May 26, 1966 was the first Elvis session for David Briggs, a young piano player from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He had been called to sit in for the first three hours for the second evening recording sessions until Floyd Cramer arrived. He later told writer Peter Guralnick how nervous he was coming in for the session: "Normally Elvis didn't come in until late, but as it turned out, he came in early that night, ready to go to work." Elvis began the evening by sneaking up behind Briggs at the piano; then he gathered everyone around the piano for the customary gospel sing before getting down to work. "The first song he wanted to do was "Love Letters," which is all piano," Briggs recalls. "So I had to play on it. I had just met him, and five minutes later I was sitting on a stool beside him at the piano." Engineer Jim Malloy was watching Briggs from the control room; like Felton he was impressed with the young man’s playing and was delighted he was on the session. Jim noticed how anxious Briggs was, he had red blushes all over the back of his neck, but the new keyboard player had no trouble with gospel, having recorded with the Statesmen just weeks earlier. By the time they got to “Love Letters” David was in full swing. "Love Letters" was released in June 1966, reaching only number nineteen without selling even half a million copies.
This version came from "Love Letters From Elvis" rerecorded June 07, 1970 prompted by pianist David Briggs’s desire to improve on his performance, but Elvis wasn’t into it, and the new version lacked all the understated charm of the first. The same version was also released on "That's The Way It Is Special Edition." |
