TCBCast: An Unofficial Elvis Presley Fan Podcast

Authentic Brands, the company who owns the largest chunk of the Elvis business, recently filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic alleging infringement on the rights of songwriters whose material was recorded by Elvis and represented by his publishing companies. 
In light of this, Justin asked John Heath to join him for the first major update on Elvis & the wider world of AI that we've tackled since 2023, recapping Tennessee's Elvis-themed legislative changes protecting artists' voices, looking at how both generative and transformative AI applications have progressed as increasingly more "Elvis slop" has piled up online, with fake photos, videos and songs proliferating. 
Has AI gotten better at capturing or re-creating Elvis? The guys take a listen to a few examples of recent AI Elvis songs and discuss where the technology has improved, where it falls short... and how its failures reveal so much more about the innate sensibilities and style that inform what makes an authentic, original Elvis performance tick. 
For our Songs of the Week, Justin leads off with Elvis' partial 1975 live performance of Hank Williams' iconic "Jambalaya" and the history of the Cajun song, while John brings us home with a thorough exploration of the shared admiration and rivalry between Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, whose smash hit cover of Big Maybelle's "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" paved the way for Elvis' revisit of the song both on "Elvis Country" and during memorable live shows like "Aloha from Hawaii." 
If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.

Bec and Justin revisit the 1974 album "Good Times," which was comprised mostly of material from Elvis' December 1973 sessions at Stax, though with the inclusion of a single "Take Good Care of Her/I've Got A Thing About You Baby" held over from the July sessions. "Good Times" unfortunately suffered perhaps the worst chart and sales performance of Elvis' 1970s albums of original studio material - the duo takes a listen to reassess whether the material merited it, or if the context and circumstances of its release at the time held it back. 
Bec also takes the opportunity to give her thoughts on the Stax sessions overall, something she hasn't really had a chance to do on the show, they catch up on listener emails and finally, Songs of the Week! Bec leads off with a breezy pick, the Harum Scarum song, "Mirage," which turns out to be almost as fleeting as a real mirage. 
Justin then digs in on the challenging recording session and creative choices that led to the stunning ballad "Summer Kisses Winter Tears" being cut from the 1960 film "Flaming Star." Elvis' recording, as some may know, did end up making an eventual cinematic debut in 1991's "Until the End of the World," paired with a soundtrack cover by Julee Cruise, but did you know that "Summer Kisses" also had an extensive, multi-generational parallel life overseas as the beautiful Mando-pop song "多少柔情多少淚" or "So Much Tenderness, So Many Tears" starting in 1964 and subsequently revived and reinterpreted over the decades into modern day? We didn't until this episode! All that and more in this TCBCast!
If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.

Bec's back this week after an extended illness, and so we're diving into the history behind two classic Song of the Week picks: first up is "Got a Lot o' Livin' to Do," the upbeat boogie-woogie showpiece featured at the beginning and the climactic ending of 1957's "Loving You." Then, Bec climbs her way up to Marty Robbins' dramatic semi-autobiographical "You Gave Me A Mountain," which Elvis famously covered in the film "Elvis On Tour," and the TV specials "Aloha From Hawaii" and "Elvis in Concert," but took influence from Frankie Laine's hit version rather than the songwriter's.
The duo also discuss a wide array of miscellaneous topics, including rare live Elvis tracks, Bec plays a round of Elvis trivia, and... it's really finally happening... TCBCast's planned summer 2027 meetup in Memphis.
If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.

Hello TCBCast listeners! We took a short break for Justin's birthday, but illness and scheduling conflicts struck, however new TCBCast is incoming ASAP! To hold you over, we wanted to share a bit of some of the great backlog of bonus content exclusive to our Patreon, where we've featured over 50 episodes on a wide variety of similar Elvis-related movies, TV shows, short films, and other programs, including a recently released episode on part 1 of the miniseries "Elvis & Me" from 1988, with more on the way!
This archival mini-episode from 2023 features Gurdip and Justin picking right up where they left off with the first and only season of the 1990 ABC TV series "Elvis: Good Rockin' Tonight" starring Michael St. Gerard, Millie Perkins, Billy Green Bush, Jesse Dabson, Blake Gibbons, Kelli Williams and Jordan Williams.
Back on episode 85 in 2019, the guys had watched and reviewed the first two episodes, but now have revisited the entire rest of the series with a fresh lens: pondering, in the post-Baz Luhrmann Elvis era, how the 1990 series' slower pacing, more granular focus and acute attention to historical accuracy holds up. And what does Gurdip, who saw the show in its original airing, think of Ronnie McDowell's singing in this series now?
Episode 3, "The Locket" is all about Elvis and his fictionalized girlfriend "Mattie," and also depicts Elvis' first appearance at the Overton Park Shell in Memphis.  Sadly, since that time, the episodes have been pulled from YouTube and other public-facing streaming services - perhaps now is the time for Elvis fans to collectively demand it finally be released officially! 
If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.

Justin is joined this week by musician Matthew Zeiss, professionally known as ZEISS, who is also the director of the forthcoming documentary "Moody Blue: Between the Lines," which was announced with a trailer during Elvis Week 2026 and is set to premiere in August 2027.
Featuring new interviews with Glen Hardin, Jerry Scheff, Estelle Brown, Larry Strickland, Brent Maher, Layng Martine Jr, Letitia Henley Kirk, Shirley Dieu, archival interviews with James Burton and Mark James, and more yet to be announced, "Moody Blue" the documentary will explore Elvis' creative process in the less-commonly-explored late 1970s, including the abandoned 1977 Nashville session.
Zeiss & the TCE band have also recorded new interpretations bringing their own influences and love of Elvis' music to the known demos selected for that session like "Energy," "By Day by Day" and "That's What You To Do Me," as well as covering several studio tracks from the Jungle Room sessions to craft one possible imagined alternate "Moody Blue" album.
But come to find out, they would never have undertaken either project to begin with if not for an episode of TCBCast... the guys also talk plenty about numerous songs and demos Elvis was pitched, considered recording, or were written for him, including a fascinating rarely-discussed Mark James song that has also been uncovered by Zeiss, which the "Suspicious Minds" writer had explicitly told author Ken Sharp that he intended as Elvis' first possible disco hit.
The duo also geek out about EPiC, mull over future Elvis projects such as EPE's announced hologram show, where tribute acts and AI-generated songs often fail at capturing the soul of Elvis' music despite technical accuracy, and much more.
The trailer for Moody Blue: Between the lines is viewable on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbKD6X7Zc3U
Moody Blue, ZEISS' album, can be heard on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/album/21XXQzTPXyLNE6SlGnzdEc