Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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This 60th Anniversary 60-CD Deluxe Edition celebrates RCA Victor's signing of Elvis Presley-The King of rock 'n' roll. Features all of the albums Elvis recorded and RCA released in his lifetime: studio, soundtrack, and live. It also includes compilations released that featured unreleased songs or songs new to the LP format. The Album Collection represents album sales in the U.S. of 135 million! Collectively, Elvis has RIAA certified sales of singles, EPs and albums equaling 25x multi-platinum, 52x platinum and 92x gold awards given for U.S. sales alone! Estimated worldwide sales are in excess of one billion! Highlights include: Elvis' iconic first two studio albums, Elvis Presley and Elvis released in 1956. All 17 of his film soundtrack LPs including Loving You, King Creole, G.I. Blues, Blue Hawaii and Roustabout. The legendary NBC-TV special Elvis; the 1969 American Sound sessions that spawned From Elvis In Memphis and Back In Memphis; and 1970s triumphs On Stage (1970), Elvis As Recorded Live At Madison Square Garden (1972) and Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite (1973). Original album packaging has been painstakingly restored including gatefold/die cut sleeves, original RCA Victor inserts, stickers and more. CD labels replicate original side 1 labels.

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Frankie and Johnny found Elvis Presley playing a riverboat gambler, cruising up and down the Mississippi, placing bets, and falling in love. Its period setting means the film's accompanying soundtrack is loaded with retro Dixieland, a decision that keeps Elvis far, far away from the swinging Mod explosion in pop music in 1966. There's a slight feint at high-booted go-go music with the double-time breakdowns on "Shout It Out," but by the time that number shows up halfway through the second side, the clamor of the brass bands, tambourines, and bass drums obscure not only this subtle detail but also the record's two minor highlights: the passable Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman tune "What Every Woman Lives For" and the lazy, understated "Beginner's Luck." The charms of these are relative because Frankie and Johnny is one relentless, noisy, ugly record, its decibel level cranked to the breaking point and Presley appearing singularly mirthless throughout. ~Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine ~

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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With his career in free fall, Elvis Presley returns to Hawaii, the site of one of his biggest successes: 1961's Blue Hawaii. Released five long years later, Paradise, Hawaiian Style is a faint shadow of that previous success, containing little of its charm and certainly none of its craftsmanship. The familiar team of Bill Giant, Bernie Baum, and Florence Kaye cranks out six of the album's ten songs, taking credit for such aggressive inanities as "Queenie Wahine's Papaya" and "Stop Where You Are," tunes that still manage not to be among the worst cuts here. That honor belongs to the singalong "Datin'," which explains romance in a fashion only a five-year-old could understand, and "A Dog's Life," a canine rock & roller that's a far cry from "Hound Dog." When paired with campy island exotica -- the title track, "Drums of the Islands," "House of Sand" -- it adds up to a nadir for Elvis: this isn't as clamorous as Frankie & Johnny, but it's certainly every bit as calamitous. ~Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine~

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Spinout is where Elvis Presley tentatively starts to climb back from his 1966 nadir by pushing at the boundaries of the formula Col. Tom Parker and RCA set for his soundtracks. At its core, Spinout is very much a soundtrack -- nine of its 12 songs were designed to slide into the film's nonsensical race car plot -- but there's a slight swinging spark to the production and, better still, there are some gems at the margins. Chief among these is a funky, folky version of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," the first time Elvis actively engages with any of the musical or cultural upheavals of the '60s, and he knocks it out of the park; the distance that separates this from the rest of his 1966 work is startling. He's back on familiar ground singing the old Clovers single "Down in the Alley," but he tears into the tune, his zeal in singing an actual blues practically leaping out of the grooves. Although there's a pleasing sweetness to a rendition of Don Ho's "I'll Remember You," "Tomorrow Is a Long Time" and "Down in the Alley" are Spinout's unabashed highlights, the tracks that transcend their soundtrack origins, but the LP does deliver some relative pleasures. "Stop, Look and Listen" swings and jives, Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman's "Never Say Yes" is a cheerful rhumba, the title track cooks along with a groovy fervor, and "Smorgasbord" embraces its camp. None of these are great songs, not by any means, but they possess style, swing, and tunes, something Harum Scarum, Frankie & Johnny, and Paradise, Hawaiian Style all lacked, and the return of cinematic swagger is most certainly welcome here. ~Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine ~

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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Elvis Presley - The Album Collection: 60 CDs Deluxe Box Set (2016) {Discs 25-27}

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