Site icon The Skeptical Audiophile

Elvis Presley – From Memphis To Vegas / From Vegas To Memphis

humorem

More Elvis Presley

These vintage RCA pressings have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, these are the records for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of From Memphis To Vegas / From Vegas To Memphis Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing these record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressings that sound as good as these two do.

Standard Operating Procedures

What are sonic qualities by which a record — any record — should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.

Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.

Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

What We’re Listening For On From Memphis To Vegas / From Vegas To Memphis

Elvis In Person At The International Hotel Las Vegas, Nevada

Side One

Blue Suede Shoes
Johnny B. Goode
All Shook Up
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
Hound Dog
I Can’t Stop Loving You
My Babe

Side Two

Medley
Mystery Train
Tiger Man
Words
In The Ghetto
Suspicious Minds
Can’t Help Falling In Love
Elvis Back In Memphis

Elvis Back In Memphis

Side Three

Inherit The Wind
This Is The Story
Stranger In My Own Home Town
A Little Bit Of Green
And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind

Side Four

Do You Know Who I Am?
From A Jack To A King
The Fair’s Moving On
You’ll Think Of Me
Without Love (There Is Nothing)

AMG 4 1/2 Star Review – Elvis in Person at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada

When Elvis and the Colonel decided it was time to start appearing live again, they assembled a crackerjack band (featuring James Burton) and took on Vegas full-bore. Easily the King’s best live album, In Person at the International Hotel featured a slew of hits, including “Johnny B. Goode,” “My Babe,” the “Mystery Train/Tiger Man” medley, and “Suspicious Minds.”

. . . Regardless of what they’re playing, the band really rock throughout, and that’s not just Burton — who sounds like he’s wearing his fingers ragged as he puts a new edge on “Hound Dog,” coming up with something different than, yet vaguely similar to, Scotty Moore’s approach to the song in concert 14 years earlier — but also the entire guitar contingent of John Wilkinson and Charlie Hodge (not to mention Elvis himself, who strums along here and there) and the muscular rhythm section of bassist Jerry Scheff and drummer Ronnie Tutt. The vocal support by Hodge, Millie Kirkham, the Sweet Inspirations, and the Imperials is soaring and tasteful, never more so than on the album’s seven-minute version of “Suspicious Minds” and the soaring finale, “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

Back In Memphis Rave Review

History has placed these ten tracks as mere outtakes to the great ‘From Elvis In Memphis’ sides but a closer inspection not only reveals ten great tracks but one of the most cohesive records Elvis ever delivered.

The opening, Eddie Rabbit penned, track ‘Inherit The Wind’ sets the tone. Like other albums I have focused on in this series, from ‘Watertown’ to ‘Houston,’ we are dealing with a man in isolation. Backed by the incredible American studio house band, including the great Reggie Young on guitar, Elvis is in top form here. The backing female vocals give the song a strange feel that is complimented by the string section that producer Chips Moman would add on later. The song’s odd time signatures coupled with Moman’s production gives the song a perfect swaying feel that is punctuated by Elvis’s reminder of what it’s like to indeed Inherit the Wind.

‘This is The Story’ follows, and this as mentioned dates from that first historic night Elvis stepped into American studios. The tragic tone is set here for the album, and when Elvis sings ‘but the words that I’m reading could apply to myself’ we realise why he didn’t have to be a songwriter, once he sang a song it was his, they were his autobiography.

Percy Mayfield’s startling ‘Stranger In My Own Hometown’ follows. This is the most rocking track on the album and the most haunting. This is the sound of a man confronting a city that had witnessed the assignation of Martin Luther King less than a year earlier. Elvis’ sorrow at this event has been recounted by both Celeste Yarnall and Jerry Schilling, perhaps more than ‘If I Can Dream’ this is his reaction to it. It’s an explosive, surging performance that stands with his greatest work. The song’s ferocious climax features one of the strangest horn arrangements ever put on vinyl and Elvis screaming off mike ‘Blow your brains out.’ He would revisit this song later in his career and re-invent the idea of a blues man in a frightening laid back chronicle of alienation and despair. Anyone who doesn’t understand the genius of Elvis Presley should listen to this song.

‘Just a Little Bit Of Green’ and Elvis’ lovely reading of Neil Diamond’s great ‘And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind’ are sublime examples of sixties pop at his best. More importantly the album never loses it’s chronicling of a man who has denied love. Every track leads up to the album’s final upcoming declaration making this, even more than Elvis Country (I’m 10,000 Years Old), the great Elvis concept album.

Bobby Russell’s dark and brooding ‘Do You Know I Am’ with it’s near whispered vocal and far-away tambourine is the calm at the center of the storm. The regret and longing are starting to kick in and it’s the perfect opener for a side that’s yearning for forgiveness.

Ned Miller’s ‘From A Jack To A King’ was one of Elvis’ fathers Vernon’s favourites. The most playful and country sounding song on the album still fits in perfectly with the idea of lost love and Elvis delivers a slyly comical rendition that provide a brief respite from the darkness that would follow.

‘The Fair’s Moving On’ would provide the album with some of it’s most haunting imagery, with it’s portraits of a packing and vanishing carnival and love affair. Bobby Wood’s piano playing is particularly impressive as is Moman’s kaleidoscope production that surrounds Presley’s soulful vocal.

‘Back in Memphis’ concludes with two of Elvis’ most impressive and greatest performances. Mort Shuman’s ‘You’ll Think Of Me’ opens with Reggie Young on Sitar instead of guitar and it’s that instrument that takes the lead throughout the song, providing an exotic counterpoint to the perhaps the most soulful vocal performance Elvis ever gave. The song was used as the b-side to the legendary ‘Suspicious Minds’ and had remained all but hidden in the years since it’s release. It is perhaps the great lost jewel in Elvis’ crown, listening to it now it’s hard to imagine a singer more in tune with all that a song can symbolically give. No-one, not even Sinatra at his most impassioned, has melded together with a song like this one. This song is Elvis Presley.

The album closes with Danny Small’s ‘Without Love,’ and we find our narrator (and I would say Elvis himself) realizing that ‘without love, I am nothing at all.’ With Bobby Wood again on piano, we find Elvis at his rawest. Paul Westerberg would later write, ‘Remember me, I used to wear my heart on my sleeve’, and he could have easily been describing Elvis singing this song. Recorded on the final night of the January sessions, and shortly before ‘Suspicious Minds,’ it gives the album an uncommonly powerful conclusion. We are still with the same person from ‘Inherit The Wind’ but we have witnessed him changing and ultimately growing. Of all of the concept albums that have gained fame, perhaps only The Pretty Things ‘S.F. Sorrow’ came to such a resonate and deceptively simple conclusion.

– Jeremy Richey, http://www.elvis.com.au

Exit mobile version