My box sets - Elvis Presley

[jhar26]

As an avid collecter I have aquired quite a few box sets over the years. I will display some of them because it will give us something to talk about. I will start with what is the biggest of them all in terms of the number of cd's that it contains. This bad boy contains 60 cd's. 57 that were released as regular albums (including a few compilation albums) and 3 cd's with stuff that isn't on any of the 57 - one for each decade. I was never as huge an Elvis fan as Erik is, but I like his best stuff quite a bit. And the historical importance also played a part in my descision to purchase this. So when I saw a copy on offer for a reasonable price I didn't hesitate.

As expected, it's very much a case of the good, the bad and the ugly. At it's best it's great. At it's worst it's "what was he thinking?" Still, I'm glad to have it.

[jhar26]

Unboxing the box set.

[erik]

Well, it has to be said that this man was arguably the single most important figure in American popular music for the second half of the 20th century, even if most of the films he made, not to mention a fair amount of songs he recorded during the 1960's were (by his own admission) fairly terrible.

I won't question your assessment, Gaston, that this huge box set is a combination of good, bad, and ugly. Elvis did have a fair amount of bad and ugly moments, whether it was the number of mediocre B-grade musicals he made in Hollywood for most of the 1960's, or the number of times he performed in Vegas between 1969 and 1976. The truth of the matter was that he was never particularly secure about his own ability to think for himself, which is why he deferred to one Colonel Tom Parker for a good part of his career; and unfortunately, and this is in the public record, the Colonel was a shyster and a huckster who saw Elvis as a mere money machine, not as the great transformational figure he really was.

By the same token, however, when the King was at his A-game, which was a fair amount of time, he was practically unstoppable, which is what I would hope one takes away from this mammoth box set.

[jhar26]

No matter whether you wanted to make the argument that Elvis is one of the best or worst artists in history, this box set (which are his complete works really) provides you with plenty of material to make your point. The movie soundtracks are for the most part an artistic disaster that progressively got worse and worse. Embarrassing even, some of them. Evis himself got so fed up with them that he did what he should have done all along: He rebelled against the dictates of the colonel. He really didn't have an option anymore because by 1965-1967 he has become litte more than a joke to the fast rising counter culture. But once he did he found that he still had what it takes.

[erik]

It does have to be said that not all of his movie songs were complete clunkers: "Viva Las Vegas", written for his 1964 film of that name by legendary songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, was certainly nothing to sneeze at, and the same could be said for "Can't Help Falling In Love" for his 1961 opus BLUE HAWAII.

It was with the 1968 NBC Special, followed up by a solid recording stint at Chips Moman's American Studios in Memphis, only seven miles from Graceland, that Elvis finally reasserted himself and became relevant again, with four million-selling singles, a pair of great albums (From Elvis In Memphis; From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis) that also sold over a million copies a piece. He still managed to get good material, including many that became hits, right up to the bitter end.

One only wishes he had gone a bit easier on himself and laid off the bad habits--among them, of course, kyboshing The Colonel, who had long since outlived his usefulness.

[jhar26]

The so-called "Colonel" was part crook and part genius. What's undeniable however is that he didn't have a clue about music. What's more, he didn't care that he didn't have a clue about music. As a manager/business man he was billiant though in that he always got his way somehow, anyhow. I think you could compare him to the legendary crook/boxing promotor Don King, although Parker was less flamboyant. To be fair, towards Elvis he was never dishonest in his business dealings. He squeezed every last cent out of record companies, movie makers, concert promotors, etc to the benefit of both Presley and himself. When outsiders told Elvis that Parker got too big a piece of the pie Elvis told that that he knew, but that he didn't mind because he "earned it'" because Parker made him more money than any other manager could have. And that's probably true. The downside was that there was no "art for arts sake" as far as the coloel was concerned. If he could have made a few million by making Elvis record an album full of different arrangements of "Old McDonald Had a Farm" he would have been all for it.