Send "Elvis Presley " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 I have very mixed feelings about this release. On the one hand, this music is indispensable for Elvis fans. On the other, this piece of product is about as shameless as they come, revealing nothing we didn’t already know, adding little to numerous prior releases of the same material. Basically, it’s par for the course as far as Elvis Presley releases go.Is there another major figure in rock and roll whose catalogue has been treated with such haphazardness as Elvis Presley’s? During his lifetime, his albums alternated between the well-executed and the slapdash, and that trend has continued unabated in the decades since his death. This system of issuing product, thinking about it later, and rethinking it on the occasion of an anniversary has made things more confusing than ever. The fact that Sony now owns Presley’s vast and valuable RCA catalogue, due to the miracles of corporate mergers and takeovers, is strange enough on its face, but this also means a whole new rash of reissues and reconfigurations is slowly trickling out. On the bright side, we’ve gotten the four-disc Elvis 75: Good Rockin’ Tonight, the most imaginative and thorough collection of its kind. But we’ve also been treated to the likes of Christmas Duets, which surely must be the last way anyone could think to wring more money out of Elvis’ holiday output. Somewhere in between was the Legacy Edition of From Elvis in Memphis, which received almost unanimously glowing reviews even though it was an unimaginatively straightforward repackaging of the titular album with its inferior companion Back in Memphis, plus the singles recorded during those sessions. It ignored the alternate takes from RCA’s 1999 anthology Suspicious Minds, added nothing new, and didn’t give anyone who owned the earlier collection a reason to replace it. At the same time, it’s not like it sullied the reputation of the Memphis sessions, or, God forbid, Elvis himself. It was a fine, if ultimately unnecessary, reissue....full text |
| Blogcritics |
| On Stage: Legacy Edition is the latest release celebrating the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth. Elvis had not performed live in eight years when he took the stage at The International Hotel in Las Vegas for four weeks during the summer of 1969. He returned for another month of performances in early 1970. A number of the songs from 1969 formed the live disc of the two record set From Memphis To Vegas – From Vegas to Memphis which was released during the fall of 1969 plus ten songs from the 1970 shows were released as On Stage during June of 1970. The albums were commercially successful receiving gold and platinum sales awards respectively. RCA/Legacy has now combined this series of concerts into a two CD set. Each disc contains an original album plus bonus tracks. The sound has been scrubbed and cleaned and a booklet with photos plus a three thousand word essay gives a history of the performances and the albums. I have most of the Elvis catalogue on vinyl and his 1969 concerts remains my favorite live performances. It presents a young, clean, and in shape Elvis at the top of his game. The patter with the audience shows a nervousness but makes the album have an intimate appeal that his later live work lacks. His 1969 concerts concentrate on his early material and he presents it well as he had not performed it hundreds of times. During his last years this material would be presented quickly and many times in a truncated form. Here such classic songs as “Blue Suede Shoes,” “All Shook Up,” and “Hound Dog” quickly show why Elvis was The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll. His medley of “Mystery Train/Tiger Man” is more straight forward rock while “My Babe” has toughness to it. His hits of the day, “In The Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds” provide a nice balance to the concert. The only real miss for me was a cover of the Bee Gees hit “Words.”...full text |
| Seattlepi |
| When Elvis Presley returned to live concerts in 1969, he did so with a fire not seen since the earlier part of his career. He was in peak form both physically and vocally and thankfully RCA was there to capture it live. His two live albums — 1969’s In Person at the International Hotel (originally part of the two-LP From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis) and 1970’s On Stage are collected on On Stage: Legacy Edition. TV/Film Music Sci/Tech Politics More from blogcritics.org · Music Review: Matthew Stubbs - Medford & Main · Book Review: Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie by Mark Millar · Book Review: Beginning F# by Robert Pickering Presley’s return to the concert stage was a long time coming — nine years in fact. As the 1960s wore on, the King found himself recording an increasing number of bad songs for an increasing number of bad movies while the rest of the music industry passed him by. Toward the end of the decade, his commercial fortunes were at an all-time low. While he began his creative rebirth with the Grammy Award-winning How Great Thou Art album in 1967, it was the 1968 Comeback Special that solidified his return to the top. Freed from the clutches of Hollywood, Presley returned to Memphis to record the career-defining From Elvis in Memphis and its accompanying singles, including “Suspicious Minds” — his last number one in America — and was eager to perform before a live audience again. After original band mates Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana turned him down due to the revenue they’d lose as session men, Presley recruited what would later become known as the TCB band with James Burton on guitar, Ronnie Tutt on drums, and Jerry Scheff on bass. The 1969 recordings at the International Hotel in Las Vegas form the basis of disc two. And what performances they are. From frantic versions of “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Johnny B. Goode” to a countrified “Are You Lonesome Tonight” to the gospel/blues of “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” Presley sounds like a lion freed from the cage. Contemporary material, including a heartfelt rendition of the Bee Gees’ “Words” and his own “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds” also feature in the set. This was the strongest material Presley had sung in years and he knew it, delivering the songs with conviction as if his very career depended on it. In spite of this, his insecurities about performing live made him wonder if anyone would still care after all those years. That answer was a resounding yes....full text |
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