Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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This 60th Anniversary 60-CD Deluxe Edition celebrates RCA Victor's signing of Elvis Presley-The King of rock 'n' roll. Features all of the albums Elvis recorded and RCA released in his lifetime: studio, soundtrack, and live. It also includes compilations released that featured unreleased songs or songs new to the LP format. The Album Collection represents album sales in the U.S. of 135 million! Collectively, Elvis has RIAA certified sales of singles, EPs and albums equaling 25x multi-platinum, 52x platinum and 92x gold awards given for U.S. sales alone! Estimated worldwide sales are in excess of one billion! Highlights include: Elvis' iconic first two studio albums, Elvis Presley and Elvis released in 1956. All 17 of his film soundtrack LPs including Loving You, King Creole, G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii and Roustabout. The legendary NBC-TV special Elvis; the 1969 American Sound sessions that spawned From Elvis In Memphis and Back In Memphis; and 1970s triumphs On Stage (1970), Elvis As Recorded Live At Madison Square Garden (1972) and Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite (1973). Original album packaging has been painstakingly restored including gatefold/die cut sleeves, original RCA Victor inserts, stickers and more. CD labels replicate original side 1 labels.

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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How Great Thou Art, Elvis' second gospel album, had very different conceptions of gospel music on its two sides. The first side, including the title track and "In the Garden," was very high church, with hymnal readings and quietly burbling organ accompaniment. The second side was a far more exciting proposition, with an alternately rocking or swinging piano, some breakneck tempos, and the type of performances more apt to be heard at the gospel singing meetings held in Memphis during Elvis' early years than at church (or, at least, most churches). Fans who prefer either Elvis the crooner or Elvis the rocker will, likewise, have different feelings about each side. On the first, Elvis is full-throated and sincere; on the second, it's easy to picture him cracking a smile as he leads the quartet on "So High" and "By and By." ~Review by John Bush~

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis showed signs of life on Spinout only to be spun back into the dregs on 1967's Double Trouble. As it always is with Presley's soundtracks, the culprit is the careless construction. Any time a passable tune surfaces, its appearance seems to be by chance, an accidental combination of performance or production. Double Trouble kicks up just two of these tracks: the snazzy Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman title track, which kicks with a vigor suited for Vegas, and "Long Legged (With the Short Dress On)," a nice blast of fuzzy chaos. The rest are stiff throwbacks to the low-stakes hijinks of his early-'60s movies, so outdated that by the time this short LP slides into four leftovers from 1963 and 1964 - some originally released on EPs, so they're the definition of filler - there doesn't seem to be much of a gap aesthetically. Without these four cuts, the soundtrack material would add up to a paltry 16 minutes and that brevity still disguises how terrible the worst of the batch are: Elvis rarely did anything worse than the farting march "I Love Only One Girl" or a big-band rendition of "Old MacDonald," nonsense that seem even worse in the wake of the relatively lively Spinout. ~Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine~

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Kicking off with a vigorous, vital rendition of Jerry Reed's "Guitar Man" -- a song Elvis loved so much he had to record it, publishing deals be damned -- Clambake initially seems to deliver a definitive break from Presley's soundtrack doldrums, but that's only because "Guitar Man" has nothing to do with Clambake, the film. The good news is, "Guitar Man" is nevertheless a harbinger for a good portion of the rest of the album, which was recorded once Elvis reached a breaking point with the nonsense he had to record for his films. "Guitar Man" is the flashiest tune of these, but he also revives two old Eddy Arnold tunes - "You Don't Know Me" and "Just Call Me Lonesome" - sinking his teeth into the well-constructed songs, and he fuses Jerry Reed's fingerpicking with the big-band-swing of Charlie Rich on a dynamite "Big Boss Man," a song that points toward his 1968 comeback. (He also acquits himself well on the ballad "Singing Tree.") This isn't enough to make Clambake a great album, but it does place it on the level of something like Spinout, where the non-movie tracks elevate the soundtrack cuts. Unfortunately, the movie songs from Clambake lack the snap and swing of Spinout. Several of these are merely bland or cloying, but "Who Needs Money" - a hammy duet with baritone actor Will Hutchins - and the dreadful "High Hopes" rewrite "Confidence," are bottom-of-the barrel sludge, among the worst dreck Elvis ever recorded. ~Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine ~

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 28-30}

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