OCTOBER 30, 1976 – What would prove to be Elvis Presley’s final studio recording session was held at his Graceland mansion. Having entered his 40s, Elvis Presley was evolving as an artist and, rather than bask in the nostalgia of his 1950s watershed recordings, was looking for new ways to express himself musically. Needing to create new sounds for a new era, Presley (who’d been charting on Country and Adult Contemporary stations) decided to convert the Hawaiian-themed Jungle Room (a relaxation den in his fabled Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee) into an informal home studio, where he could lay down tracks the way he wanted, outside the budget and scheduling pressures of the professional studios he’d worked in previously. On a handful of nights in February and October of 1976 (February 2-8, 1976 and October 28-30, 1976), Elvis and his handpicked team of musicians and engineers (including longtime guitarist James Burton, bassist Jerry Scheff and producer Felton Jarvis) cut 16 titles there with the help of RCA’s mobile recording truck and longtime producer Felton Jarvis and engineer Mike Moran at the board. Elvis tackled a far-ranging mix of country and pop covers (“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,: “Danny Boy,” “Solitaire”) and late-period classics of his catalog, such as “Moody Blue” and “Way Down.”
Ten of the Jungle Room master takes first emerged on “From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee” in the spring of 1976, including the Top 10 hit “Hurt.” More tracks from these sessions were later paired with live material and released in July 1977 (a month before Elvis’ death on August 16th) on the “Moody Blue” album. The title track would top the country charts that month; “Way Down” would follow. These were the last studio albums released during Elvis’ lifetime.
The historic tapes were later given a new life via “Elvis: Way Down in the Jungle Room,” a two-disc set that is the most complete collection of Elvis’ studio swansong ever assembled, including rare outtakes and alternate versions. The material on Disc 2 (“The Outtakes”) was mixed for this collection at the Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis and includes both outtakes and in-the-studio dialog, providing a “fly-on-the-wall experience of what the sessions were like.” With the exception of track 13 (“She Thinks I Still Care”), the performances on Disc 2 have been sequenced in the order they were recorded.
Interest in Elvis’ music has continued unabated for more than six decades since the mid-1950s, but the release brought renewed attention to the Jungle Room. Alongside his birth home in Tupelo, Mississippi, and the floor of Memphis’ Sun Studio, it remains one of the most holy places in all of Presleydom.
Presley himself never called it the Jungle Room. For him, it was merely “the den.” Constructed in 1965 as an addition to Graceland, it was a substantial addition (14 by 40 feet) on the rear (east) facade of the house. Elvis Presley’s already-fabled Memphis headquarters, the room was the nerve center of his home life. It became known as the Jungle Room because of its furnishings, as well as the built-in waterfall of cut fieldstone on its north wall. The one-story section at the house’s north end was constructed as a four-car garage. It was remodeled as an apartment in the mid-1960s, later used as offices, and currently provides additional exhibit space for the house museum.
The den received its evocative sobriquet from a journalist soon after Graceland opened to the public in 1982, five years after Elvis’ death. The newly dubbed Jungle Room was an immediate fan favorite, and not just because of the novelty. While other areas of the home make concessions to conventional aesthetics, the den brings you closest to the King’s personality. His eccentric style, playful humor, manic moods and sheer bravado ooze from every corner. No wonder the room draws 600,000 people to bask in its faux-wood-paneled glory each year.
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