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From Elvis in Memphis

Elvis Presley - From Elvis in Memphis Audio CD

A fair review of the Elvis Presley "From Elvis in Memphis" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Elvis Presley reviews here, or go back to the Elvis Presley tabs.

Band: Elvis Presley
Title: From Elvis in Memphis
Rating:

Release Date: 2009-07-28
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Wearin' That Loved On Look 2: Only The Strong Survive 3: I'll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms) 4: Long Black Limousine 5: It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin' 6: I'm Movin' On 7: Power Of My Love 8: Gentle On My Mind 9: After Loving You 10: True Love Travels On A Gravel Road 11: Any Day Now 12: In The Ghetto 13: I'll Be There (Digitally Remastered) 14: Hey Jude (Digitally Remastered) 15: If I'm A Fool (For Loving You) (Digitally Remastered) 16: Who Am I? (Digitally Remastered) 17: Inherit The Wind (Digitally remastered) 18: This Is The Story (Digitally Remastered) 19: Stranger In My Own Home Town (Digitally Remastered) 20: A Little Bit Of Green (Digitally Remastered) 21: And The Grass Won't Pay No Mind (Digitally Remastered) 22: Do You Know Who I Am (Digitally Remastered) 23: From A Jack To A King (Digitally Remastered) 24: The Fair Is Moving On (Digitally Remastered) 25: You'll Think Of Me (Digitally Remastered) 26: Without Love (There Is Nothing) (Digitally Remastered) 27: In The Ghetto 28: Any Day Now 29: Suspicious Minds 30: Don't Cry Daddy 31: Rubberneckin' 32: Kentucky Rain 33: My Little Friend 34: Mama Liked The Roses

Elvis: THE SERIOUS MODERN ARTIST

For those buying this expecting material that sounds like Hound Dog or Don't Be Cruel, you will be disappointed. There are 3 types of Elvis fans: Those who like the FUN early stuff 50's to mid 60's; Those who like the SERIOUS later stuff (late 60's to his death); and those who like it all. This is Elvis in 1969 doing SERIOUS, more complicated material for an adult contemporary audience. THIS IS ALSO AMONG HIS BEST MATERIAL. Actually, this album is unique among all other elvis albums. Elvis never did material like this again or with this same texture. It was his return to serious music and one can hear in his voice that he was really showing a side to himself that had been dormant (if not undiscovered) previously.

While Elvis had most of his landmark fun songs in the 50s & early 60's, he had his serious, more vocally challenging songs in the 70's. Listen to his voice doing a ballad in 1955 (blue moon) vs My Way from 1977. Sounds like 2 different artists. His later voice (even beyond this album prior to his death) was that of someone with a range of an opera singer.

So, if you have never ventured into serious material, this is a place to start, however, I would recommend Elvis Thats The Way It Is (and seeing the documentary of the same name) before listening to this album. There needs to be a transition for some fans when they break away from the 50's stuff and mature into his later music.

Phenomenal
I never heard it before so I bought it with my eyes closed, because I'm a fan. The album is great. From the first song I heard I said to myself "man I already like it". This album really rocks. It's even better than what most people say. It makes a great addition to my collection. It's a must have for any rock fan out there.

From Elvis in Memphis
Amazon made affordable to buy it on CD, It's the very best from Elvis. I have this album on vinyl.

More than just for the fans
, is painted with master strokes. We all know about the "Follow That Dream" RCA subsidiary, where a comprehensive picture of a recording session or soundtrack, etc.
Here is Elvis' studio comeback album from 1969. The last comeback album was "Elvis Is Back", nine years back. Both albums are masterpieces; both could have sold even more. Who knows why?
Although there are classics throughout his career, and yes, in that "lean period" as well, these cuts must have meant alot more than "get me back on the charts".
His singing on every single song is astonishing. He suddenly jumps to falsetto on "Any Day Now", and his final "don't fly away!" is enough to bring a hardened criminal to confess to all his crimes.
The mono mixes are sure to bring out that nostalgic feeling - that feeling, at the time, that I think I'll put away that Paradise, Hawaiian Style album for a while. ("Sand Castles" was beautiful, though).
So here's another five big ones: It's gotta be *5* if I could get through "Hey Jude". (Sorry, fellow fans).

The Original , but better, better, this one the best!

They did. Hello music lovers,

In January 1956, just days after attaining age 21, Elvis Presley invented something that did not exist in the world before: a pop version of a blending of blues, R&B, Gospel, a tinge of C&W to make a new sound that he hoped people would like all over the world. The song was "Heartbreak Hotel. " He had already lived out the song, as he usually did {excepting those "movies"}, but it was this new SOUND he was making: it didn't have a name yet, but he knew what he wanted. The record made him a King, but the sound would not have a name for some time.

It's called soul: a blend of gospel, blues, R&B, some C&W lyricism that has enough of a "pop" gloss to it to attract people from all corners of music throughout the world. And ya gotta FEEL it! He struggled for years after leaving the heavy-handed approach of Sun's Sam Phillips to make this ideal sound. That struggle resulted in bunches and bunches of great recordings. But none like this one from his "comeback" era {'68-'70}: "From Elvis in Memphis. " The "Stranger in {his} Own Hometown" returned in January and February of 1969 to take the brilliance of an adolescent genius and transform it into some of the greatest artistic masterpieces in the history of recorded music. By then of course, it had a name. But not this particular voice or creative vision.

On "From Elvis in Memphis" you hear the very sound of what Memphis had to have felt like to Elvis in early 1969. You hear him pick through the ashes of his "town"'s broken dreams, struggling for hope and rebirth. It amazing: a musical document{ary} of a man, a time, and a once-great city. But it's much more than an documentary: it is the truth that great art reveals. {Yes, of course, the title could have been more creative: how about simply "Memphis Dreams" with "Elvis Presley's" in small writing above it. And the original back photograph with the yellow sweater-jacket is definitely NOT indicative of the history in these grooves. } Would it have cost RCA Victor back then too much to photograph Elvis on what was left of Beale Street in post-1968 Memphis? Just let him walk, sit, look up, look down, whatever, and with some black&white film, just snap away until they got "THE" picture to go with the music?
Why, of course it would have been too much for them to do for him. But the work is so strong that it actually didn't matter: not in the long run. Sure, perhaps the lame cover art {especially the back!} probably harmed both chart position and any hope of a Grammy nomination or award, but it's been 40 years since that young man walked into that little pink "dump" of a building and said "man, what a funky studio"! He loved it.
The first song he tore into may have been the best: a not-very-well-known country plaint about a loved one leaving the folks back home for {his} "dream" in the big city. In a country song, there's gotta be sadness, so the innocent youngster, corrupted by The Big City, comes back later in a hearse. Sounds corny, huh? Well, you'll have to listen, then. Elvis Presley struggles, with brutal honesty, to an extremely powerful full-on southern soul arrangement - but with Chips Moman's perfectionistic care to remove anything non-essential and leave a beautifully doomed and stark ambiance that turns the country weeper into a powerful backdrop for Elvis's unimaginably electrifying vocals. If Elvis Presley had written every word, note, and chord, and had this arrangement {which he helped shape}, it would have been EXACTLY THE SAME.

Someone once complained of a book by a thoughtful friend that it did not explain Elvis's "politics. " Those "politics" are here on these sessions, which are a coherent statement about "dreams turned to ashes and gone" {"Without Love"}, which is so strong it actually carries the morbid, but strangely hopeful spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 's final speech the night before his murder not far from where Elvis grew up, and not far from the little pink studio. The speech was given in the old Ellis auditorium, where Elvis used to go to thrill to ecstatic shouts of gospel fervor in the all-night sings there as a teen through his very early 20s. On this masterful work, Elvis looks at his world and his place in it and struggles to pick through those "ashes" to "be a man {and} take a stand" {"Only the Strong Survive"} in search of the "better world" he sang of in "If I Can Dream" about six months earlier. By the end of the following year, he gave up, both personally and politically. All he seemed to care about, by then, was scoring dope without getting busted {especially if his one last dream: touring the world, could actually come true -- of course, it did not}.

He wasn't the only one: by the early '70s, popular music was slipping into a malaise that would claim both souls and lives. Elvis sang a song about that, too: it was called "Where Did They Go, Lord?" and was, in his hands, a powerful cry of despair over the loss of youthful idealism and hope. Back in 1956, he was proud to tell a newspaper reporter in New York City that he would be voting {his first time!} for Adlai Stevenson because "man, he knows the most" although he didn't "dig the intellectual bit. " The reporter probed a little deeper asked about the draft and its necessity in cold war times. Elvis said the words he would regret 'till the morning of his death: "there should be no draft!" A little over a year later, he cried in Sun records singer Barbara Pittman's arms after picking up his own draft notice. {It was NOT his idea to pick it up himself: he was told to do so, and realizing there was no way out, anyway, he did. It was a few days before Christmas. } Yeah, Parker saw some publicity potential in the thing, but in truth, he did not want his charge so close to his true homeland in the Netherlands. Parker claimed to have Great Powers with people in Washington, but he was, as one observer astutely put it, like the actor Frank Morgan, who played the powerless little man behind the curtain pretending to be the all-powerful Wizard of Oz. Only difference was that Elvis never quite saw him that way, or felt he WAS trapped. Parker had every little mistake the Presley's had ever made neatly collected and ready for distribution should Elvis ever try to tell him he's through. Elvis and his father were both insecure enough to believe he could destroy them when he could not {he plenty to hide, himself}.

Yes, Elvis Presley should have faced his mammoth insecurities and taken complete creative control of his material at this time. I mean COMPLETE, as in sitting in a room and not coming out until he'd written some real songs without any collaboration, and certainly without his defense mechanism of using profanity to kill the release of almost any of his very own feelings in song: the Rolling Stones' first manager locked them in a kitchen and they wrote "As Tears Go By" -- not their best, but it got them started. It's not rocket science, and Elvis understood songs from the inside out. {He apologized later in '69 to Johnny Tillotson [sp?] for changing some lyrics, which left Tillotson stunned -- at the apology. } If Parker actually had listened to any music after, say, Follies of 1920, he would have known such an action was necessary at this time, but that would be like asking RCA to have taken some real photos for the first great album from these sessions -- and liner notes, too! On this record, it didn't matter. Instead, they paired a second batch of songs {mostly excellent} with a live Vegas album for an appropriately tacky two-fer. Elvis should have been playing Carnegie Hall first.

In any case, it's all THAT GOOD. Get out your debit card and buy it!
rm.

You can see a complete list of all Elvis Presley discography, or go back to the Elvis Presley tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.