Customer Reviews

Good Rockin' Tonight-The Complete Louisiana Hayride Archives

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

 

 

Cover Art

The design of the set is done with taste. It's most black and white with golden fonts. This is a good choice since all photographs are also black and white. There are some great shots of Elvis on the Louisiana Hayride including images of Elvis playing the drums and accordion.

The booklet is about twelve pages in a fold out style with a lot of images and the storyline of the documentary and background information on music in the fifties. The CD's are "picture disks" besides the besides the track listing and the title there are two small images of Elvis on the disks.

Content

The title of this 2CD release is very well chosen since the content has been done in the form of a documentary. We can follow Elvis "evolution" from Elvis' first appearance on October 16, 1954 in front of a crowd of several hundred people to his final special appearance before over 10,000 people on December 16, 1956.

This live radio show, which began airing in 1948, rivaled the Grand Ole Opry for appeal in its day. You get to hear what the audience heard ...The evolution of Elvis Presley from a an nervous kid who wanted to be a country-western singer to the King of Rock and Roll.

The story is told as a documentary by Frank Page, one of the original announcers for the Louisiana Hayride and the man who first introduced Elvis on their stage. He takes you backstage at the Hayride and on the road with Elvis. His recollections provide wonderful insight to Elvis' performances on this renown radio show.

Frank tells the story of Elvis Louisiana Hayride appearances as an introduction to the recordings of the actual performances that survived the test of time. Starting of with an 'impression" of an evening out in the fifties to the Louisiana Hayride. It's a bit like you're there, looking around. We can hear Elvis "evolve" from a shy boy on his first appearance to the king at this last performance on the show.

Unlike all the other budget releases with various Hayride recordings simply put together this release gives the tracks in the right order with background info on the actual performance. Besides that this release is complete covering all available Hayride recordings from 1955 to 1956 in a very good quality.

We must make the remark that this is not the kind of release you put in your CD player and listen to while doing something Else. Since it's a "documentary" you have to pay attention since there's a lot of 'talking' on these CD's between the tracks. Another option is of course to program the musical tracks.

When Elvis left the stage after his final Louisiana Hayride performance on December 15, 1956, the show's producer and announcer Horace Logan tried to quiet the crowd so the show could continue by uttering for the first time the now-famous words "Elvis has left the building". The claim on the CD that this now famous announcement has never before been released on CD is untrue. It was released on another Hayride archive, the 3CD box "The Louisiana Hayride Shows" released by the Goldies label in 1998 (also presented by Frank Page). But for those of you who don't have that one it is now included so you can can add this piece of Elvis history to your collection.

Conclusion

This release is the complete history of Elvis Louisiana Hayride performances and therefore a great addition to your collection. If you buy this you can throw away every other Hayride collection you have since those are not as complete as this release, and don't have this audio quality. Well, perhaps you should keep one other CD, because listening to the same documentary again and again might get boring at some point.

This is a truly amazing archive into the spark that spawned 'The King of Rock'n'roll. The sound quuality is great and so is the sound. Elvis is in top form and you can hear the audience love it. What can beat a fresh faced, hiccupin' Elvis with a stunning Scotty Moore on guitar, electrifying us with his haunting guitar echo and Bill Black laying down the vibe.

This CD is a scream - literally - as Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black rock out on the Louisiana Hayride. There's a lot of narration between songs. It's informative, during the first listen anyway. It's the music that stands strong here.

This is great archival, historic, recordings of Elvis, performing on the Louisiana Hayride Radio Show. The main location of this show was the Historic Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, built in the 1920's as a memorial to WWI veterans. They changed the name of the street it is on, and renamed it Elvis Presley Blvd, and that's what it's named today. It's a museam now, and has a statute of Elvis Presley and James Burton in front of the building. I'm been there several times, it's a museam now. It seats 3,800 people.

Now on with my review of this double disc CD. Overall, I really like it, but I do think it is a bit "over-narrated", by Frank Page. This collection does not contain all of Elvis's performances on the Hayride, but only selected performances. The reason Elvis' last performance was held at the Youth Building at the Louisiana state fairgrounds, is because it would seat more people.

The performances are as follows:
2 performances from his first Hayride show on 10/16/54, 2 performances from 1/15/55, 5 performances from 1/22/55, 3 performances from 4/19/55, 1 performance from 7/15/55, 3 performances from 8/20/55, and 3 performances from his last Hayride Show, on 12/15/56, held at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds in Shreveport. Also, there is the announcement that "Elvis Has Left the Building", made by announcer, Horace Logan.

I was a little disappointed that many of these performances were not held at the official home of the Hayride, the Historic, Shreveport Municipal Auditorium. Many were held on "Louisiana Hayride" Tours, at High School auditoriums in Texas.

The actual performances are great, they have not been edited and polished, and I like that. I like to hear the stage announcements, the dialog, and etc., as it actually ocurred, and you get that here.

Overall, yes this is definitely worth the purchase in my opinion.

Didn't realize when I bought this, that there'd be so much talking in it, and what songs there were, were a lot of the same songs over & over. Interesting to listen to once, but that's it. I got other Elvis records the same day I got this one, so I'm keeping the others and giving this one away.

The music tracks on this cd are great, but be warned--the music is interspersed with an enormous amount of narration. It should be made more clear on the packaging that this meant to be some sort of audio documentary. If that's what you're after, you might like this, but I have no idea why the producers decided to totally halt the momentum of the album by interrupting the music to give information that is included in the liner notes. Very frustrating!

Let's clean up our language a bit. This is great music essential Elvis! Essential rockabilly tight rhythm section!