I'm watching the 2001 Turner cut of That's The Way It Is, in 2:35 aspect ratio HD, with DTS HD 5.1 audio...because I can.
There are a lot of good songs on all of the soundtracks. I'm actually in an Elvis-soundtrack-mood quite a lot, I find. More than I would have thought, anyway. I like nonsense. Hey, hey-hey hey! But a lot of the soundtracks work in nice stuff. I have them all and love them, yes love them in all their goofy glory. I was playing Double Trouble earlier -- I love this period of Elvis. Someone realized they needed to put some good songs on these soundtracks. It actually finishes strong. Elvis is able to pull off a lot of material that is otherwise beneath him.
The FTD I'm Listening to... Clambake I love Clambake! Great songs and Elvis is on. Really good soundtrack album. While I guess every Elvis album is essential to me, in some respects -- I would think every fan would find this one pretty solid, if not quite essential. Guitar man. Big Boss Man. You Don't Know Me. Just Call Me Lonesome. Pretty much all of side 2. There's only two goofy numbers, really: Who Needs Money and Confidence. Those two are 60s-soundtrack nonesense. But the rest is good to great. Besides... How could you lose... what you never had!
I love those sessions too, specially Love Letters and Down In The Alley because he sounds like the old Elvis: once again, there is subtlety mixed with passion and fun. Still, the Guitar Man sessions were more than a year away. "Double trouble" is a terrible soundtrack and "Clambake" is worse, only saved by the bonus tracks. But a change was definitely coming.
A lot of people hate these two soundtracks. Double Trouble starts off pretty rough and only gets rougher, hitting jaw-dropping levels with Old McDonald. But it finishes quite strong overall. Clambake, on the other hand, is quite good, I always thought -- minus those two aforementioned duds. Before things like FTD and box sets and other compilations, there's enough awesome stuff on Clambake that I would have considered it an essential album.
I assume you are talking about the Clambake soundtrack album that has five non-soundtrack recordings from the September 1967 Guitar Man sessions? Those recordings are indeed good-to-great and essential, and should have formed the basis of a non-soundtrack album at the time, if someone at RCA had been thinking clearly. The actual songs from the movie itself are for the most part more like show tunes than rock-n-roll. I enjoy them for what they are (my daughter really likes that soundtrack and I've come to appreciate it by listening from her perspective). But it's not the type of material Elvis should have been singing or that made best use of his talents. "Confidence" is such a blatant ripoff of "High Hopes" that I'm amazed there was no lawsuit. The Double Trouble material sounds more like rock-n-roll than Clambake, but it's grade C rock-n-roll. It sounds even worse because it's from the 1965-66 period when whoever was mixing put Elvis' voice way up in the mix and making it sound like he was singing inside a cardboard box. The 90s Double Features remix makes it sound a lot better, but of course remixing can't improve the quality of the material.
Several of the older movie FTDs sound so tinny to me. I'm very fond of the Kid Galahad songs for some reason, even though they're very slight and superficial. So the repetition of takes on the FTD is no problem for me, but the weak sound quality means I rarely listen to it. I don't know how things like that could ever justify a fresh FTD though in this day and age, with a few exceptions like VLV as you say, which is far more popular with fans than Galahad! It's just a bit frustrating when the distance between the sound quality of say, the superb-sounding Blue Hawaii FTD, and the tinny Kid Galahad FTD, despite them being from not too far apart recording periods. But most of Elvis' BEST work sounds great on FTD which is the main thing.
Kid Galahad's soundtrack was pretty good compared to what was to come. Actually, I wish several movies had got an EP soundtrack instead of the full LP treatment (which means much more fillers). Something like Girls, Girls, Girls would have probably benefited. SIDE A 1) Girls Girls Girls 2) I don't wanna be tied 3) I don't want to SIDE B 1) Return to sender 2) A boy like me, a girl like you 3) We're comin' in loaded
I would have taken out A Boy Like me, A Girl Like You and added Thanks to the Rolling Sea. Just my opinion...
A lot of the soundtracks have been getting released as hi-res downloads. I've picked up all the ones they've released thus far -- and they sound awesome. I'm 100% confident they're sourced from the recent Vic Anesini remasters, as opposed to the Lene Reidel masters that many of the early FTD releases have (circa early 2000's). I don't think the Reidel masters are bad at all -- they're so much better than what we had in the 90s. They sound true to their source and mellow. They're thankfully not loud or "futzed with." But the Anesini masters sound like either better generation tapes, and/or better hi-def DACs/equipment. Crystal clear, super bass-extension. They sound fantastic in hi-res -- assuming you like the soundtracks -- and sound like they were recorded yesterday. Acoustic Sounds seems to have the most releases: http://store.acousticsounds.com/ind...htext=elvis,presley&CategoryID=365&OrderBy=14
I do. What's the standard CD release? I do have the FTD and it sounds like the same mastering. The hi-res is awesome. It's nice to clearly hear the full impact of the Jordanaires.
The one where Rick Rowe was the remastering engineer. I believe I bought this in the late 80's, but not sure. Thanks for the information!
Ah. Yeah, don't have that one. In general, if one is equipped and interested -- the Elvis hi-res downloads are all excellent. A lot of hi-res releases use old masterings or most often of unknown origin. Even though they don't tell you, I'm abundantly certain that Elvis' are all the Anesini (or most recent) mastering. Which is great. It's been nice for the soundtracks FTDs, as I mentioned, which are older masterings. I usually load the Hi-res version in the playlist and then tack on that great bonus content from the FTD -- which gives me that "refreshed mastering" (only on the original album, of course) that many of them need.
I believe there is also a 1997 remaster of Pot Luck... which sounds alright. Surely, the hi res files will blow away the Rick Rowe original CD's.
Ah yes... Elvis or "The Fool Album." That's where it had to become patently obvious that something was wrong with Elvis Presley. Love Letters was certainly a leftover meal. But "Fool" was full-on a panic. Charlie Chaplin eating a shoe, kind of desperation. My God, that whole scene is genius, by the way.
Right on man! Welcome to the FTD thread. You are quite right to be afraid of FTD. I had a dozen or two Elvis CDs... a few box sets, you know. But eventually, I buckled -- and I held out for years, mind you. And now, courtesy of FTD, I have a row, of what 60?, 7-inch "Classic Albums." I have all of them, thus far. Crack. Coke. Kane.
Can any of you Elvis crazies tell me if any outtakes of the song "Love Me" are on any of the FTD (or other official) releases? I saw one sessionography that seemed to have some times for alternate takes, but it didn't appear that the tapes were known to still exist. Thanks!
I'm no session-expert, but I am an Elvis crazy! -- but, sadly, you're right. Nearly all the tapes are missing from these most seminal sessions.
Yep, the only outtakes that exist from Elvis' second album are one alternate take of "Old Shep" and several alternate takes of "Rip it Up."
In this particular case, you don't really need outtakes for something as perfect as Love Me. What a beautiful rockaballad!
