Review by Piers Beagley - Elvis Information Network
The quintessential first Elvis Presley album. The first million-selling popular music LP; the world’s first Number One Rock ’n’ Roll album; the in-your-face front-cover photo showing rebellious youth breaking free; the album that changed music history forever. So good that the twelve songs could be split into six separate 45rpms. So good that it was also worthy of three separate four-track EPs.
So what could be better? Well, well, well.. the Kevan Budd remastered deluxe FTD of course! How can music fifty-years old sound so goddamn good?
Most Elvis fans will have bought this LP multiple times already, including the Kevan Budd remastered 2005 release, but it doesn’t matter, as this unbeatable CD features the complete sessions, all the outtakes and more - along with a pristine sound that will rock you out of your seat.
In fact, FTD’s new deluxe release really needs no review - as an Elvis fan you just have to buy it.
All Elvis’ early recorded musical interests are presented here. Country, pop, ballads, delicious rhythm and blues, brand new hits (i.e. ‘Blues Suede Shoes’) and old classics (i.e. ‘Blue Moon’). The interesting thing to note is that with pressure on RCA to produce the first Elvis LP, this is actually a rather cobbled-together affair featuring two RCA sessions as well as roping in five unreleased Sun studio songs. While it seems inevitable that ‘Tryin' To Get To You’ would have been Elvis sixth Sun single, there is no way that Elvis could have imagined the other Sun recordings ever being released, let alone on his first LP.
So from a 2006 audio restorer’s point of view this must be a nightmare to try and make three different types of studio sounds blend correctly.
The first CD presents Elvis’ first LP Elvis Presley, along with the first three classic singles - plus another eighteen outtakes. It is seventy minutes of sheer bliss. Tracks like ‘I Got A Woman’ (two unknown unidentified takes) sounding sensational compared to its previous release on the Platinum box-set. Audio restorer Kevan Budd (Elvis At Sun, Loving You) has worked his usual magic throughout and the sound is magnificent.
Listening to this album I discover something new everyday and today ‘One-Sided Love Affair’ reached out and grabbed me. A Steve Sholes rather than an Elvis choice, the band drag it from its plain country roots and blast it with rock ’n’ roll. Elvis throws in a pile of his (soon to be known) trade-mark vocal mannerisms while pianist Shorty Long plays some mean boogie and an amazing one-note piano solo. Listen to Elvis slide his vocals, imitate a Buddy Holly hiccup, and his whoop of joy @ 01:10 in Shorty Long’s solo. As the song glides to the end, you know that Elvis isn’t happy "I ain’t for no one-sided love affair" but there’s that bold curl in his voice that let’s you know he’s won her over.
Yesterday I couldn’t get enough of ‘Money Honey’ but, let’s face it, all of the eighteen songs here make one feel this way. Every one is two minutes of masterful creative rock ’n’ roll perfection.
The second CD features thirty-four outtakes, most of them from just three songs, but again all essential listening as you eavesdrop on the band and explore the creation of this classic Elvis material.
The sleeve design is excellent and has the correct LP front cover at last (compare it to the incorrect photo cropping on the 2005 version), while the memorabilia, press cuttings and photos are wonderfully presented.
The session information and “Behind The Scenes” details are informative and there is no doubt that the deluxe FTD production values are getting better and better. The original cover photos are used, as opposed to the poor scans in the 2005 version. Unfortunately there’s no art credit on this one, but I guess Ernst Jørgensen and Roger Semon are the designers once again.
Do you need to see or know more? At a double CD for a single CD price, just buy it!
Digging Deeper ...
Fifteen officially unreleased outtakes (plus fragments) are featured here. Many of them have been bootlegged before but in audio quality that hardly counts. And the main thing is to once again get all these essential 1956 recordings in context.
Disc 1
On the first CD we get only two unreleased takes but every minor fragment is included down to an eight second fragment of ‘Money Honey’ - Ahh, if only there was more! Of course the early versions of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ are a delight and it’s fascinating to hear the development as they record ‘I Was The One’ and head towards the more subtle drum arrangement of the final take.
When I reviewed the Flashback FTD (pages 206-211) I stated that ‘I Was The One’ was never the unedited master Take 7 as suggested, so I am pleased to see this CD features both Take 7a and the original single Take 7b. I wasn’t dreaming after all!
Another new unknown take of ‘I Was The One’ ends the first disc. This is a great addition, unfortunately incomplete, as it has a sparser backing vocal arrangement. Check towards the end where Elvis sings, "I’ll never know, who taught her to lie" where there are no backing-vocals at all, unlike on every other take. I wonder if this was a late or early version?
CD2 starts with the “Dry Reverb” tape for ‘I’m Counting On You’. Only two minutes long but a total fascination as we get to hear the session as it sounded just through Elvis’ lone microphone. Listen to this carefully and then go back to the Sun session track ‘I’ll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin’)’ as it then helps reveal even more of the history of Sam Phillips’ slap-back echo when you hear Elvis’ solo vocal electronically echoed back onto the tape.
‘Lawdy, Miss Clawdy’ and all twelve takes follow. The all-important Take 1 with its classic studio build-up was featured on Platinum but here is has even more of that great pre-take build-up that here has not been edited. Elvis gets a correct feeling for the vocal almost immediately, so the takes are fairly similar, but the band take a little longer to catch up. There is, however, some delight in hearing the studio banter and interaction as they go along.
'Lawdy, Miss Clawdy' - Unreleased Take 5 is noteworthy for the delightful messed up Scotty Moore guitar solo and there is also the pure fun of D.J. Fontana‘s slip-up on Take 7 with everyone bursting into laughter. Take 8 soon ends, after less than a minute, but with Elvis announcing, "That’s the best one we’ve done yet!"
It’s also a bonus to hear the pre-take studio build-up "Wait a minute, wait a minute now" just before they record the single master, Take 10.
‘Shake, Rattle And Roll’ similarly took twelve takes. This song is much more interesting as Elvis follows the suggestive lyrics of Big Joe Turner’s original over the more famous Bill Haley and The Comets’ version, and the arrangment also changes as they progress. As Elvis states at the start of a rockin' Take 7, "Hang up that tambourine and go"! Unfortunately the rather managerial Steve Sholes decided that Elvis should cut out the suggestive lyric, "You wear those dresses, the sun comes shining through" after they recorded Take 8.
Several false starts haven’t been released before. On Take 11 Elvis misses the start sighing, "Always the same, we forget our cue." Unreleased Take 12 (a) is a true gem. It has a great sound of Elvis clearly clapping along @ 1.20 and a sensational D.J. Fontana middle-break which is so off-the-wall that Elvis gives up saying, "I can’t come in there Steve!"
The final single (Take 12b) also featured Elvis and the band overdubbing the backing vocals and a real discovery was that the master was actually edited, as well as being overdubbed! On the Take 12b single version the edit appears to be @ 2.10 where it seems a work-part ending has been spliced, or edited in from elsewhere in the take. It certainly doesn’t sound the same ending of earlier takes.
The rather low-key session of ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’ follows. There is interest hearing Elvis mentioning the problem the band had with the flight the night before, getting lost and with fuel problems. Before Take 14 Elvis says, "We catched that old whippet plane - that glider!" It is surprising that he doesn’t sound more upset as they nearly didn’t make it!
At last the cute Take 15 from Elvis - A Legendary Performer Volume 2 gets a CD release. A classic cut, this is where Elvis gets the word order wrong but still keeps going.
The final single was a splice of takes 14 and 17 and it is interesting to hear the unreleased final Take 17 of the session at which point Elvis obviously called it a day.
One final bonus is Elvis’ remarkable and previously unreleased 1956 interview with Radio DJ Don Davis, taken from a syndicated programme from the Gruen Watch company called “Time Hill Frolic”. Here Elvis talks of his clothing, cars, the Jacksonville riots and more.
One highlight is Elvis’ unusual and modest remark that Sam Phillips never recorded his acoustic guitar. "(In the trio) Well, actually there’s only two. I’m just singing. I play the guitar but they don’t record it," he says, when we all know how important Elvis’ guitar playing was to that Sun sound and the birth of rock ’n’ roll. In a perfect understatement Elvis says, "The session was about three blocks from my home. I walked in just by accident and, umm, Boom!"
Verdict
Yet another totally essential FTD. The packaging and sleeve design gets better and better and I discover something new every time I listen to it.
This is the music that changed the world, that made ELVIS the worldwide superstar. I wish I’d been alive to buy the original album in 1956 but 50 years later, incredibly, this is the next best thing.
FTD really give us value for money with all these deluxe double CDs.
If you want to re-live the start of it all - do not miss out.
