Elvis Presley

      Elvis Presley (RCA, 1956)
      Elvis (RCA, 1956)
      Elvis' Christmas Album (RCA, 1957)
      Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 1 (RCA, 1958)
      His Hand in Mine (RCA, 1969)
      50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong: Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 2 (RCA, 1960)
    Blue Hawaii (RCA, 1961)
(expanded, with 14 bonus tracks)
     Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 3 (RCA, 1963)
      How Great Thou Art (RCA, 1967)
      Elvis (TV Special)
(RCA, 1968)
     Elvis' Golden Records, Vol. 4 (RCA, 1968)
      From Elvis in Memphis (RCA, 1969)
     On Stage—February, 1970 (RCA, 1970)
     Elvis in Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada (RCA, 1970)
     Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas (RCA, 1971)
      He Touched Me (RCA, 1972)
   As Recorded at Madison Square Garden (RCA, 1972)
    Aloha from Hawaii (Via Satellite)
(RCA, 1973)
   From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (RCA, 1976)
    Moody Blue (RCA, 1977)
     Memories of Christmas (RCA, 1982)
     Elvis' Gold Records, Vol. 5 (RCA, 1984)
      Known Only to Him: Elvis Gospel, 1957–1971 (RCA, 1989)
     The Million Dollar Quartet (RCA, 1990)
      The King of Rock 'n' Roll: The Complete '50s Masters (RCA, 1992)
      The Top Ten Hits (RCA, 1987)
    Christmas Classics (RCA, 1992)
     Blue Christmas (RCA, 1992)
      From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential '60s Masters (RCA, 1993)
      Amazing Grace: His Greatest Sacred Songs (RCA, 1994)
      If Every Day Was Like Christmas (RCA, 1994)
     Heart and Soul (RCA, 1995)
     Command Performances: The Essential '60s Masters II (RCA, 1995)
      Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential '70s Masters (RCA, 1995)
     Elvis 56 (1996; RCA, 2003)
    Great Country Songs (RCA, 1996)
     An Afternoon in the Garden (RCA, 1997)
     Platinum: A Life In Music (RCA, 1997)
    Greatest Jukebox Hits (RCA, 1997)
    A Touch of Platinum, Vol. 2 (RCA, 1998)
     Rhythm and Country (RCA, 1998)
     Tiger Man (RCA, 1998)
     Memories: The '68 Comeback Special (RCA, 1998)
      Sunrise (RCA, 1999)
    The Home Recordings (RCA, 1999)
     Suspicious Minds (RCA, 1999)
     Tomorrow Is a Long Time (RCA, 1999)
     Artist of the Century (RCA, 1999)
     Burning Love (RCA, 1999)
    The Collection (RCA, 1999)
     Can't Help Falling in Love: The Hollywood Hits (1999; RCA, 2003)
    It's Christmas Time (RCA, 1999)
     That's the Way It Is: Special Edition (RCA, 2000)
      Peace in the Valley: The Complete Gospel Recordings (RCA, 2000)
    White Christmas (RCA, 2000)
     Elvis Ballads, Vol. 2 (RCA, 2001)
    Live in Las Vegas (RCA, 2001)
     The 50 Greatest Love Songs (RCA, 2001)
     The Country Side of Elvis (RCA, 2001)
     He Is My Everything: The Gospel Series (RCA, 2001)
     Today, Tomorrow & Forever (RCA, 2002)
      30 #1 Hits (BMG, 2003)
    Christmas Duets (RCA, 2008)

There was no model for Elvis Presley's success; what Sun Records head Sam Phillips sensed was something in the wind, an inevitable outgrowth of all the country and blues he was recording at his Union Avenue studio. Enter Presley in 1954, bringing with him a musical vocabulary rich in country, country blues, gospel, inspirational music, bluegrass, traditional country, and popular music—as well as a host of emotional needs that found their most eloquent expression in song. His timing was impeccable, not only as a vocalist, but with regard to the cultural zeitgeist: emerging in the first blush of America's postwar ebullience, Presley captured the spirit of a country flexing its industrial muscle, of a generation unburdened by the concerns of war, younger, more mobile, more affluent, and better educated than any that had come before.

The Sun recordings tower over Presley's later work, which, exemplary as most of it was, could not possibly have the overweening and broad import of his explosive first sessions. These were the first salvos in an undeclared war on segregated radio stations nationwide. (His initial Sun single, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" b/w "That's All Right, Mama," was released in 1954, the same year the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools and Dr. Martin Luther King arrived in Montgomery to take the pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Overnight, it seemed, "race music," as the music industry had labeled the work of black artists, became a thing of the past, as did the pejorative "hillbilly" music. Suddenly Elvis Presley could be heard fusing musical styles on stations that would also play Ray Charles or Al Hibbler, who in turn might follow Ernest Tubb, who might follow Jo Stafford or Tony Bennett.

The Sun years, once represented by The Complete Sun Sessions, have been given a makeover on disc by way of the double-CD Sunrise collection. Unlike the previous Sun collection's random track order, Sun-rise features one disc devoted entirely to 19 original takes; the second disc features the alternate takes, live cuts from 1955, and four tantalizing private demos recorded in 1953 and 1954. The other essential document from the Sun era is the legendary Million Dollar Quartet session, a December 4, 1956, summit meeting of Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash that took place during one of Perkins' hottest Sun sessions. We hear Elvis telling the others of an exciting new R&B singer whose act he had caught in Las Vegas. "He was out there cuttin' it, man," Elvis exclaims, "and I was goin' way up in the air! I went back four nights straight, man." The singer was Jackie Wilson, then a member of Billy Ward's Dominoes, and the song Elvis was so excited about having heard this young singer perform was his own "Don't Be Cruel."

In late 1955 Sam Phillips sold Elvis' recording contract to RCA in order to keep his own business running. The artist spent the rest of his career on RCA, and since his death in 1977 the label has fed the Elvis industry with numerous reissues and box sets; has reconfigured studio albums with bonus tracks to the point where the original configurations no longer exist in the form remembered by millions of fans whose connection with Elvis predates the CD era; has deleted almost all of the Sixties soundtrack albums (placing the key tracks on box sets and themed single-disc albums); and has issued so many themed albums (e.g., Great Country Songs, Heart and Soul) that it's hard to keep track of them all.

Wading through all this is a daunting task, but the bottom line on Elvis' in-print recordings is that the quality remains high, whether it's a roiling Sun track from the early Fifties or one of his final recordings, such as 1977's "Moody Blue." The discography here represents the albums RCA shows as being in print, but a visit to a record store or an online retailer will reveal numerous other, supposedly deleted titles in stock as well, including almost all of the movie soundtracks, which RCA reissued in the '90s as twofer CDs (the best of the bunch being Viva Las Vegas/Roustabout, which contain some of Elvis's finest studio performances of the Sixties). Being an out-of-print Elvis album seems to be a temporary condition at best. Also, the shops at Graceland will from time to time offer special, limited edition CD titles unavailable anywhere else on the planet. With that in mind, the lay of the land looks something like this:

Studio and Live Albums:

Elvis' first two RCA albums remain two of the finest rock & roll albums ever released. The reissues from 1999 replete with bonus tracks don't alter that fact, but will frustrate anyone who grew up remembering Elvis Presley kicking off with a rousing cover of Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" or the first sound on the monumental Elvis being D.J. Fontana's swinging cymbal intro to "Rip It Up." The bonus tracks represent songs that were hit singles but nonalbum tracks at the time of the original albums' releases. The big question is why the sequencing of the albums couldn't have been retained and the bonus tracks added to the end of the CD. It's an insult to an album that was great in 1956 and has lost none of its luster in the ensuing 48 years.

That said, both Elvis Presley and Elvis are essential for fans, even though each album's tracks are also available on the essential box set, The King of Rock 'n' Roll: The Complete '50s Masters. Elvis Presley is a statement nonetheless of Elvis' deep roots in Americana, and of the remarkable chemistry among Elvis and his trusted musical trio, guitarist Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and drummer D.J. Fontana (with RCA house producer Chet Atkins sitting in on rhythm guitar). The fare roams from country into pop ("Blue Moon"), R&B (Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman," the Drifters' "Money Honey"), blues, and the jet-fueled rockabilly Elvis had sculpted into rock & roll ("Blue Suede Shoes").

Elvis is even more impressive. This was Elvis' first total RCA album effort, and it couldn't have come out any better. The cover photo of a backlit, crooning Elvis in profile in a cool, light purple shirt, hair slicked back, strumming a guitar, is eye-catching in its warm tones and simple presentation. The uncredited liner notes, by an RCA staff member named Chick Crumpacker, are among the smartest ever written in the Fifties. Rather than crack wise and jivey about the new teen idol, Crumpacker made a sober, sensible case for Elvis as a folksinger extending into the contemporary R&B field, a tradition established by Jimmie Rodgers, and noted the influence of important Southern gospel quartets of the day on Elvis' style. The song selections include three Little Richard covers ("Rip It Up," "Long Tall Sally," "Ready Teddy"), Leiber and Stoller's dramatic ballad "Love Me," jazzman Joe Thomas' laconic, swinging "Anyplace Is Paradise," Red Foley's heart-tugging tale of a boy and his dog, "Old Shep"—which Elvis had first performed in 1945 at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show—and Aaron Schroeder and Ben Wiseman's poignant love song, "First in Line," which produced one of Elvis' most deeply felt balladeering performances (despite doing 27 takes of the song before he was satisfied). With each cut Elvis' mastery as an interpreter becomes more breathtaking, his command of nuance and subtlety (the vulnerability in his voice in "First in Line," the strength he exudes in "Ready Teddy") more astonishing in so young an artist. He was deep inside every song on Elvis, maybe more so than he ever would be again until his 1969 masterpiece, From Elvis in Memphis.

Years later, at the moment he was in danger of becoming a rock relic, Presley bid adieu to Hollywood and returned to live performing. The public found out about this in a dramatic way, when, on December 3, 1968, Elvis' face filled TV screens everywhere, his eyes set in a commanding glare, and he snarled, "If you're lookin' for trouble/you came to the right place." Tough and unequivocal, "Trouble" set the tone for an evening in which Presley reasserted his primacy as a rock & roll artist. His ammo was blues, gospel, and powerhouse rock & roll; in the special's most memorable sequence, he played live in the round with his former band members Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana (and other friends, including his army buddy guitarist Charlie Hodge, who in the Seventies would be noted mostly for handing Elvis his scarves onstage), all of them rocking out on some of the songs Elvis made famous back in the day. He showed even greater command of ballad stylings in goosebump-raising versions of "Memories" and "Love Me Tender," added an appropriate seasonal touch in his signature Christmas song, "Blue Christmas," and revealed a hitherto-unexpressed social conscience in closing the show without comment, but instead offering a dramatic reading of "If I Can Dream." It was a performance of emotional grandeur and historical resonance, Presley refusing to be discarded by the music he helped create and seizing his moment with a fury that remains astonishing still.

While the triumph of the TV special was still fresh in the public consciousness, Presley returned with one of the finest studio albums of his career in 1969's From Elvis in Memphis. Recording in January 1969 at Memphis' famed American Sound Studio, Presley produced 21 usable tracks in less than a week, with another 14 tracks cut in six nights a month later. Elvis enlisted as his producer the flamboyant Chips Moman, whose own history in the Bluff City dated back to the formation of Stax Records. With a house band that included some of the city's best players (including a large horn section and a female background chorus that became a defining feature of Elvis' Seventies concerts), Moman fashioned an album that was conceptually and aesthetically whole, integrating strings and other interesting instrumental flourishes seamlessly with the rock-solid core provided by a basic Southern soul band. From Elvis in Memphis finds the artist moving with grace and ease from Jerry Butler's forthright, gospel-tinged advisory "Only the Strong Survive" to John Hartford's languorous "Gentle on My Mind," and he goes on to assay in compelling fashion Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On," Johnny Tillotson's "It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin'," and Chuck Jackson's "Any Day Now," closing it out with another barbed bit of social commentary in the form of Mac Davis' "In the Ghetto." The definitive take on the Memphis sessions is provided by Suspicious Minds, the most complete document of those critical recordings. Nine alternate takes of classics such as "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto" illuminate the critical choices that resulted in some of the most memorable recordings of Elvis' entire career.

In 1973 Elvis was back in the studio in Memphis, but this time at the Mecca of Southern soul, the Stax studio, where over the course of 12 days he fashioned not hit records but some interesting excursions into his singular style of contemporary country fused with R&B, gospel, blues, and rock & roll. Eighteen of those cuts form the Stax sessions overview Rhythm and Country, ranging from the beautiful pop ballad popularized by Al Martino, "Spanish Eyes," to Jerry Reed's rambunctious "Talk About the Good Times" to Dottie Rambo's soaring song of faith and inspiration "If That Isn't Love."

As his comeback mirrored his arrival nearly two decades earlier, so did the live albums of the Seventies approximate the movie years of the Sixties—that is, wildly uneven, sporadically uninspired, but nonetheless replete with startling, penetrating performances on occasion. On the road Presley expanded the sound Moman had crafted during the Memphis sessions, adding a full orchestra behind a crack band that included the estimable James Burton on guitar, Glen D. Hardin on piano, Ronnie Tutt on drums, and Jerry Scheff on bass; in addition, he employed male and female gospel groups. On Stage—February 1970 (now featuring six bonus tracks) and Elvis in Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada are indicative of the hard edge common to those early-Seventies shows—coming off his celebrated TV special, Elvis is lean and hungry, intensely engaged at every moment in his concerts.

By 1972, though, the concerts had become ritual anointings and the music spotty. Still, Elvis cut some great singles in the Seventies, and the live versions of "Suspicious Minds" and "Burning Love" invariably were highlights, even when much of the rest of the fare was mostly rote. The 1973 Aloha from Hawaii televised spectacular brought out the best in Elvis, as he delivers, before an international audience connected by satellite, his finest self-defining treatment of Mickey Newbury's "American Trilogy"—a rich weaving of "All My Trials," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and "Dixie" that spoke to Presley's Southern pride and sense of mortality—and concludes with a bombastic, Baroque finale that becomes a jaw-dropping showcase of vocal muscle on Presley's part. Elvis' celebrated Madison Square Garden show from 1972 was finally issued as An Afternoon in the Garden, 25 years following the show in question, and spotlights a commanding if not transcendent performance.

The 1968 comeback special is the focus of two recent overviews, Tiger Man and Memories: The '68 Comeback Special. The former captures the second of the two in-the-round sets filmed for the special, whereas the latter is a double-CD expanded version of the original soundtrack album, fleshed out with 22 previously unissued recordings. It's a valuable document, but more for fanatics, historians, and completists than the casual Elvis fan, for whom the original will suffice.

Gospel Albums:

Arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time, throughout his career Elvis put the Word into the culture, and he's really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs. Gospel pervaded Elvis' character and was a defining and enduring influence all of his days. Even in his sad last years, when he was ballooning to unrecognizability and shuffling around in a druggy haze, he always delivered the goods in concert when it came time to perform "How Great Thou Art."

The individual albums Elvis cut in his lifetime are all magnificent, moving testimonies of a man's deep and abiding faith in God and God's word. His Hand in Mine is closest to the country church Elvis knew as a lad in its spare arrangements and scintillating blend of quartet voices, with "Working on a Building" and the potent "In My Father's House" ranking with the finest gospel performances he ever committed to tape. How Great Thou Art (Elvis' only Grammy winner ever, for Best Engineered Album) features a bigger band than its predecessor and even more of a pop feel, certainly by way of its hit single, a cover of the Orioles' "Crying in the Chapel." On each cut here Elvis is given splendid vocal support by the Imperials Quartet, who are especially effective on the dramatic "Somebody Bigger Than You and I" and "Where Could I Go But to the Lord," a song that surfaced again in a production number on the 1968 comeback special.

From its first cut to its twelfth and last cut, 1971's He Touched Me is a wonder, featuring great songs and powerful performances by Elvis and the Imperials Quartet. Even with well-worn testimonials such as "Amazing Grace" and "Bosom of Abraham," He Touched Me has a buoyant, light spirit about it, and you can sense the depth of all the singers' commitment to the material. Elvis' version of "An Evening Prayer" rivals that of Mahalia Jackson, and the Jerry Reed–penned country-pop treatise, "A Thing Called Love," gets a nice, bouncy treatment worthy of repeat listenings.

Beyond the individual studio albums, it's almost pick-'em with the excellent anthologies of Elvis' gospel music. The big enchilada of the bunch is Peace in the Valley: The Complete Gospel Recordings, a three-CD collection that encompasses all the recordings from the three studio albums, a host of previously unreleased alternate takes, and an entire disc compiled from various sources, such as the Million Dollar Quartet session, "the Ed Sullivan Show" (featuring the national debut of "Peace in the Valley"), and the gospel medley from the 1968 comeback special.

If that's too much ephemera, check out the double-CD Amazing Grace: His Greatest Sacred Songs, which is tightly focused on the official studio releases, starting with the four cuts that fleshed out the B-side of Elvis' first Christmas album (including "Peace in the Valley"), winding through 54 other cuts from the three gospel LPs, before concluding with a septet of songs comprised of two live recordings (including a powerful reading of "How Great Thou Art") and five previously unreleased songs—not least of all the full version of "Lead Me, Guide Me," the song featured in a scene from the documentary, Elvis: That's the Way It Is, in which Elvis and J.D. Sumner and the Stamps do a verse and chorus at the piano between shows. A truncated overview of the gospel highlights is provided by He Is My Everything: The Gospel Series, with 14 tracks from Elvis' gospel catalogue, the highlight being an informal performance of "The Lord's Prayer." The 2008 Christmas Duets album mixes archival Elvis performances with newly recorded vocals from Carrie Underwood, Gretchen Wilson and LeAnn Rimes on songs like "Blue Christmas" and "Silent Night."

Compilations:

The various compilations in the Presley catalogue offer both greatest-hits surveys and single-genre spotlights. The standard-bearer of this category is the wonderful five-volume series of Elvis' Golden Records (Vol. 5 is titled "Gold" records, but it's part of the same series as the first four volumes), all of which have been remastered and expanded with bonus cuts. Even in their original 12-song editions, these volumes were a great way for the Elvis fan to follow the arc of the King's career, from "Heartbreak Hotel" to "Moody Blue," even though there is little in the way of liner copy to offer any critical perspective on the work. The music speaks volumes, though, and with each disc having additional tracks, the portrait of the artist through the years is more complete and complex.

For Elvis newbies who want cheaper options, look to the 38-track, double-CD Top Ten Hits, which spotlights every Top Ten hit of Presley's career or 30 #1 Hits. Both skip over huge parts chunks of Elvis' story, but what's there is choice. For the tender, romantic side of Elvis, nothing beats the superb ballad performances to be found on Heart and Soul, Elvis Ballads, Vol. 2, and, most highly recommended, The 50 Greatest Love Songs. Great Country Songs and the 51-track overview, The Country Side of Elvis, show him at ease with almost every style of country music and, on a more interesting note, incorporating pop influences in a way that only enhances the country elements in his arrangements—something contemporary mainstream Nashville has yet to learn. Released originally in 1996 and remixed (with the same tracks; no bonus cuts here) in 2003, Elvis 56 is heavily weighted toward material that appeared on Presley's first two studio albums, supplemented by nonalbum singles, including such key entries as "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel," "Too Much," "Any Way You Want Me," and "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You." The material favors Elvis' R&B/blues bent, ranging from covers of a couple of Little Richard hits, Lloyd Price's R&B boiler "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman," two Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup tunes, and the first of many Leiber and Stoller songs in the Presley canon, including "Love Me" as well as "Hound Dog."

Movie Albums:

If any aspect of Presley's career is more readily dismissed than his movies, it would be the music in those 33 films (including two documentaries). But even the least among the films often featured a couple of interesting songs that Elvis made the most of, and a good number of bona fide hits sprang from the soundtracks—sometimes well after the fact: witness 2002's surprise hit remix of "A Little Less Conversation" from the soundtrack of Live a Little, Love a Little. Twenty-two soundtrack songs comprise Can't Help Falling in Love, a remixed, remastered reissue of a 1999 anthology. Elvis' favorite writers are well represented: Leiber and Stoller are on board with five classics (including three title songs: "Jailhouse Rock," "Loving You," and "King Creole"); Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman are here with the exquisite, exciting, and right-on "Viva Las Vegas"; Otis Blackwell is cowriter of three terrific songs, including "Return to Sender" and "One Broken Heart for Sale"; and three songs from the pens of Fred Wise and Ben Weisman are featured, most notably the self-affirming "Follow That Dream." Nothing here will ignite an aesthetic reassessment of the movies in question, but these tracks prove that the "movie years," far from being a waste, found Elvis producing a lot of good music, not all of which has ever been properly acknowledged for the excellent work it is.

A compilation that might well have been titled "essential" is the 18-track Tomorrow Is a Long Time, which gathers 18 tough tracks from Elvis' Sixties precomeback years. Anyone who has studied Elvis' soundtrack recordings from that time knows that in between "(There's) No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car" and "He's Your Uncle, Not Your Dad," Elvis was filling out the LPs with some spirited, committed vocal performances. This disc represents a healthy portion of those cuts, although the best release in this vein is no longer in print—The Lost Album. But Tomorrow Is a Long Time is a winner, whether it's in tender ballad performances of "Love Letters" or Eddy Arnold's country classic "You Don't Know Me"; hard-charging rock & roll on the order of a gritty take on Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" (which might be heard as a metaphor for Elvis' career at that point); Jerry Reed's "Guitar Man," Willie Dixon's "Big Boss Man," or certainly the sensitive treatment he gives Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time."

Box Sets: RCA has done right by Elvis in the box set department. Apart from the $400-plus, 30-CD The Collection and the 30-disc, velvet-covered Blue Suede Shoes Collection, the various Elvis boxes are solid, reasonably priced journeys through an amazing career, and there are enough options to satisfy the hard-core fan who collects everything as well as those on a limited budget who still want a sense of a towering 20th-Century artist's career arc.

The three key boxes are 1992's The King of Rock 'n' Roll: The Complete '50s Masters, 1993's From Nashville to Memphis: The Essential '60s Masters, and 1995's Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential '70s Masters. Note that only one of the three is billed as Complete; the Sixties box omits soundtrack and gospel recordings (which are available in other collections—in fact, the double-disc Command Performances: The Essential '60s Masters II is nothing but soundtrack highlights, as a supplement to the first '60s box), whereas the five-CD Seventies box breaks down into two discs of singles, two of studio essentials, and a live show comprised of highlights from several concert dates. Still, in three multiple-CD boxes, these collections offer a breathtaking journey through the Elvis era, even without the soundtrack music (although the Fifties box does include the three songs Elvis performed in Love Me Tender) and the gospel. Well annotated and profusely illustrated, these boxes are model presentations of a monumental body of work.

The four-CD Platinum: A Life in Music is consistently interesting, but it's a completist's package, as most of its 100 tracks are alternate takes of material ranging from the Sun years to "Way Down" from the Moody Blue sessions. Platinum's big selling point upon release was the inclusion of a 1954 demo of "I'll Never Stand In Your Way," with a tentative but bristling Elvis accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. You can hear the pent-up energy in his voice, the sense of wanting to break free of the song and soar, and it's exhilarating, knowing what was indeed to come only a short while later. Five months following the release of Platinum: A Life in Music came a sequel, A Touch of Platinum, Vol. 2, a two-disc set featuring 44 of the 50 tracks on discs two and three of its predecessor, with 18 of the tracks being alternate takes. Mark this one for completists only. A juggernaut of hits defines the three-CD Artist of the Century box, released in 1999. A self-contained alternative to the various Golden Records volumes, the set begins with "That's All Right" from 1954 and winds up three discs and 74 cuts later in 1976, with "For the Heart." Curiously "Kentucky Rain" (not merely one of his best Seventies singles, but one of his best ever) and "Moody Blue" are absent.

One of the weirder boxes in the catalogue is 2002's Today, Tomorrow & Forever. Over the course of 100 tracks on four discs, this collection focuses on alternate takes, soundtrack recordings, and live recordings. A show taped in Arkansas on May 6, 1956, is the big news: as it shows Elvis, newly ensconced at RCA and with his star still ascending, fiery but in command, already a polished pro in his presentation but very much the Hillbilly Cat in his attitude and energy. The title song is one of the Lost Album cuts that features some exceedingly sensitive singing on Elvis' part.

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