Album Reviews

Listening to Elvis makes clear his indebtedness to Dean Martin and Bryan Ferry’s to Elvis. No doubt Paul McCartney was imitating growing up too. There’s not been a voice like it since, which for detractors is a good thing.  

Elvis has been in and out of fashion numerous times while he was alive and even after he died in 1977 at age 42 his star has risen and fallen. After his initial teen success and his triumphant return after army service, he fell out of favor once the Beatles broke through, though the hard core remained faithful.

Listening to Elvis makes clear his indebtedness to Dean Martin and Bryan Ferry’s to Elvis. No doubt Paul McCartney was imitating growing up too. There’s not been a voice like it since, which for detractors is a good thing.  

Elvis has been in and out of fashion numerous times while he was alive and even after he died in 1977 at age 42 his star has risen and fallen. After his initial teen success and his triumphant return after army service, he fell out of favor once the Beatles broke through, though the hard core remained faithful.

He was written off as “washed up” until his spectacular revival thanks to a ballsy do or die 1968 NBC television special where he played live and “unplugged” in the round to a small studio audience and reclaimed his greatness. The sound, produced by the great Bones Howe was equally great, though not through any TV of the time.

The passage of time has made the sound and the spectacular production of his albums, not to mention the enormity of Elvis’s voice and his unparalleled ability to emote, appear dated and baroque.

How sad that ultra-wide dynamics, harmonic correctness, musical transparency and an enormous sense of inviting but artificial space should somehow sound “old fashioned,” but that’s the gray, compressed world in which we find ourselves.

Few singers today dare to dramatize vocally as Elvis did and few today could even if they wished to and tried. Tom Jones still can, but who else is there who can go from a soft whisper to a full throated but rounded roar as Elvis could, sounding intimate one second and in terrible pain the next?

Listen to the ending of “It’s Now or Never,” lifted appropriately from an opera and his ability to convincingly sell the false ending in a whisper and then take the real one into emotional and physical orbit in a split second is astonishing.

His timing was exquisite, his vocal technique was formidable, and the finest Nashville musicians backed him from the start, later adding the best of Hollywood when he went west to become a movie star.

Nonetheless, not even the best sounding Elvis ever, which this collection surely is, will turn a doubter into a fan, but if you’re on the fence about Presley this pricey set should easily pull you over to the King’s side and if you’ve been away from Elvis since hearing him on AM radio as a child, this collection will do no less than startle you.

In fact, you’ll be startled even if you have the DCC Compact Classic double LP set of the same tunes. The first of the three records is monophonic but the setting is three-dimensional nonetheless. Listen to “All Shook Up,” arguably one of the greatest rock’n’roll songs of all time and the sound of the rhythmic “thunk,” which I think is the stand-up bass being slapped, is so present and well-textured you’ll think it’s in the room.

Quickly obvious on this set is how carefully The Jordanaires were miked and recorded. They are almost subliminal background on the old 45s but here (and to a lesser degree on the DCC edition) you can hear each voice and follow the parts with ease throughout the songs as they add richness and depth to the instrumentation.

You can also hear the differences in the gear and room acoustics of famed Nashville Studio B and equally famous Radio Recorders in L.A. as well as the last few tunes (“In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds”) recorded at Chips Moman’s American Studio in Memphis, which produced so many good sounding hits during its short lifetime between 1967 and 1972.

As the years went by the sound of Elvis’s recordings went from good to fantastic. The two mono sides sound pretty good but when you hit “Love Me Tender,” which begins side three, the sound quality goes up considerably. The simply arranged track was recorded on the 20^th Century Fox soundstage and it’s a sonic gem.

There are so many ways to approach listening to this collection: you can enjoy Elvis’ magnificent and daring voice, you can concentrate on the great musicianship behind him and the wonderful arrangements, most of which I believe were not done using charts, or on the Jordanaires’ work or on the superb engineering, which in those days really was a producer/engineer job as all decisions as to the actual sound were made by the engineer.

That would be the great Bill Porter most of the time here. Elvis and Roy Orbison as well as the Nashville establishment of the 1960s were all lucky to have Porter’s brilliance putting it all down on tape. And we’re lucky to have this out yet again at 45rpm. It sounds better at 45 and spread out on three LPs means the last song on a side ends before the groove radius gets really small. So the last song on the side sounds as good as the first. Compare “It’s Now or Never” ending a five song side at 33 1/3 with it ending a three song one at 45. The sonic differences are dramatic.

All I can say is this set is an Elvis fan’s dream come true. My only complaint is with the packaging. The jacket is thin and the cover art is way-oversaturated (Elvis is too red). Too bad the whole package isn’t as good as the superb mastering and pressing, but don’t let that stop you because mediocre cover art or not, this is destined to be a collector’s item.