Melodies that Elvis stole

In high school, I sang bass in a barbershop quartet. We were called the Thundertones. I am the one second from the left. The guy with real facial hair. I had a fu man chu. I was cool.

 

Our name was derived from the school mascot, the Thunderbird. That and the fact that our bass had a thunderous deep voice made the name a natural. I sang bass, by the way. I was so cool. There were some immature and jealous people in our school who called us Kenny, Denny, Johnny, and Chip. Just for the record, they weren't cool.

Just in case you were wondering, there is no connection between us and the Thundertones rock group that you can find at http://www.thundertones.info/. I notice their website (as of this writing) has had 58 visits, so you know that these guys are very big. And we were big, too. You can tell by the classy uniforms.

I also sang in a barbershop chorus where I learned the old standard "Aura Lee". Here is Jim Reeves giving the standard version. Just to give you a little flavor of it, here is a quartet singing the tag for Aura Lee. These guys are cool, by the way. They sing barbershop.

I wrote a little parody of this song when I was in high school. My lyrics were:

Whenever you take medicine,

Take it orally,

Not by needle, not by pin,

And not ... (John bends over and points to his tush)

Not only was I cool in high school, but I was a riot. I also wrote a smutty parody of Carolina in the Morning. Those lyrics will not be appearing in this blog.

I noticed something interesting about that song. Elvis stole it. The melody of Love Me Tender was stolen from Aura Lee. So, Love Me Tender became one of our songs.

This morning, my lovely wife informed me of another song that Elvis stole. She sang the opening to "It's Now or Never". I love it when she sings to me. Then she asked me what the original song was. I couldn't think of it. Then she sang to me "O Sole Mio", which I guessed to be from an opera. Although it was recorded by many opera singers including Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza, the Three Tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, and SpongeBob SquarePants, my wife told me that it was not from an opera.

I did a little digging and found a third song where Elvis stole the melody. It turns out that the melody for "Can't Help Falling in Love" was taken from a French love song called Plaisir d'Amour. Here is Joan Baez singing the original song.

Did Elvis steal any other songs? He has been accused of stealing "Hound Dog" from Big Mama Thornton, but in reality, the song was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.