Moody Blue

One thing Ace Atkins's great forthcoming novel did, for better or for worse, is get me to listen to MOODY BLUE, which is, I think, Elvis's final non-posthumous album, and which makes a significant appearance early in Ace's book. So then I looked up the recording session that produced the title track in the second volume of Peter Guralnick's massive and definitive Elvis bio: "He showed up for the first day of the recording session still dressed in his police captain's uniform." (!) "Elvis's continued preference for downbeat material was not heartening... At one point, when he was alone in his room with Red and Sonny, he explained a plot he had devised to rub out the drug pushers of Memphis... 'That's pretty heavy,' Red said dubiously."