Customer Reviews

Elvis 56

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is why Elvis is still the king of Rock and Roll and why he caused so much controversy in 1956. The raw sensuality of Elvis' voice is richly captured on this compliation. Makes me want to travel back in time and see him as he was, at his best!

i just purchased this cd and i must say that elvis in 56 sounds just like the performer of the millenium .....this ia a very nice choice of music , hound dog ,lawdy miss clawdy ,i got a woman and I was the one are all very well done ,,,this whole cd is awsome not one bad cut ...real rockabilly,,,rock and roll i highly recommend ,,,,buy this one while you can ....

This album collects most of what Elvis Presley committed to tape during his first full year as a recording artist with RCA.

"Elvis 56" is filled with classics like "Heartbreak Hotel", "Hound Dog", "Shake, Rattle & Roll", "Don't Be Cruel" and "Love Me", as well as several equally excellent, if somewhat lesser-known songs ("Paralyzed", "Any Way You Want Me", "One-Sided Love Affair", and covers of Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and Arthur Crudup's "So Glad You're Mine").

This is a very enjoyable collection filled with good pop hooks and some fine musicianship (would have been nice with some more insightful liner notes and recording information). The only problem is that most Elvis fans probably already have most or all of this music.
But if you don't, and just want a bit of 50s rock n' roll, rockabilly and pop to keep your fingers tapping on the steering wheel on your way home from work, "Elvis 56" is a really fine purchase, although it's by no means a definitive early Elvis Presley retrospective.

This CD is a good sample of much of the best of 1950s Elvis. Though it covers only 1956, that was his biggest year in that decade. This is mostly a combination of his original albums ELVIS PRESLEY and ELVIS, minus the Sun Studio recordings of 1954-55 that were on those albums (which you can get separately). At 22 tracks it's quite sizable, and emphasizes rock and blues along with a few slower ballads. It's also got a nicely-done booklet with many photos. There's not a lot of unusual material here if you've already got most of his '50s stuff, but of the alternate takes of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" and "Heartbreak Hotel," the latter is especially interesting. Sound quality is unusually clear, and the packaging is attractive. This album gives good evidence why the Beatles were huge Elvis fans in the '50s.

It's wonderful to hear these early Elvis recordings, when he was still raw and new and amazing, when he was still singing real music, before The Colonel turned him into a movie star singing songs like "Do The Clam". Even if you've heard all these before, and even if you already have most of them, this is still a great collection. Everything on this CD was recorded in the same year, and all I can say is that 1956 must have been amazing! (I was only 6 years old, so I can't really say much from personal experience.)

My only complaint isn't with the music, only with the liner notes, or rather the lack of liner notes. The booklet that comes with the CD is beautifully designed, with some very evocative photgraphs by Alfred Wertheimer - LordyLordy, Elvis was certainly somethin' to look at back then! But I would have enjoyed a little more discussion about the music - who wrote it, who recorded some of it before Elvis, how he took some of the repertoire of the black blues and R&B artists of the time and made it accessible to the white audiences of the time, what the rest of the popular music world was like at the time and how Elvis totally changed the landscape, and how that all really started in 1956. But unfortunately, that one run-on sentence I just wrote is more information than you'll get with this CD.

Yeah, well, liner notes would have been nice, but really it's all about the music. And the music on this CD is awesome!

These historic recordings are the ones that not only made Elvis THE superstar of the era, but also helped to establish Rock and Roll as the dominent pop music form for decades to come. This collection includes not only the hits from 1956, like Heartbreak Hotel, Don't Be Cruel, and Hound Dog, but also many forgotten classics like Ready Teddy and my favorite Money Honey! A must for Elvis fans and students of Rock and Roll!

For any Elvis fan that loves his music from his earlier years will love this CD. I highly recommend this CD.

This CD features 22 songs that Elvis Presley recorded in 1956. What more need be said? I guess I can add that the version I have has some great pictures of Elvis taken by Alfred Wertheimer. Seriously, these are the best pictures anyone ever took of Elvis. But the best thing about this CD is the music, which is magnificent. Elvis could almost do no wrong at this point, at least in a recording studio. I highly recommend this CD.

I have never been a big Elvis fan so to speak. But any serious fan of popular music has to give the man his due, and this album is as fresh as anything I have ever heard. Simply put: this is rock n roll.

There are many gigantic hits here: 'Heartbreak Hotel,' Tutti Frutti,' and 'Hound Dog' are just a few. But even the lesser known songs shine, and listening to these 22 tracks together is a glimpse into an historic period in recorded music, on par with the Beatles early work.

Elvis paved the path for a lot of artists, and rock as we have come to know could never have happened without Elvis. These songs won't make you think hard, but man do they make you feel too good!

I listened to cuts from other albums that may have had a few ELVIS recordings but the rest were from groups of "wannabe"s (like the Jordanaires) and it just didn't do it for me. I finally found the SONY version ELVIS 56 and there's no "imitating" on it at all. Just pure Elvis. Love it. (Ordered it 12/31, Got it USPS on 1/4/10 with estimated delivery by 1/7.)