Elvis Presley
Sunset Boulevard
RCA/Legacy (CD, LP, digital)
By Gillian G. Gaar
There have been box sets focusing on Elvis Presley’s recording sessions in Memphis and Nashville. Now comes a box set that takes a look at his 1970s sessions in the City of Angels: Sunset Boulevard.
Presley first recorded in Los Angeles in August 1956, recording songs at 20th Century Fox’s soundstage for his film debut, Love Me Tender. Over the next decade and a half, he often recorded in Nashville, but recorded songs for his movies on the west coast, especially at Radio Recorders. He began using RCA’s studio located at 6363 Sunset Boulevard in 1967; the tracks on this box are drawn from sessions in March 1972 and March 1975.
The first disc in the five CD box set is the standout. The 17 master recordings from both sessions are presented in new mixes by Matt Ross-Spang, removing all the instrumental overdubs. This has been done on other releases, such as Way Down in the Jungle Room, to good effect. What it leaves you with is pure, unadulterated Elvis, without the slatherings of schmaltz that marred his later recordings in particular. Ross-Spang gives a similar treatment to the session outtakes presented on Disc 2 (which don’t sound too different to the final versions).
The sessions featured some of Presley’s best studio work of the 1970s. That included some of the most autobiographical songs he ever recorded. In February 1972 he had separated from his wife, Priscilla. Just one month later, he was in Los Angeles recording songs of heartbreak and disintegrating relationships: “Separate Ways,” “Always on My Mind,” “For the Good Times,” “Fool.” Such songs obviously touched a nerve with Presley. After recording “Separate Ways” (co-written by his Memphis Mafia buddy Red West), he played the track over and over again for members of his entourage. Jerry Schilling, one of those members, observes in the liner notes that the song “was very reflective of his life. He wasn’t getting any hit material, [so] he just sang about his life.”
But that long-awaited hit would also come during those March 1972 sessions, though it wouldn’t have if Presley had his way. Producer Felton Jarvis brought Dennis Linde’s rocker “Burning Love” to the sessions, but Presley didn’t like it. Everyone else did though, and Presley was finally persuaded to record it, and was rewarded with the last Top 10 hit of his lifetime when the song peaked at #2 (kept from the top spot by Chuck Berry’s inane “My Ding-a-Ling,” truly a criminal offense).
By the time Presley returned to RCA Studios in March 1975, he had largely lost interest in recording. He didn’t enter a studio at all in 1974. And in comparison to the work he’d done in 1972, the 1975 sessions were a bit lackluster. He does have a lot of fun with the lively “T-R-O-U-B-L-E.” And he threw himself into the country weeper “Green Green Grass of Home,” a song that Presley had loved since hearing Tom Jones’ version of it back in 1966. A look at the record stats in the liner notes show that Presley’s singles and albums were now doing better on the country charts, suggesting this was a direction he could’ve pursued more seriously, as Jerry Lee Lewis was doing. Presley never entered a proper recording studio again; his 1976 recording sessions were held in one of his rooms at Graceland (later dubbed the “Jungle Room” after his death).
The set’s remaining three discs feature rehearsals at the RCA studios held in 1970 and 1974. There’s no new material; all the songs have previously been released, mostly on albums issued by the collector’s label Follow That Dream, though on this set they’re mixed by Vic Anesini. Presley sounds rather listless during the rehearsals (which were held in preparation for his live engagements), but as he’s primarily performing songs he’s done before, he apparently feels he doesn’t need to put in much effort. It’s more interesting when he works through the numbers he rarely performed live, like “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” and “Promised Land.”
In addition to the five-CD box, Sunset Boulevard is also available in a 2-LP “highlights” edition; a colored vinyl edition is available through Graceland’s website. All tracks are also available digitally.
Overall, the set presents a concise look at a less-examined period of Presley’s career.
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