Music Friday: Lisa Marie & Elvis singing for New Orleans
As I posted last week, Lisa Marie Presley has recorded a video with her father singing "In the Ghetto." This duet, only the second time she has done this, was produced for the sole purpose of raising money for construction of a Presley Place building in New Orleans.
I wanted to use this anniversary for something really good. So first I picked the song. David Foster produced it. I called him last minute and he had four hours to lay a track down of mine on the original version — and that turned out really good. And when it came to the video, I wanted Tony Kaye ("American History X") to direct. He's controversial; he's cool. He was in New Orleans filming a movie, and he had just a few hours. So I flew to New Orleans.
All of this — the song, the video — is going to charity. The money from the downloads is going to help build another Presley Place in New Orleans, which is a transitional housing program that we started in Memphis. Families come in and live there, get their life skills and get it together. They get jobs ... and then about a year later, they move out when they can get back on their feet. This program has been doing incredibly well for the past few years, so I wanted to branch it out. It's something [Elvis] was very interested in, because it's kinda where he started from. And Presley Place is near where he was raised. I wanted to do this [video] and use it for something good. All fingers pointed towards New Orleans. I landed there to do the video and I looked around when I got off the plane, and it looks like Katrina happened six months ago. That's when it all fell together. And all proceeds — not a portion of — all proceeds are going towards building a transitional housing building in New Orleans.
You can read the full interview — where Lisa Marie discusses various aspects of recording one of her father's songs — at Spinner.
You can buy the video from iTunes for a couple of bucks and all of it goes to charity. I watched it last week and it's well worth your change and I'm sure some folks in NOLA would appreciate it. Behind the cut you can catch a recording from the recent Elvis anniversary concert. The visual isn't all that great, but you can hear Lisa Marie wail with her father — it's awesome. After the video plays, she talks about why she made it.
