Elvis Rare Footage I''M LEAVIN' Remix

No copyright infringement intended or implied. Every so often in the 1970s Elvis Presley would walk into a recording studio and cut a song that revealed as much about the state of his soul as the later self-portraits of Vincent van Gogh, typified by manic brushwork, said about the Dutch artist's torment. In songs like It's Midnight, For Ol' Times Sake,
Elvis Presley
and I'm Leavin', this legendarily reclusive figure showed us the suffering behind the image, using music to acknowledge realities he tried to ignore outside the studio. For me, the greatest of these performances - which now, with all we know about his life, feel almost like entries in Elvis' private journal - is his chilling rendition of the haunting Michael Jarrett/Sonny Charles ballad I'm Leavin'.
Watching Elvis sing I'm Leavin' in concert, biographer WA Harbinson wrote: 'If he sings of the spirit, he imbues it with the flesh, if he sings of desire he speaks of love. 'Who will I find to lie beside me?' he sings and the words, which are simple, which are quite simply desolate, are filled with the tragedy, with the crystalline grief of a flesh that might never be touched. 'Leavin' me lonely', he adds and the last word is a killer, a knife through all hope, a common word transformed to pure poetry by its tone of delivery'.
The song's unusual blend of quiet horror, utter weariness, inexorable sadness and subtle rebuke is a tribute to the craft of Jarrett who, as he revealed in an interview published on www.elvis.com.au created the song on a 12-string guitar in the LA home of his old friend Sonny Charles. Jarrett had given up life on the road to write and record his own songs and was shocked to hear his girlfriend ask: 'What if your songs aren't good enough?' Realising they didn't share the same dream, they went their separate ways: the girl stayed in Portland, Jarrett headed for LA where - still haunted by his failed marriage and angry at his girlfriend's lack of faith - he wrote I'm Leavin'.

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