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Elvis Presley: On Stage (Legacy Edition)

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Elvis recorded live amid the blaze of his 1968-71 revival

After an eight-year layoff from concert performance, Elvis returned to the stage with a pair of runs at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. The first shows, in the summer of 1969, were first captured on Elvis in Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, and featured samples of his seminal early hits and then-contemporary smashes. In early 1970 he returned for a second set of shows, documented on On Stage, and changed up the set list to highlight his restyling of others’ hits in his own image. RCA’s new two-disc Legacy Edition combines both albums and ten bonus tracks into a superbly detailed picture of Elvis’ return to the stage and the physical reconnection to his fans.

When originally released, the albums caught Elvis amid his biggest blaze of glory. His televised ’68 Comeback Special had proved him still vital, and the 1969 studio sessions that resulted in From Elvis in Memphis (and its own 2-CD Legacy reissue) had proved him still relevant. The live sets showed Elvis to be both a star of the brightest magnitude and an artist with something to say to contemporary audiences. With both an extensive legacy and new singles, Elvis had to find a way to satisfy crowds that came to hear both his rich back catalog and his hot new hits. In the ’69 shows, featured on disc two of this set, Elvis cherry-picked from his seminal rock ‘n’ roll sides (including blistering versions of “Mystery Train” and “Hound Dog”), his early’60s post-army comeback hits, and the contemporary tracks he’d recently laid down with Chips Moman at American Studios.

For his 1970 return to Las Vegas, featured on disc one, Elvis leaned away from the rocked-up performances of 1969 and more heavily on his then-current penchant for covers. Beyond his Top 10 cover of Ray Peterson’s “The Wonder of You,” the selections forsook the golden oldies in favor of recent hits by Engelbert Humperdinck (“Release Me”), Neil Diamond (“Sweet Caroline”), Tony Joe White (“Polk Salad Annie”), the Beatles (“Yesterday,” recorded at the 1969 shows), Creedence Clearwater Revival (“Proud Mary”), and Joe South (“Walk a Mile in My Shoes”). It’s a mark of Elvis’ force and singularity as a performer that the original singers often disappeared in his wake, and a few of these songs (particularly “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”) became as closely associated with the King as with their originators.

Elvis sounds loose, comfortable and artistically commanding on stage, a surprise given his eight-year hiatus from live performance. No doubt his A-list TCB Band (which included James Burton, Jerry Scheff, Glen D. Hardin and the Sweet Inspirations) helped him regain his crown, but the essential flame that sparked in 1954 was clearly still burning within sixteen years later. A hint of his humble uncertainty is shown as he introduces “Kentucky Rain” with “I have out a new record, just came out in the past week or so, I hope you like it,” but his fans never had a doubt. As with his Memphis sessions of 1969, the liberty to engage his musical muse spurred Elvis to great artistic heights. Freed from the musical dross that filled many of his film soundtracks, standing in front of an audience he’d not seen face-to-face in nearly a decade, Elvis dug deep into the music he loved.

As with much of Elvis’ catalog, these tracks have been issued, reissued and scattered among previous collections. The original 10-track On Stage was reissued on CD in 1999 with six bonus tracks, and all of the extras collected here (four for On Stage, six for Elvis in Person) have seen previous release on reissues, greatest hits collections and collector’s discs from Follow That Dream. But gathered together into a single volume they paint a compelling picture of Elvis’ live show: the seminal early hits, post-army comebacks, contemporary breakthroughs, and refashioned covers, and amid it all the revival of a legendary musical talent mid-stride between the triumphs of the late ‘60s and the forthcoming early-70s successes (e.g., Elvis Country) that would cap his incredible comeback. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Elvis Presley: Elvis 75

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Career spanning single CD skims the surface of Elvis’ greatness

This single CD, issued in celebration of Elvis Presley’s 75th birthday anniversary, includes twenty-five tracks selected from the more thorough 4-CD Elvis 75 Good Rockin’ Tonight. Much like the box set, this disc covers the length of Elvis’ career, including early sides for Sun, incendiary rock ‘n’ ‘roll for RCA, hits from the movies, post-Army comebacks, gospel, late-60s Memphis gems, live performances and later studio work from 1972. Unlike the box set, you’ll miss his pre-Sun acetate and his post-72 recordings. More importantly, each phase of Elvis’ career gets only one or a few cuts here, and the lesser known tracks that provide compelling context in the box set are dropped.

Obviously, a career as rich as Elvis Presley’s can’t be summed up in a single disc. Even his Top 10 hits won’t fit on a single CD, and there’s so much material beyond the charts that a fair hearing of the King’s catalog really takes multiple discs or sets. 30 #1 Hits painted a picture of Presley’s career through a recitation of his best-known hits; it’s a fair summary, as is the broader 2-1/2 CD Essential 3.0. But none of these short collections, this one included, provide enough depth on Elvis’ innovations, failures and resurgences to really essay the full arc of his career. A single disc such as this can serve as a map to an artist’s career, but it’s no substitute for a more thorough hearing.

What’s here is fantastic. From the early rave-up of Arthur “Big Boy” Cruddup’s “That’s All Right” through the deeply-felt “Always On My Mind,” Elvis is nothing less than brilliant. The disc is nicely programmed and plays well, but with so few tracks to provide context, you’ll have to figure out for yourself how Elvis got from “Viva Las Vegas” to “How Great Thou Art.” If you want to dig deeper, seek out the 4-CD box, or sets that survey his 50s, 60s and 70s masters, soundtracks, sessions at Sun and American Studios, his ’68 comeback special, and his numerous live recordings.

The disc is delivered in a two-section digipack featuring a pair of full-panel Presley photos. The 16-page booklet includes a short biographical essay by Billy Altman (seemingly excerpted from his much longer essay in the box set), additional photos, and recording and chart data. If you think you only need one disc of Elvis Presley’s music, this isn’t a bad place to get an earful, but be forewarned that it’s a gateway to a large catalog that you may find yourself unable to resist. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Elvis Presley: Elvis 75- Good Rockin’ Tonight

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4-CD anthology shines as brightly as a King’s crown

Elvis was not only the king of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Little Richard’s claim on the crown notwithstanding), but in his afterlife he has also become the undisputed king of reissues and anthologies. RCA’s four-CD set, spanning from his earliest self-funded acetates through late home recordings and live sides, his last major studio works and a post-mortem remix, offers no new tracks for Presley’s legions of collectors, but provides a superb introduction and deep overview for anyone who’s heard about, rather than heard, the King. Those who know a few hits or have sat through an Elvis movie or two will find the greatness of his musical catalog measures up to the hype and explains the dedication of his most ardent fans.

Collected here are one hundred tracks, beginning with Presley’s very first recording, “My Happiness,” waxed on his own dime as a gift for his mother. His earliest commercial sides show how he forged hillbilly, blues and country roots into his personal strand of rock ‘n’ roll, first for Sun with Scotty Moore and Bill Black, and then, with the addition of D.J. Fontana on drums and A-list guests like Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins, for RCA. These early works aren’t so much primitive as they are elemental – the lack of production pomp or circumstance presents Elvis as an unadorned and raw rock ‘n’ roll spirit. The addition of a backing vocal trio, as can first be heard on 1956’s “I Was the One,” showed a crooning side of Elvis that would continue to reappear even as he continued to explore rockabilly and blues.

From the 50s through the 70s Elvis moved through a variety of producer’s hands and a number of different studios, and got something different from each. His studio recordings took him from Memphis to Nashville, north to New York, west to Hollywood, back to Nashville where he worked in RCA’s legendary Studio B and back to Memphis for his legendary late-60s sessions at Chip Moman’s American Studios. By the early ‘70s, on the heels of his televised comeback special, Elvis once again became a live draw, and selected sides find him in Las Vegas, Honolulu and on the road in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Elvis waxed his share of clunkers, but with each new direction and in each new setting he seemed to record something worthwhile, and producer Ernst Mikael Jorgensen has done a masterful job of picking highlights.

More importantly, Jorgensen has intermixed iconic hits with lesser known singles and album tracks, showing the depth of Elvis’ artistry and the catalog he created. Elvis often overwhelmed the charts with hit singles, leaving terrific performances such as the energized “One-Sided Love Affair,” a bluesy cover of Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and the gospel “Thrill of Your Love” to languish as album tracks. Even more surprising is a 1962 version of “Suspicion” that pre-dates Terry Stafford’s hit by two years. Elvis’ soundtracks included their share of dregs, particularly as the ‘60s wore on, but they also included hits and great album tracks like a scorching version of “Trouble” from King Creole and bluesy covers of Dylan’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time” from Spinout and Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man” from Clambake.

While other artists reinvented themselves to fit the times, Elvis bent the times around himself (excepting “Yoga is as Yoga Does,” thankfully not included here), staying true to his voice as everything around him changed. His producers, songwriters, and musicians kept turning over, but in the center of it all Elvis sang a surprisingly straight line from ’53 to ‘77. Even as his voice matured and the productions were influenced by his Vegas stage show, the fire in his delivery remained. Whether singing rock, blues, country, soul, pop or gospel, his performances found a true line stretched from the Sun sessions through RCA studios in Nashville, New York and Hollywood, a stint in the army, a catalog of often mediocre films, his 1968 resurrection, a triumphant return to Memphis, and country sessions that brought him back to his roots.

For many listeners, disc four will be the least familiar. Covering 1970 through 1977, these selections find Elvis’ singles charting lower, but still delivering the goods. Only “Burning Love” made the top-5, and his other top-10 from that stretch, “The Wonder of You,” is not included. “An American Trilogy,” is at once bombastic and utterly show-stopping, his version of “Always on My Mind” made the country charts but should have found cross-over success before Willie Nelson ten years later, and his last single, “Way Down,” though given to ‘70s production sounds, finds his gospel fervor undimmed. The beat heavy remix of “A Little Less Conversation” that closes the set shows just how easily Elvis’ voice could slide into new contexts (the original film performance from Live a Little, Love a Little is worth searching out on DVD, by the way). These hundred tracks aren’t a complete run through every Elvis highlight, but they tell the entire arc of his musical career in a compelling and thorough way.

The box includes an 80-page booklet that features a biographical essay by Billy Altman, numerous photos, reproductions of original record labels, covers and picture sleeves, movie posters, master tape boxes, and detailed recording, chart and personnel data. RCA/Legacy is releasing a companion 26-track single disc that cherry-picks this box, and though it may prove useful as a guide to further Elvis purchases, it doesn’t provide the compelling, detailed portrait of this four-disc set. With more Elvis 75th-birthday anniversary reissues on the way (and a terrific 2-CD version of From Elvis in Memphis already out) you may be tempted to put together your own collection, but you’d have a hard time assembling a more compelling introduction than this box. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Elvis Presley: From Elvis in Memphis

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ElvisPresley_FromElvisInMemphisStellar expansion of 1969 Elvis milestone

Elvis Presley wasn’t just the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, he was an artist who prospered in spite of an unsympathetic manager, and a star who rose to a second great peak, resurrecting himself from the ashes of a moribund career. His incendiary, game-changing hits of the ‘50s led to the start of a bright film career, but after losing his crown in a repetitive string of artistically lean popcorn movies, it took a string of three key performances to regain the throne. The first, 1967’s How Great Thou Art, was a gospel album anchored in Elvis’ musical roots; the second, an iconic NBC comeback special in 1968, proved he still had the rock ‘n’ roll spark; and the third, this 1969 return to his Memphis home ground, showed he still had something new and potent to offer. There was more, including live and country albums in 1970 and 1971, but the artistic and commercial renaissance of 1967-69, capped by this soul and gospel masterpiece (and its hit single, “In the Ghetto”), is one of the great comebacks in music history.

Even more impressive, the album’s dozen tunes are less than half the Memphis sessions’ output. RCA’s 2-CD Legacy reissue collects 36 tracks from Elvis’ stay at Chip Moman’s American Studio, adding ten tracks from the second platter of From Memphis to Vegas – From Vegas to Memphis (subsequently reissued as Back in Memphis), four single mixes of album tracks, six non-LP singles (including the trio of chart hits “Suspicious Minds,” “Don’t Cry Daddy,” and “Kentucky Rain”), and four bonus tracks. Having recorded in Nashville and Hollywood since his mid-50s departure from Sun, Elvis returned to Memphis to find soul music still heavily influenced by gospel and blues, but also powered by the bass-and-horns funk developed by the Stax, Hi, FAME, American and Muscle Shoals studios.

Buoyed by the success of his televised comeback, Elvis shook off the insipid material he’d been recording, and dug deeply into a set of blues, country, gospel and pop sounds, pushed by Moman and his crack studio band. You can hear Elvis rediscovering himself as he tests his crooning, wandering through a loose arrangement of “I’ll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)” that turns Eddy Arnold’s 1940s country twanger into an emotion-soaked gospel. He’s commanding with the testimony of “Power of My Love” and swaggering and blue at the same time on “After Loving You.” He nails a slow-burning gospel-tinged cover of “Long Black Limousine,” lightens to horn-lined Memphis melancholy with “Any Day Now” and closes the album with the stunning “In the Ghetto.” The extras on disc one are finished tracks that include Bobby Darin’s “I’ll Be There,” the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” and the gospel “Who Am I?”

The ten tracks of the follow-up album open disc two, and though the sessions were well picked-over for the original album, there are several highlights in the second set, including the slow building blues rocker “Stranger in My Own Hometown,” the dramatic farewell of “The Fair’s Moving On” and the gospel soul “Without Love (There is Nothing).” Disc two’s pay-off are the original mono single mixes, six of which don’t appear on either Memphis album, including the hits “Suspicious Minds,” “Don’t Cry Daddy” and “Kentucky Rain,” and the supremely funky “Rubberneckin’.” All of these tracks have been previously released, scattered across LPs and singles, and brought together on collections such as The Memphis Record and Suspicious Minds. But never before has Elvis’ homecoming been drawn as such a vivid portrait.

This brief leave from Col. Parker’s stifling control gave Elvis a chance to go home, both literally and figuratively, and the circumstances in which to wax one of the two or three finest albums of his career. The energy created in Memphis sustained the King through a resurgent live show, but as the bubble closed back around him, these blue-eyed soul sessions turned into the last studio high point of his extraordinary career. Legacy’s 2-CD set is delivered in a tri-fold digipack that reproduces the covers of both From Elvis in Memphis and Back in Memphis, and includes a 24-page booklet stuffed with photos and excellent liner notes by Robert Gordon and Tara McAdams. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Country All Stars: Jazz From the Hills

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countryallstars_jazzfromthehillsAll star country string-jazz session

This CD reproduces the 1954 RCA ten-inch String Dustin’, featuring country legends Chet Atkins, Homer Haynes, Jethro Burns and Jerry Byrd, and adds sides from 1956 that augment the all star lineup with jazz guitarist George Barnes. In retrospect, it’s easy to think of Atkins picking jazz, but at the time it was still unusual for country artists to cross over. Those who know Homer & Jethro from their comedy records may be surprised by their top-notch guitar and mandolin playing. The material is a mix of pop and jazz, and the group (which included a changing line-up of session bassists, drummers and pianists, as well as fiddle player Dale Potter) gives most of these tunes a hillbilly twist. Haynes, Burns and Byrd each sing a few, but the real charm of these sessions is the high-spirited instrumental interplay. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Dolly Parton: 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs

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dollyparton_9to5Country and pop from Hollywood Dolly

In celebration of 9 to 5: The Musical‘s Broadway debut, RCA/Legacy has reissued Parton’s 1980 album with a trio of bonus tracks. Building on the 1977 pop breakthrough, “Here You Come Again,” 9 to 5 (as a film, album and single) cemented Parton’s draw beyond her core country audience. She’d released Dolly, Dolly, Dolly earlier in the year, and its orchestrated AOL covers freed her to indulge more country sounds here. The 9 to 5 album topped the country chart and the title single topped the country, pop and AC charts. The album’s second single, a light-pop cover of the First Edition’s “But You Know I Love You” (originally sung by future duet partner Kenny Rogers) also topped the country chart, and a disco cover of “The House of the Rising Sun” made the top twenty.

The hit singles provide a fare representation of the album’s variety. Parton’s originals include the hopeful, country gospel “Hush-A-Bye Hard Times,” the unapologetic portrait “Working Girl,” and the homespun values of “Poor Folks Town.” The covers are more diverse, including a delicate reading of Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee” and a solemn take on Merle Travis’ “Dark as a Dungeon.” Less successful is the pedestrian Nashville backing given to Mel Tillis’ “Detroit City” and Mike Post’s badly aging arrangement of “Sing for the Common Man.” Yet even when backed by hackneyed keyboards, liquid guitars and by-the-numbers strings, Parton’s voice still shines.

The struggles and successes of working people provide the album a theme, but the album never musters the artistic force of Coat of Many Colors, My Tennessee Mountain Home or Jolene. Parton’s in excellent voice throughout, but her bid for broader commercial success leaves several tracks uncomfortably laden with pop clichés. Legacy’s 2009 reissue adds a previously unreleased session cover of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People,” a beat-heavy 2008 house remix of “9 to 5,” and a lead vocal-free remix of “9 to 5” that puts you in Dolly’s rhinestone-studded high-heeled shoes. Bonuses aside, it’s the album’s originals and selected covers that make this an essential entry in Parton’s catalog. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Willie Nelson: Naked Willie

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willienelson_nakedwillieWillie’s Nashville-era work stripped to the studs

Nelson’s longtime harmonica player Mickey Raphael “unproduced” these seventeen tracks from the original RCA multitrack masters, drawing material from 1967’s The Party’s Over and Other Great Willie Nelson Songs, 1969’s My Own Peculiar Way, 1970’s Laying My Burdens Down, 1971’s Willie Nelson & Family, and a few rarities, including the 1968 single “Bring Me Sunshine,” and the archive tracks “Jimmy’s Road” from 1968 and “If You Could See What’s Going Through My Mind” from 1970. The new mixes are stripped of strings and backing vocals, leaving Nelson’s voice up front of rudimentary arrangements of guitar, bass, piano and drums, and occasional flourishes of vibraphone, steel and organ.

Unfortunately, the notion that these de-sweetened versions get to the roots of the songwriter’s original vision is only half true, as Nelson and Raphael could only work with what was on the tapes, which includes unswinging Nashville-styled performances from studio A-listers. The basic tracks were purposely arranged as scaffolding upon which decoration was to be layered, distracting decoration perhaps, but decoration that was part of the original architecture. What’s left sounds unfinished, rather than the original root of something that was embellished. Even without the orchestration and backing chorus, Nelson’s vocals remain at odds with the backing players, confined by Nashville’s straight time, and unable to launch his idiosyncratic stylings.

This would be less evident had Nelson not bucked Nashville’s constrictions and satisfied his muse across dozens of celebrated albums for Atlantic and Columbia. These de-produced versions are neither the intricately assembled, finished products of Nelson’s producers, nor the fleshed out visions of a singer-songwriter chafing against Nashville’s conventions. The Nashville studio players only hint at the emotional work that would back Nelson’s breakthrough efforts. Fans will enjoy hearing Nelson’s voice out front of these terrific songs, but there isn’t true gold lurking beneath the orchestrations and backing vocalists, only a clearer picture of just how desperately Nelson needed to break free of Nashville’s way of doing things. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]