Mick Hartley

For Elvis impersonators the best were the sweaty Vegas years of rhinestone suit and shades, peanut-butter-and-jelly diet, and extravagant pill-popping – though I suspect much of the reason is that the man was already a parody of himself. Almost anyone who can hold a tune can do a reasonable Suspicious Minds, but very few can get within a mile of Heartbreak Hotel or Jailhouse Rock (except maybe The Residents: if you're going to do Jailhouse Rock, do it differently).

Then there's the earlier-the-better school, for whom the Sun Sessions, recorded in '54 and' 55 but not released till the mid-Seventies, provided a gold standard which was never again to be reached. From then on, thanks to Colonel Tom Parker, the US army, and Elvis's own easy-going nature and regrettably middle-of-the-road tastes, it was downhill all the way to the bloated corpse on the toilet in Gracelands.

It's a persuasive case, particularly as it follows a template: the extraordinary raw talent reined in and ultimately destroyed by the commercial realities of a corrupt and duplicitous music industry. But I don't really buy it. I think Elvis's greatest moments were pretty much what most people think of as his greatest moments; that is, basically the hits collected on Golden Records Volume One and Volume Two. And my particular favourites are the Country ones – Love Me, That's When Your Heartaches Begin, and, especially, A Fool Such As I.

Not that I thought of them as Country when I first heard them, any more than I thought of One Night, say, as Blues. They were all just Elvis songs. Maybe he was the first Alt. Country singer:

Hank Snow did the original version. Pure Fifties Country. Great instrumentals and gritty vocal. Not a hint of Vegas here.

Bob Dylan did a version on the Dylan album. Straining the vocal chords a bit, but it just about works.

Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris do it live.

Raul Malo (of the Mavericks) is one of the few singers who could really match Elvis vocally (check out his version of Roy Orbison's Crying) but he plays it straight and uptempo here.