How do you put together a four-disc introduction to Elvis Presley? Ask my advice, and I’d probably tell you to seek out four separate but almost equally essential discs: Start with The Sun Sessions, which compiles all the essential music (and then some) that Presley recorded in Memphis with Sam Phillips to launch his career. Next comes 30 #1 Hits, the self-descriptive compilation that captures Presley the genius pure singer and mutable pop superstar across a 20-plus-year span. The third choice would be The Memphis Record, a 1987 disc that pulls together the very best of his 1969 Memphis homecoming sessions (initially released across multiple albums and singles). The final pick is a tough one. I’d be tempted to tab Elvis is Back!, the most recent CD issue of Presley’s first post-Army LP which also includes the separate singles from those sessions. But really I’d hate to miss out on the casual yet often overpowering live material he recorded for his 1968 “comeback” television special. And you can hear one of those full sets — with no fat — on the 1998 Tiger Man release.
Not bad, but not without problems. Whichever way you go on that fourth disc, you’re missing some classic stuff. And even with both there are pockets of material crucial to the Elvis story unrepresented.
A bigger problem is that The Sun Sessions and The Memphis Record are long out of print, replaced in the catalogue by double-disc sets (Sunrise and last year’s From Elvis In Memphis reissue, respectively) packed with alternate versions and lesser songs nice for completists but unnecessary for normal everyday listening.
So it isn’t easy. But the powers that be at RCA have attempted to tell Presley’s story in four discs with Elvis 75: Good Rockin’ Tonight, a 100-song boxed set timed to coincide with what would have been Presley’s 75th birthday today.
