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Just found out that ELVIS COUNTRY (I'M 10,000 YEARS OLD) will be the next album to receive the "Legacy Edition" treatment. The ELVIS COUNTRY album will be coupled with the LOVE LETTERS FROM ELVIS album and is set for release in January, 2012 according to Elvis.com.au.
Here is the link to their article: http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/cd/elvis_country_legacy_edition_2_cd.shtml
TCB!
Mike
http://www.elvis.com.au/presley/uplo...dition_508.jpg
Thanks my friend, looks awesome, can't wait for this one. (y)
This is fantastic, the Elvis Country album has always been a total underrated one outside fans opinion. So this is a great choice to follow up on this series, a most welcome.
Not sure if "Love Letters" was the right choice to double up the album as it is the format on this series. Yes, it is the logical choice as it is build out from the same sessions, but is it that good to be released this way? My choice would have been the "He Touched Me" album, sure, a bit strange, but not if we consider it as "roots" music, and so, it is in the same concept as "Elvis Country" but more important, as same as artistically relevant. But oh well, I guess Love Letters could also be considered a countrish album, so be it, great to have Elvis Country back on the catalogue and in this handsome format anyhow.
Just one thing!!!! What happened with "Its Only Love" on the single bonus tracks, we have the B side: "The Sound of Your Cry" but not the A side?
I do also believe that a few other bonus tracks could have been included as bonus tracks in the CD1. Like the Instrumental Jam "I Didn't Make It on PLaying Guitar" or a few other countrish tracks from Elvis Now, as "Help Me Make it Though the Night" or "Early Morning Rain" or "Don't THink Twice Its All Right" from "The Fool" album. I mean if they added up "Silvia" to CD2. We usually have about up to even 6 bonus tracks on this series so, why not?
The addition of Love Letters CD is stupid and downgrades one of Elvis' best 70s albums.
They could have easily compiled a country/folk album from the era wqith quality songs rather than dross like This is our Dance.
On January 3 Sony Legacy will release Elvis Country.
CD 1:
Snowbird - Tomorrow Never Comes - Little Cabin On The Hill - Whole Lot-ta Shakin’ Goin’ On - Funny How Time Slips Away - I Really Don’t...
Link To Original Article
Mmmmm........give this one a miss I think
I hope they don't have the 10,000 years ago song snippets inbetween the other tracks, that was just bizarre
I enjoyed many songs on album , however, I found the in between soundbite ot 10,000 yrs ago more than annoying. This was supposed to be an attempt at a "theme" album but I did not care for it. Songs like "snowbird", "I really don't want to go", "Make the world go Away" were very well done to name a few.Quote:
Originally Posted by monk37
The inclusion of the Love Letters LP does seem to cheapen it but the use of an entire second album for Disc 2 is in keeping with the strategy of the Sony Legacy Edition series and really, Love Letters is the only logical choice even if it's a few steps down on the quality ladder. I would prefer more material of the same caliber as well but it is what it is.
Actually, TTWII paired with Elvis Country would make one powerhouse release but maybe there are other plans for TTWII...or maybe it's already been covered so well that they won't bother. Whoa, that 3-CD Special Edition set was released 11 years ago! Who knows what they'll do with that one then.
The snippets of I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago bridging the songs together was a nice concept in my opinion and one that was purportedly Elvis' brainchild. I could go either way on this one because for the sake of preserving the original album I think that should be kept intact but for the sake of having a "clean" version of each song, it would be nice to have them all without that. Both would really be ideal but we've got them both ways already, don't we? :)
You're right they should do Elvis Country/ TTWII and they could put in few better songs from Love Letters as a Bonus
You're right, "Love Letters" is the only logical choice, even if its not up the high standard of albums released in this new re-issue collection. Sure TTWII or He Touched Me, definetively were better choice and also suitable as they came from the same studio and era, but those being actually classic critically aclaimed albums, they are probably going to be released and reincorpored to the catalogue on their own in a few years, although I wonder which albums would be the pair for those.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonniebealestreet
What is not that much of a logical choice are the only a few bonus tracks, when they could have as much of bonus tracks as in the other releases in this series. About 4 to 6 in "From Elvis in Memphis/Back in Memphis", "On Stage/In Person", "Elvis is Back/SOmething For Everybody", "Elvis Presley/Elvis", but just 3 in each CD on "Elvis Country/Love Letters"?
"The Sound of Your Cry" is the logical single bonus tracks to the "Love Letters" album, but why not its A side "Its Only Love" is in the Cd? is like if in the "Something for EVerybody" release they have added "Anything Its Part Of You" as a single bonus track, but not "Good Luck Charm", you know what I mean? its weird, its not like they hadn't space for it, so why not? "We Can Make The Morning", "Until Its Time FOr You TO GOt", "FIrst TIme I Ever Saw Your Face", "I'm Leaving" where strong singles and logical choices most needed to tighten up a not so strong album, but instead of that we got "Silvia"? again its kind of weird and not much acording to the logic of all releases in this series where all singles around the album are added.
Now on the "Elvis COuntry" CD, "A Hundred Years From Now", "Where Did They Go Lord" and the full "I Was Born About Then THousand Years AGo" where logical and good choices, but, well if they are bringing in songs from other albums that obviously are then not being released in this series, I think "Early Morning Rain", "Don't THink Twice Its All Right" and "That's What You Get For Loving Me" could have rounded up thing pretty well.
Agree with this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Erhan
I have the FTD, so I'll pass on this one.
I have to agree that despite the fact that LOVE LETTERS is a lesser quality album, it really was the only logical choice to pair with the ELVIS COUNTRY CD because all of the songs were recorded during the same recording sessions. I really couldn't see TTWII being coupled with ELVIS COUNTRY...while it would have been the best pairing for these two albums, my guess is that TTWII is being held back for future release considerations. :hmm:
Personally, I like the LOVE LETTERS album. I know there have been many reviews and fans who have had negative criticism for the album, and I have to agree that back in the day, coming off epic albums like ELVIS COUNTRY, TTWII and FROM ELVIS IN MEMPHIS, the LOVE LETTERS album was indeed a step backwards. But overall I think the material on the LOVE LETTERS album is average for the most part and not nearly as bad as some would have you believe. ;)
As for the discussion about whether the snippets of I WAS BORN 10,000 YEARS AGO will be included in between each song on the ELVIS COUNTRY CD, I would imagine they will since this is a LEGACY EDITION release and the album is being released as it was originally released back in 1970. (y)
TCB!
Mike
certainly was.........skipped it if I couldQuote:
Originally Posted by monk37
The snippets inbetween the tracks, as weird and even stupid it might look today, back in '71, during the era of the "concept albums" bullshit, when rock albums suposedly had to be some kind of intellectual concept art statment, was actually something quite cool and interesting, and was a well recieved idea by the most of the critics and public. Maybe that idea haven't aged that well.
This releases are about the historic legacy value not of the songs per se but about the album, so it had to be released as it was back then. Even if some of us today might prefer lisening to the songs without the snippets or without the tons of overdubbed horns and strings, which, by the way, it was also fashinable back then, remember Harrison's All Things Must Past released a few months earlier? It can't get heavier on the orchesta than that.
Now here are some reviews from back in the day, this was for sure a very welcome album just as it was then. "Elvis Country" has been to me, way underated for many decades ever since, so thumbs up to Legacy to finally give the spotlight to this album, highhopes for this re-release to get some good reviews again.
*************
You wonder sometimes just who is controlling Elvis' career. In the middle of a typical movie soundtrack album, Spinout, you come across not only a raunchy "Down in the Alley" but the interpretation by which Bob Dylan would most like to be known, "Tomorrow is a Long Time." In a bland follow-up to his dynamic Memphis album, Back in Memphis, you find a brilliant and impassioned treatment of the Percy Mayfield blues, "Stranger in My Own Home Town." And now at a time when it seemed as if his career must sink beneath the accumulated weight of saccharine ballads and those sad imitations of his own imitators, Elvis Presley has come out with a record which gives us some of the very finest and most affecting music since he first recorded for Sun almost 17 years ago.
Elvis Country is, obviously, a return to roots. If nothing else the album cover, with its picture of a quizzical Depression baby flanked by grim unsmiling parents, would tell you so. Its subtitle too, "I'm 10,000 Years Old" -- taken from a song which weaves mystifyingly all through the record, fading in and out after every cut -- should give a clue to its intent. And the selection of material, from the Bill Monroe tune which echoes "Blue Moon of Kentucky," the very first Sun release, to the Willie Nelson and Bob Wills blues, is a far cry from the slick country-politan which Elvis has been leaning on so heavily lately in his singles releases.
But it's the singing, the passion and engagement most of all which mark this album as something truly exceptional, not just an exercise in nostalgia but an ongoing chapter in a history which Elvis' music set in motion. All the familiar virtues are there. The intensity. The throbbing voice. The sense of dynamics. That peculiar combination of hypertension and soul. There is even, for those who care to recall, a frenzied recollection of what the rock era once was, as Elvis takes on Jerry Lee Lewis' masterful "Whole Lotta Shakin'" and comes out relatively unscathed. He has never sung better.
But the core of the album, and perhaps the core of Elvis' music itself, are the soulful gospel-flavored ballads, "Tomorrow Never Comes," "Funny (How Time Slips Away)," and the Eddie Arnold-Solomon classic, "I Really Don't Want to Know." Well, it's often seemed as if Elvis bore more than a passing resemblance to Solomon Burke. The way in which he uses his voice, his dramatic exploitation of vocal contrast, the alternate intensity and effortless nonchalance of his approach all put one in mind of a singer who passed this way before, only going the other way. And here he uses these qualities to create a music which, while undeniable country, puts him in touch more directly with the soul singer than with traditional country music. It was his dramatic extravagance in fact which set him apart from the beginning, and it is to this perhaps as much as anything else -- to the very theatrics which Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis all brought to hillbilly music -- that we can trace the emergence of rock & roll.
There's not much to reproach about the album. Except for "Snowbird," an unaccountable choice to open this album or any other, the choice of material is unexceptionable. It does continue, it's true, a puzzling fascination with Eddy Arnold's songs, but these, too, are invested with Elvis' own particular brand of passion, and even "Make the World Go Away" becomes by transformation a kind of urgent plea. The production is fine and a big improvement on recent records. Instrumentation is perfect, from driving bass and rocking gospel-flavored piano to more traditional fiddle, harmonica, and dobro. On a good many of the songs there's the tasteful suggestion of strings and horns and a chorus appears on about half, but we really haven't heard so much of Elvis in a long, long time, and certainly the element of playfulness in his voice, the degree to which he is willing to take risks is something that has been absent since the very earliest days. There remains only the mystery of the album's theme and the song which gives it its title. Even that is not so much of a drawback as a puzzlement, though, since the song -- fragmented as it is -- gives promises of being one of his more exciting revival-styled numbers, if only it were put together again.
Well, I don't know what, really, this promises for the future. Elvis has never been exactly noted for his taste. Unlike Jerry Lee Lewis, say, who seems to possess a sure instinct for for sticking to exactly what he is good at, Elvis has shown a distressing inability over the years to distinguish strengths from his weaknesses. What is so encouraging about the album, of course, is its indication that he has not altogether laid waste to his own talents, merely squandered them on efforts not worthy of his energy. The energy is still there, though, that much is certain. And if Elvis can only be persuaded to put out an album of blues now, too, we'll have in capsule a picture of the genesis of rock & roll and what first went into the make-up of one of its few authentic geniuses, this brilliant and altogether original performer.
- Peter Guralnick, Rolling Stone, 3/4/71.
This is much better than Elvis' recently released "live" soundtrack to his latest movie. The album is titled I'm 10,000 Years Old - Elvis Country and the music is the finest country in the land. There's not a note of the excessive over arrangement that you've heard in the past. The arrangements and musicanship here is more reminiscent of New Morning than old Elvis records, though Dylan's band really can't compare to this mellowness. The songs are dynamite, from a Presley rework of "Snowbird," to a super tasteful track of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," to fantastic country crooning on "Funny How Time Slips Away," and "I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water." And to spice it up (and space it out) Elvis has added this concept of "I'm 10,000 Years Old." About ten seconds of a song by that title are inserted after every cut on the album. The words to it are farther out than most recent Presley. Oddly, the album is packaged in loveable banality -- there's a picture of Elvis at age 2 on the cover and the back song listings are superimposed on logs. Have a good next 10,000 years Elvis: you're the tripsmaster of all time.
- Danny Goldberg, Circus, 3/71.
This is a great album, wherein Elvis shows his country roots. Many of the tunes are arranged with gospel chord progressions, giving a true Southern flavor to the cuts. Sides include his current smash, "I Really Don't Want To Know" and "There Goes My Everything," plus "I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water" and others. A stone gas for pop and country charts.
- Billboard, 1971.
great reviews and i agree this is a great album