lp discography - covers & lyrics

Western swing, blues, countrypolitan, traditional country, gospel — if it was music that even brushed the airwaves of a Southern state, Elvis Presley at his best could make it his own, and Elvis was at his peak when he cut Elvis Country. Actually, Elvis Presley was positively on a roll at the time. A decade after the end of what were thought to be his prime years, he was singing an ever-widening repertory of songs with more passion and involvement than he'd shown since the end of the 1950s; he was no longer transforming the nature of popular music with every record and performance, but he was a major concert draw. What's more, his voice had achieved a peak of perfection as an instrument, acquiring a depth and richness, a beauty to go with its power at which even his best work of the early years had only hinted. And it all came together on Elvis Country (and its preceding studio album, From Elvis in Memphis), which has lots of country music on it but also a lot else. His greatest long-player of the 1970s, and one of his three or four best albums ever, Elvis Country was a record that he threw himself into with every bit of the passion displayed on the better known, soul-oriented From Elvis in Memphis, and it was even more personal; he was cutting songs that he was either very impressed with at the moment or had loved for a lot of years, but they were all songs he cared about, which gives him a commanding and charismatic vocal presence. He doesn't necessarily supplant the originals, but he gives you more than enough reason to listen, again and again, to everything here. Producer Felton Jarvis and a cadre of Nashville sidemen (augmented by James Burton) provided backup as good as Presley ever got. The spring 2000 remastering captures Elvis Country in all of its glory and adds on a handful of tracks from the same sessions.

ELVIS PRESLEY

ELVIS COUNTRY