Music

Elvis lives on in the 90s [The Elvis Beat newsletter]

/ TY

I was 17 when I wrote this article back in 1992 for The Elvis Beat #2, my official Elvis Presley Fan Club newsletter.

1992 is a revolutionary year for Elvis on CD. With the release of ELVIS: The King Of Rock ‘n’ Roll – The Complete 50s Masters, a 5-CD set containing 140 songs, and the new “Elvis In The 90s” series, RCA seems to have finally made a commitment to release quality Elvis recordings in the CD format.

The “Elvis In The 90s” series is dedicated to bringing back all of the key albums yet to be released on CD or which have been deleted from the RCA catalog completely. Also planned for the future are boxed sets for this 1960s and 1970s material. Work on this massive project is expected to be finished by 1996.

Below is an incomplete list of Elvis CDs released within the last year. Due to the large number of discs currently being released, the list is not up-to-date.

Elvis’ New CDs

  • ELVIS: The King Of Rock ‘n’ Roll – The Complete 50s Masters (5 CDs)
  • Collectors Gold (3 CDs)
  • The Lost Album
  • ELVIS – NBC TV Special
  • On Stage
  • He Touched Me
  • As Recorded At Madison Square Garden
  • Aloha From Hawaii via Satellite
  • Elvis Today
  • Elvis In Concert

New releases examine two phases of Elvis’ career [The Elvis Beat newsletter]

/ TY

I was 17 when I wrote this article back in 1992 for The Elvis Beat #2, my official Elvis Presley Fan Club newsletter.

Wednesday, June 24, was, perhaps, the best day for Elvis fans in the past 15 years. It marked the debut of two long-awaited releases.

The first new release is RCA’s ELVIS: The King Of Rock ‘n’ Roll – The Complete 50s Masters (List Price: $79.98), a five-CD set which contains every master studio take recorded in the 1950s, several alternate takes, live tracks, and previously unreleased material (140 songs in all). 500,000 units were pre-shipped to record stores.

Included are “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” the songs an 18-year-old Elvis paid to record for his mother in 1953.

The other release is even more monumental. The Turner Entertainment video Elvis: The Lost Performances (List Price: $19.98) contains an hour’s worth of never-before-seen outtakes from the 1970s concert movies Elvis: That’s The Way It Is and Elvis On Tour. 25 songs are performed on this video. See review on page 6.

Five disc set to be released for fifteenth anniversary [The Elvis Beat newsletter]

/ TY

I was 16 when I wrote this article back in 1992 for The Elvis Beat #1, the first issue of my official Elvis Presley Fan Club newsletter.

The King of Rock and Roll is the tentative name of a 5-CD set to be released for the fifteenth anniversary of Elvis’ death. This will be a “definitive 50s” set, according to Ernst Jorgensen of BMG International who is a co-producer of the set.

Along with “pristine” versions of the standard fifties songs, the set will also feature unreleased material obtained by Graceland from Colonel Parker in their recent multi-million dollar purchase of his Elvis memorabilia. Parts of his collection will be displayed in a new museum under construction across the street from Graceland.

The King of Rock and Roll should be a good companion piece to 1991’s 3-CD set Collectors Gold, which contained unreleased songs from the sixties (including a disc devoted to his 1969 Las Vegas concerts).