‘Best Ofs’ and ‘Greatest Hits’ packages abound, but hit singles are merely a snapshot in time. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to see what else was going on during the life of those hit singles.
With this 2xCD, sixty-five track compilation, you get the best of both worlds and you get an insight into how things worked when the record business was a far less corporate animal via the inclusion of tracks issued on LPs that only saw the inside of a record shop in Brazil and France.
The second CD is where you’ll find two of Elvis’s hit collections, Elvis’s Golden Records from 1958 and Volume 2 of that title as issued in Britain in 1960.
It’s worth adding here that Volume 2 was known as 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong in America where it had far fewer tracks than on the British release. It’s on these two LPs that you’ll find Hound Dog, All Shook Up, Heartbreak Hotel, Teddy Bear, One Night, Jailhouse Rock and Treat Me Nice among others, while on CD 1 you get Elvis as he was when he recorded at Sun Records. Blue Suede Shoes, Shake Rattle And Roll, Lawdy Miss Clawdy and Mystery Train offer a more raw Elvis.
In France they got recordings from 1954 and 1955, Baby Let’s Play House, Milkcow Blues and You’re A Heartbreaker and from Elvis’s first LP issued in Brazil, Good Rockin’ Tonight and Blue Moon of Kentucky, again recorded between ’54 and ’56. The nine tracks from those LPs are a real bonus.
Here’s two and a half hours of rock ‘n’ roll stardust; plenty of Elvis’s hits and a glimpse of what else the King was up to at the time.
Four Classic Albums Plus
Avid Rock ‘n’ Roll : AMSC1384.
Author: AUSTIN POWELL
Austin Powell has spent his entire working life in the music business. From being an agent and manager of ‘beat groups’ in the sixties to working for major record companies in the seventies and eighties, he has also held management positions at radio stations in England, Wales and on the Isle Of Man. He continues to act as a consultant to several record companies and artists and presents a weekly 'oldies' show on Monday evenings on 101.8 WCR FM in Wolverhampton.
