Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [204]
“Elvis rose then, saying, ‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow evening,’ ” which was an invitation for her to go to the recording studio with him.
“After he left, the two patrolmen were absolutely rolling on the floor laughing, and I couldn’t figure out why. And then the sergeant told me, ‘Well, that wasn’t exactly what your father said. What he said was, ‘It was time for the Hound Dog to go.’ ”
Over the next two days, Elvis recorded the mellow Something for Everybody album, Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana from the old days sitting in with the Nashville “A-Team,” which included Hank Garland (guitar), Bob Moore (bass), Buddy Harman (drums), Floyd Cramer (piano), and Boots Randolph (sax).
Soprano Millie Kirkham, who often worked with the “A-Team,” came in for backing vocals, and Elvis was glad to see her again. He had loved her distinctive high harmony since they recorded “Blue Christmas” together in 1957, and he was always respectful in her presence. On their first session together, she was six months pregnant, and he asked for a chair for her. When one of the players used foul words, Elvis brought it to his attention, saying, “Please watch your language. There’s a lady present.”
Now he was equally protective of Ann, camouflaging her to bring her into the studio, where she sat off to the side or the back. He would invite her there more than once, and, as if for inspiration, “He always wanted me where he could see me, or at least acknowledge that I was standing behind him.” That first night, he played her “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” which he was about to record in California for the soundtrack of Blue Hawaii.
In time, he would try to shield their relationship from the press. “When it got time for us to leave the governor’s residence, I always had a highway patrolman with me, who drove me over to the motel where Elvis was staying. And then we switched cars, and I would go to the studio with him. Then when everything in the parking lot was quiet and nobody was there, we would run in. We would be there till early in the morning, and then go get some breakfast, or come back to the residence. Then he’d turn around and head back for Memphis.”
Rumors flew that Elvis was secretly courting Ann and that the two were a heavy item. “I think any female who had an opportunity to sit down and meet him, even for five minutes, would find a love for him that words cannot describe,” she says. But she didn’t want an affair, or a fling, or any kind of romantic situation, really. “It wasn’t that I was trying to create a spot in his life for me. We enjoyed our friendship.”
Aside from their physical attraction, Elvis took a parental interest in her and apparently saw her as a twin substitute as well. When he told her, “I need for you to go” into the legislature, he meant it. As he had done with Priscilla, he formed a bond with her based on mutual loss and displacement.
“He came into my life at a time that was very crucial for me,” Ann says. Her father’s political career had taken “a thirteen-year-old girl from a farm life and put me in a place that I was not accustomed to, was not prepared for. Elvis had the same kind of situation, just in a different world. He helped me adjust more than anybody else . . . I could tell him things that I’d never told anybody.”
In turn, he gave her advice on how to deal with situations, like “how not to let hurts get to you so bad that you couldn’t deal with them. He had already experienced so much of that, and I was just beginning it.”
But while they came from similar backgrounds, they both “pretty well knew where life was going to take us,” and that Ann was not meant to be the wife of an itinerant entertainer. And so the romance faltered, even as they continued to care about each other. “I always knew that if I ever needed him at any point in time, all I had to do was pick up the phone and call and he would be there.”
A week after