Crawfish_(1958_song)

Crawfish (song)

Crawfish (song)

1958 single by Kitty White and Elvis Presley

"Crawfish" is a song written by Fred Wise (lyrics) and Ben Weisman (music) and recorded as a duet by the jazz singer Kitty White and Elvis Presley.

Quick Facts from the album King Creole, Released ...

It was the opening song for Presley's 1958 film King Creole.[1][2][3]

British musician and Clash frontman Joe Strummer described "Crawfish" on his radio-show as one of his favourite Elvis Presley songs. The song and his recommendation were included on the soundtrack to the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten.

Recording

Bilbrew and Presley recorded the song on January 15, 1958, during the soundtrack recording session for the Paramount movie, King Creole at Radio Recorders, West Hollywood, California. The producer was Walter Scharf, the sound engineer Thone Nogar. At least eight takes have been recorded; the master is take seven.

In 1978, Jean Bilbrew released an alternate master mix (with overdubs recorded in 1978) including the full length intro sung by herself. This version runs 4 minutes and 10 seconds.

Cover versions

The song has been covered a number of times,[4] perhaps the most well-known is by Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin released in 1985 and included on their Copy Cats covers album in 1988.

References

  1. [1]
    Pitre, Glen (1993). The Crawfish Book: the story of man and mudbugs starting in 25,000 B.C. and ending with the batch just put on to boil. University Press of Mississippi. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-87805-599-9.
  2. [2]
    Caine, Andrew James (2004). Interpreting Rock Movies: The Pop Film and its Critics in Britain. Manchester University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-7190-6538-5.
  3. [3]
    Matthew-Walker, Robert (1995). Heartbreak Hotel: The Life and Music of Elvis Presley. Castle Communications. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-86074-055-8.
  4. [4]
    "Cover versions of Crawfish by Elvis Presley". Secondhandsongs.com. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Crawfish_(1958_song), and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.