Welcome to the Laptop Sessions music video blog! Here, you'll find cover songs, original music, & music reviews updated every weekday! We hope you enjoy the acoustic covers, free mp3s, chords, tabs, and music reviews here on the site!
Category Archives: Elvis Presley Songs
Elvis Presley covers: Acoustic cover songs – music videos by the songwriters of the Laptop Sessions video blog. Daily music blog with new indie rock acoustic songs.
Really getting down to the wire now, as I bring you Day 11 of 14 here at Jim Fusco’s 14 Days of Rock’n’Roll Christmas! I hope you’ve been liking all of this free music so far. Let’s keep it rolling tonight with a great little tune that Elvis Presley sang all the way back in 1957. “Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)” is one of my favorites because of the good beat and that awesome bass line. That line took me a LONG time to master and my fingers were so sore I couldn’t play the bass again for a couple of days! But now I think I can play it in my sleep.
The backing vocals were a little trickier than I thought they’d be. There’s a couple of parts that I didn’t realize were in there, but you listen to a song a lot differently when you’re trying to recreate it. I was able to use some of my nice guitars and amps for these songs to give the proper sound and I think they really sound good.
So, add this song to your growing collection and come back for the final three days starting tomorrow!
Welcome, Laptop Sessions fans! Today is Day One of Jim Fusco’s 14 Days of Rock’n’Roll Christmas!
I’m excited to bring you the first song, which is a cover of Elvis Presley’s classic, “Blue Christmas”. It’s a great song and was a lot of fun to do (except for that high harmony part the Jordanaires sang!). I hope it does justice to the original.
Make sure to stop by again tomorrow (and for the next two weeks!), as I unveil a new Christmas song for you. And remember, they’re completely FREE to download! Just click the down arrow icon at the top right of the player below.
Happy holidays from the Laptop Sessions music blog!
Welcome everyone to the first new Jim Fusco Laptop Sessions cover song video for over a year and a half! I can’t believe it- doesn’t feel like that long ago AT ALL. The last cover video I did was “What Am I Doing Hanging ‘Round” by the Monkees on February 7th of 2013. Yikes.
As all fans of the music blog know, I’m releasing a new album called “The Easy Ways” in September! It’s been the spark I needed to get back into recording more Laptop Sessions cover song videos. I’ve compiled an incredible list of songs over the past 18 months and I can’t wait to get back into the full swing of it. I’ll even be re-recording some of my older videos. Yes, even I messed-up now and again, so I’m going to finally fix those mistakes and make the videos the best they can be. I went back and listened to over 220 cover song videos I’ve done in the past and only found 14 that need to be redone. That’s not so bad! I may do a few others that were poorly lit (or when I didn’t shave, was in my pajamas, etc.), as well.
Speaking of lighting, I’m still trying to perfect it, but I’ve got a new lighting kit to go along with my new video recording process. I’m now recording on my new iPad (should we change it to the “Tablet Sessions”?) with my trusty ZOOM H2 microphone. I”m also doing the video editing on the iPad. It’s so much faster and easier, but I’ve noticed a lot of features are lost on the watered-down mobile version. Thankfully I’ve found workarounds for the issues I’ve found so far. I hope there are updates to the app in the future that will allow me to enhance the colors in the video and normalize the audio better.
But these first few videos I’m doing came out pretty good and they took less than a quarter of the time it used to take me to record. And that’s the biggest part- I’ll do many more videos if they’re easy to create. That’s what was great about the Laptop Sessions in the first place: I could just open the laptop and hit record. But now, I’ve got to light it properly, have a nice background, and even comb my hair! I’ve noticed that people really like seeing a nicely lit frame with my electric guitars in the background and I think some of my older videos don’t get viewed much anymore because of their poor video quality.
So now, onto today’s video:
“Suspicious Minds” is a song by Elvis Presley that he debuted around the time of his big comeback special in 1968. I really need to see that video- I heard he really knocked it out of the park. Isn’t it so sad that the man was only in his early thirties and he already had to make a “comeback”? That’s show-business, I guess. Anyway, the song was a big hit for Elvis and it’s been a song I’ve known and loved for just about my whole life. It’s a fun one to sing, too, as it has some real passion in that slower middle section. I hope I did the song justice!
Stay tuned for an original song to come at you next Wednesday for my first Original Wednesday post for quite some time. I’ll be alternating original songs and cover songs until my new album comes out. In the meantime, you should be checking out http://jimfusco.com for previews of some of my new songs, plus the album cover artwork that will blow you away! See you all again next week and enjoy, “Suspicious Minds”, originally done by Elvis Presley!
Welcome to The Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco! I’m glad to be back with another acoustic cover song music video for you to enjoy. Tonight, I go back about fifty years and bring you Elvis Presley’s classic song, “His Latest Flame”. It’s a cool tune with a great beat. I love the bossa nova style used in the original recording. Of course, this video is just me and my guitar. But, I think it still captures the essence of the song. This song requires a lot of energy and I hope that shows in this cover song video.
“His Latest Flame” was written by the songwriting pair of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman (you may remember the mention of their names in Ben Folds & Nick Hornsby’s “Lonely Avenue”). This song went all the way up to #4 on the Billboard charts. And clocking in just over two minutes, they proved that a catchy number, no matter the length, can be a big hit.
One thing I thought was interesting was the Del Shannon (of “Runaway” fame) originally recorded this song. Of course, his version wasn’t the hit. I imagine that happened to many artists once Elvis got a hold of a song. I, for one, would be pretty intimidated if Elvis Presley picked a song I had already recorded and made it his own. I think that would spell the end of the original version and the beginning of Elvis’ sure-fire hit in the late 50s and early 60s.
Of course, my cover version of “His Latest Flame” sounds its best because of my Martin MMV acoustic guitar. It’s just so clear and powerful- it makes anything I play sound better. I hope that my cover version helps keep this song alive for years to come and introduces it to a new generation of potential Elvis (and early rock’n’roll) fans.
On a side note, I’m still getting used to editing my Laptop Sessions cover song music videos with Final Cut Pro X. It’s really a pain in the neck and many of the functions just seem purposefully “dumbed-down” to make it easier to use. The problem is that it literally took me an hour searching online to find out how to fade in the video. Geesh! Plus, there’s a little skip in the audio at the end- I’m not sure why that happened, but there’s no way to fix it. Also, there’s a few seconds of black at the end- not sure how it got there or how to fix that in the future. But when the video takes literally HOURS to render at full 1080p high-definition resolution, I really only get one shot at it to get it right.
Finally for tonight, I wanted to mention the progress of my brand-new album, “Those Around Us”. It’s all recorded and mixed. Now, it’s in the loving hands of a mastering company. If everything turns out as well as I hope it does, I’ll be posting praise for that company soon enough- I just want to make sure first. 🙂 Anyway, it’s an album of 12 original songs. It’s 95% me, but there are a couple of nice collaborations on there. As you’ll hear once it’s released, it’s by far and away the finest work I’ve done so far. Every song is crafted with love and care down to each minute detail. The songs aren’t overproduced, but they don’t sound sparse, either. The vocals, now that I have a great Shure condenser microphone, are clear and pitch-perfect. I’m not tooting my own horn there- I spent countless hours making sure the timbre of my voice was correct on each harmony track. Also, the instruments really sound great. I utilized a sampled Wurlitzer electric piano (used in such hits as “Joy To The World” among many, many others) and this album features a real drum kit. Also, I have a vast array of different guitars, ranging from a 12-string electric to a lap steel. The variation of sounds makes each track on this album sound fresh and different- no two tracks have the same instrument setup. To me, that’s the mark of a diverse and interesting album.
I’ll be releasing more information on the album in the next few weeks. I’m hoping to get the album cover firmed-up soon and will hopefully get to post an in-depth look at how it was created. In the meantime, I’ll be back in two weeks with my next Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song music video. I’d love to read comments both here on the music blog and on YouTube. Take care and I’ll see you in two weeks. Enjoy “(Marie’s the Name of) His Latest Flame”!
Elvis Presley Acoustic Rock Cover Songs and Free mp3 Downloads
Known for his hip-shaking, known as the “King of Rock and Roll,” Elvis Presley carved a name for himself with his acoustic guitar music, backed by an electric guitar player and other band members. Throughout his career, his new music consistently placed highly on the charts – he had a slew of number one hits over his career, drawing from the material of many different songwriters of the time. He knew how to write a song, but he often drew off the songwriting talents of such duos as Leiber and Stoller. While some saw his performances as too racy, music reviews were consistently in his favor, and he went on playing and recording new music until his death in 1977 at the age of 42. As his songs were largely based on acoustic music, he is a prime candidate for the Laptop Sessions to pay tribute to by recording cover songs.
