‘Elvis’ Music Producer Dave Cobb on Recreating Classic Songs: ‘It’s Terrifying to Even Attempt to Do That’
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticRenowned music producer Dave Cobb was working on a film job where he recreated the music of one singing icon — Tammy Faye Bakker — when he got the assignment to do the same for an even more significant vocalist, high a bar as that may have been: Elvis Presley.
Truly, both figured into his youth, growing up as a Pentecostal kid in the Southeast. But even if one were to consider these singers on the same plane, “Elvis” would require quite a lot more out of him than “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” as workloads go, due to the sheer amount of Presley catalog being recreated.
Ultimately, he wound up working on 80 different tracks for the Baz Luhrmann film.He admits he was intimidated by the task, although probably not as much as a producer whose parents hadn’t constantly played Elvis records from the time of his birth might have been.
It also doesn’t hurt, perhaps, that Cobb has worked as the constant collaborator of a lot of modern greats, including Brandi Carlle, Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton, as well as having started moving into film music more, starting with 2018’s “A Star Is Born,” for which he produced Lady Gaga.
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