being on stage.











TC: What about the story from '74 when you painted the cherubs' faces black at the Hilton?





RW: Boy! (laughs). Where did you get all this stuff from ?





TC: Is it true or not?





RW: It's true! It's true! We liked to have fun, and to break the boredom we'd do some crazy stuff. After the show was over one night we decided to get into a little mischief... The Hilton had these little fat angels up on the side in the showroom decorations. Elvis said he was gonna' get some black paint and paint the faces black, then the next night he'd bring it to the attention of The Sweet Inspir

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