Although no one really knew it yet, by the summer of 1973, the great Elvis Presley comeback that had begun in 1968 was over.\u00a0 Culminating in his Aloha From Hawaii Via Satellite <\/i>concert broadcast and accompanying album, the King was about to embark on the waning years of his career and life. But since he was still in comeback mode, he set about recording studio material as he was contractually obligated to do.<\/p>\n
As I have noted elsewhere on the Daily Vault, Elvis\u2019 true studio work is difficult to pinpoint throughout his career.\u00a0 While other 1960s and \u201870s artists would enter the studio and produce a cohesive product, Presley\u2019s albums were a hodgepodge of studio work that could be years old by the time it was released, or they could be live albums like Aloha<\/i>.\u00a0 Furthermore, the bulk of Presley\u2019s popular work in the \u201850s and \u201860s was not on his albums at all, but instead only released as singles.\u00a0 In this, he was an entertainer cut very much from the mold of straight laced singers like Frank Sinatra or others from the previous era of recorded popular music.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t diminish the shine that some of his work had, but the obvious ploys to make a dollar from a slab of vinyl with a picture of Elvis on the cover make looking for quality studio work from one of the 20th<\/sup> century\u2019s most recognizable performers a labor of love.<\/p>\n The Elvis At Stax: Deluxe Edition<\/i> does make this effort a little easier.\u00a0 This new collection compiles outtakes and masters from the sessions Elvis had at the legendary Stax Recording Studio in Memphis in July and December 1973.\u00a0 Since the masters from these sessions had previously been strewn across three RCA released albums in the \u201870s, it was previously impossible to really appreciate the studio presence of the performers, especially since RCA liked to keep up the money machine by putting out compilations and live performances as albums between the studio works.\u00a0 But here, presented as a cohesive work, it is possible to think that had Col. Tom Parker and RCA had more of their wits about them at the time, perhaps a solid studio album on par with Elvis\u2019 first two studio works in 1956 and 1957 could have been possible.\u00a0 Throughout this set, the consummate musical professionalism of the TCB band is front and center.\u00a0 There was little working out of material.\u00a0 Elvis might as well have been singing to pre-recorded tracks, as some of the songs appear pretty much whole through different outtakes and versions of the same tunes.\u00a0 There are some powerful tunes here.\u00a0 <\/span>The religiously driven \u201cI Got A Feelin\u2019 In My Body\u201d and \u201cTalk About The Good Times\u201d shine as well as pop numbers like \u201cI\u2019ve Got A Thing About You, Babe,\u201d \u201cGood Time Charlie\u2019s Got The Blues,\u201d \u201cIf You Talk In Your Sleep,\u201d and \u201cPromised Land.\u201d\u00a0 Elvis makes solid work of slower tunes like \u201cMr. Songman\u201d and \u201cLove Song Of The Year,\u201d and there is even an awesome version of the Dottie Rambo southern gospel staple \u201cIf That Isn\u2019t Love.\u201d\u00a0 Yet as typical of the well of Presley material (which he never originally wrote, but relied solely upon contracted songwriters to produce) there are some downright silly songs like \u201cThree Corn Patches,\u201d \u201cTake Good Care Of Her,\u201d and \u201cMy Boy\u201d (pronounced \u201cMa buah\u201d in the Presley drawl).\u00a0 <\/p>\n Sadly, because of the dearth of Presley studio material, some of that silliness was preserved and released by RCA simply to fill vinyl over the next few years as the Raised On Rock, Good Times, <\/i>and Promised Land <\/i>albums.\u00a0 <\/i>Perhaps if Elvis had been more diligent about taking to the studio with new music (or got a new pool of songwriters), and if RCA did not sprinkle in a live or compilation album between every studio offering, the resurgence in his career could have continued.\u00a0 It might also have helped if almost every album cover from the \u201870s did not show him at a live show, making the entirety of the catalog look at first glance like they were warmed up re-dos and live cuts.\u00a0 Presley would not go back into a studio until 1975, and then it would be for the last time. <\/i>\u00a0Stax<\/i> shows a professional at work, with the bulk of it being good material, but it also quite literally chronicles the beginning of the end for this icon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":31555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6914],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-43265","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-elvis-presley","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43265"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43265"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}