Anyone who has heard Elvis’ furrows into the genre are left in little doubt as to his prowess as a blues singer and it is therefore perhaps something of a surprise that this was not exploited when constructing his movie soundtracks. However, in mitigation, the consistent lack of quality of the songs in many of the later movies coupled with the proportionately small amount of songs that the man himself recorded in the blues genre could be an explanation.It is therefore satisfying to find a blues song within a movie soundtrack with Elvis’ recording of “Hard Luck” within his 1966 movie “Frankie and Johnny”. The song itself is nowhere near the class of songs such as “A Mess of Blues” or “Reconsider Baby”, indeed it probably ranks lowest of all the blues songs he recorded.Elvis recorded his vocal on 19 May 1965 to a backing track recorded on 13 May at Radio Recorders’ studio B in Hollywood. Elvis’ third take was chosen for the master and additional orchestral overdubs were then added at The Samuel Goldwyn Studios on 16 August 1965
