Elvis Presley - Young Man With The Big Beat 5 CD Box-Set - Elvis new DVD and CDs Elvis Presley FTD Bootleg Import Live Concert CD and DVD - Elvis Presley Rare DVD and CDs Elvis Live Concert On Tour DVD Outtakes

In '56, he became a teen heartthrob across America but, to his dismay, was denounced from pulpits and in the media for his unleashed music and gyrating stage movements.

By year-end, he'd starred in his first film, Love Me Tender, singing its theme and three other songs.

As the year began, songwriters weren't yet tailoring their tunes for him, and he was largely relying on covers. Comparing earlier acts' versions of his '56 songs we see what an innovator he was. He turned Eddy Arnold's 1952 waltz 'When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again' into pure rockabilly. 'Love Me' (on the 45 EP and 33 LP Elvis) has the rare distinction of making the pop top 10 without being released on a single. An early Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller composition, it had previously been done as a shuffle by Willie & Ruth (in R&B), Jimmie Rodgers Snow (in country) and Georgia Gibbs (in pop), though nobody's version dented the charts. Elvis' tastes were so eclectic that there's no telling whose rendition he'd heard (maybe even all of them), but he slowed it to a dirge and melodramatically milked its lines for every drop of emotion like no one before him. People might assume that he'd gotten 'Hound Dog' (another early Leiber/Stoller venture) from Big Mama Thornton, but the box's time line says that he picked it up from Freddie Bell when they played Vegas simultaneously.

The second studio disc closes with Love Me Tender's title track (an adaptation of the folk song 'Aura Lee'), 'Poor Boy', 'Let Me' and 'We're Gonna Move.' Elvis and Vera Matson (wife of the film's music director, Ken Darby) are credited with writing all four. But according to recently published Ain't No Grave: The Life And Legacy Of Brother Claude Ely by Ely's great nephew Macel Ely II, 'Move' simply secularized Pentecostal preacher/singer Claude Ely's roaring hymn 'There's A Leak In This Old Building'.

Elvis' record library included Ely's platters. And back in Mississippi, Gladys Presley had taken her young son to guitar-slinging Ely's emotion-drenched services with their gyrating worshipers. Macel Ely states that Elvis' stage movements were part of the Holiness church he grew up in, though amid this box set's interviews Presley says he didn't learn them from anyone but rather created them on his own.

The live disc's three shows come from a Louisiana youth center, an Arkansas auditorium and Vegas – talk about reflecting a career in transition. All their songs are on studio recordings and the audio isn't always the greatest, but we get to hear Elvis' playful side. As his mid-‘50s girlfriend Wanda Jackson once said, aside from his career, 'In those days at least, Elvis hardly had a serious bone in his body, at least outwardly'. Take the line 'Who learned a lesson when she broke my heart?' from 'I Was The One' (the flip to 'Heartbreak Hotel' – or 'Heartburn Motel' as Elvis refers to it). In various live versions, the object of his affection variously breaks his leg and his neck. Talking between songs in Vegas, he sounds genuinely honored that Ray Bolger and Phil Silvers have come to see him and takes a discreet pot shot at Roy Acuff, who hadn't exactly been encouraging when young Elvis did his life's only appearance on Grand Ole Opry.

The outtakes disc's 17 tracks include 12 'Lawdy Miss Clawdy' takes and 12 of 'Shake, Rattle And Roll', with pianist Shorty Long noodling with 'Yellow Rose Of Texas', 'Shave And A Haircut' and whatever else before 'Clawdy' takes. We hear a brief discussion of the optimal drum riff.

Given how few interviews he did throughout his career and his not having been a letter writer, we don't have a lot of Elvis in his own words, so the interviews are especially welcome. He speaks admiringly of Frank Sinatra and recalls a cherished car. The boy from the housing projects is happy that his mother can now go into a store and buy whatever she wants. As for the controversy he unintentionally generated, Jackson once told Goldmine, 'He was terribly hurt. He just couldn't believe that people thought of him as being vulgar.' But in these interviews he reserves his anger for the naysayers' trashing of the screaming girls in his audience. He's tough-skinned and open-minded about people not liking his music. It's the ugly potshots at his fans that he won't accept. The human being emerging from the interview tapes seems like a pretty decent guy.

Young Man With The Big Beat : The Complete '56 Elvis Presley Recordings

Tracklisting

Disc 1

Blue Suede Shoes

I'm Counting On You

I Got A Woman

One-Sided Love Affair

I Love You Because

Just Because

Tutti Frutti

Trying To Get To You

I''m Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry (Over You)

I'll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin')

Blue Moon

Money Honey

Heartbreak Hotel

I Was The One

My Baby Left Me

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy

Shake, Rattle And Roll

Disc 2

Rip It Up

Love Me

When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again

Long Tall Sally

First In Line

Paralyzed

So Glad You're Mine

Old Shep

Ready Teddy

Anyplace Is Paradise

How's The World Treating You

How Do You Think I Feel

I Want You, I Need You, I Love You

Hound Dog

Don't Be Cruel

Any Way You Want Me (That's How I Will Be)

Too Much

Playing For Keeps

Love Me Tender

Let Me

Poor Boy

We''re Gonna Move

Disc 3

Recorded At The Venus Room, Frontier Hotel,

Las Vegas, May 6

Heartbreak Hotel

Long Tall Sally

Blue Suede Shoes

Money Honey

Little Rock, Arkansas, May 16

Heartbreak Hotel

Long Tall Sally

I Was The One

Money Honey

I Got A Woman

Blue Suede Shoes

Hound Dog

* Recorded At The Hirsch Youth Center, Louisiana

Fairgrounds, Shreveport, Louisiana, December 15 [Recently discovered, previously unreleased concert in Shreveport, Louisiana : Elvis' last Hayride Show]

Heartbreak Hotel

Long Tall Sally

I Was The One

Love Me Tender

Don't Be Cruel

Love Me

I Got A Woman

When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again

Paralyzed

Hound Dog

Disc 4 : The Outtakes

First RCA Session Outtakes

I Got A Woman : take unknown

Heartbreak Hotel : take 06

I'm Counting On You : take 13

I Was The One : take 02

The Complete February 03 Sessions

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : take 01

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : take 03

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : take 04

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : take 05

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : take 06

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : takes 07, 08, 09

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : take 10 (master)

Lawdy, Miss Clawdy : takes 11, 12

Shake, Rattle And Roll : takes 01, 02

Shake, Rattle And Roll : takes 03, 05, 06, 07

Shake, Rattle And Roll : take 08

Shake, Rattle And Roll : takes 09, 10, 11, 12, 12 (undubbed master)

The Complete Warwick Hotel Interview

Disc 5 : The Interviews

The Complete TV Guide Presents Elvis interview

Colonel Parker Interview

The Truth About Me

The Truth About Me Interview

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