Rabbit Holes

Calling Elvis Presley the king of rock'n'roll may seem hyperbolic today, but that's what he was during 21 years in the hot pop culture spotlight. His recording career began and ended in his hometown of Memphis. From a bright cultural comet heralding something new to a depressed drug addict mailing in middling performances from his mansion's den, Sony's box set, Memphis, captures all his home-turf recording sessions.

The box has five CDs, each holding a different set of Memphis recordings. Disc 1, Sun Single Masters, contains those musical lightning bolts captured at Sam Phillips's Sun Studio in 1955 and '56. Disc 2, American Sound '69, is a highwater mark. Following his Hollywood years (financially successful, artistically mediocre), Elvis triumphantly returned to relevance with his 1968 TV "Comeback Special," which he followed with productive sessions at American Recording Studio. His reignited music career led him to become Las Vegas's top-grossing act. Hundreds of live shows honed Presley and his band to a juggernaut, culminating in a triumphant 1972 residency at NYC's Madison Square Garden (footnote 1).

By 1973, Presley's life had taken some bad turns. Divorced from Priscilla, he was falling into what we'd recognize today as opioid addiction. Recordings at the legendary Stax Studio that July and December—covered on Disc 3, Stax '73—show him past prime but still producing powerful hits.

Disc 4, The Homecoming Concert, is Elvis and his touring music carnival, recorded at the Mid-South Coliseum on March 20, 1974. It compares poorly to the MSG recording two years prior. It's evident that the wind had gone out of Presley's sails. The "homecoming" was the edge of a long goodbye.

The final disc, Graceland '76, shines harsh light on the "Jungle Room" sessions at Presley's mansion home in February and October of the US Bicentennial. Stereophile colleague Robert Baird did a thorough job debunking the alternative-universe history put forth in the 2016 set, Way Down in the Jungle Room. Suffice to say, things were not well with Elvis; the musical output is mostly forgettable, a sad end to one of the most culturally significant and financially lucrative recording careers ever. Presley died at Graceland on August 16, 1977.

This material has been released before, so what's the point? The buried lede: All songs recorded to multitrack, from '69 to '76, have been remixed using only the sounds recorded in-session, minus overdubs added later. We hear what Elvis heard in studio, remixed by Matt Ross-Spang and produced by Elvis-reissue maven Ernst Jorgensen. The Sun recordings, made direct to mono tape, are newly restored and mastered by Sebastian Jeansson.

It's definitely new thinking: Focus the setting to Memphis and offer a new sonic perspective on Elvis's studio technique. Does it work? Yes and no.

The sound quality of Presley's voice and the tonality of instruments is often excellent, probably as good as can be pulled from the old tapes. From there, success depends on each song's arrangement. Is there enough meat in the basic tracks for the song to stand proud, or is its full flowering dependent on the absent overdubbed parts?

The Sun material sounds primitive and raw. That's an enthusiastic compliment. Elvis's voice and acoustic guitar, with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black pounding a stand-up bass, were musical dynamite in front of Phillips's few microphones. All their jangly, sexy, ominous yet optimistic energy, laser-focused into the simple recording setup, blazes out of speakers 70 years later, across time and space. Some songs are so alive and life-affirming that it's scary. They are the sound of youth and boldness unbound.

As for the multitrack recordings, how well they stand up "naked" depends on whether the song can stand on its fundamental merits. Is hearing "In the Ghetto" and "Suspicious Minds"—megahits from the American sessions—without strings, horns, or background chorus enlightening? In general, the 1969 tracks are most different from the album versions and singles, but the studio band was great, and Presley was fully engaged. His voice was even stronger, his vocal art more polished than at the beginning. The tight connection of band and singer make most of these songs stand proud without adornments, a new perspective on the familiar.

The Stax and Jungle Room sessions included larger bands and backup singers. One reason was to bolster Presley's dimming musical force. Another was to maximize the return on investment: RCA parked a recording truck and union-wage engineers outside the recording locations, even at Stax Studios.

That's right: Stax's legendary Memphis-to-the-soul musicians, engineers, and recording equipment were not used. The sessions would have been more successful, I'm thinking, if they had been a true Stax affair. Instead, Elvis's personal problems distracted him, and he seemed out of his element. There are brilliant moments, his full powers summoned: Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" and Tony Joe White's reggae-ish "I've Got a Thing About You Baby," for example. Then there are songs like White's "For Ol' Times Sake," which highlight Elvis's 1973 voice, more worn-out than time-honed.

As for 1976, there are moments of soaring vocal verve—"Hurt," "Moody Blue," and a poignant rendition of "Danny Boy"—but more often, these tracks reveal a man withdrawing from his art and from life itself. His voice frequently faltered. His heart wasn't in it.

Presley biographer Peter Guralnick told the Memphis Commercial Appeal, "Increasingly, at the end of his life, Elvis no longer believed in himself. He was disappointed in his failure to measure up to himself." (footnote 2) That's a bummer summary of Elvis's last recordings, but it's true.

The nicely illustrated booklet notes by Robert Gordon provide a warts-and-all assessment of each Memphis session.

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Footnote 1: See this summary of Elvis at MSG; the headline for Chris Chase's highly entertaining concert review in the NY Times was "Like a Prince From Another Planet." (There's a paywall of course.)

Footnote 2: See tinyurl.com/2r55d25a.