It depends what you want... If you want just the "hits" or the highlights, those are readily available on other comps. If you want something more in depth, here you go. To me, yeah, it's essential. And I love the cover as is. Nice retro feel. RCA is doing these Elvis releases right.
Essential? I guess that depends on what you're going for. Are you a casual fan of Elvis looking to explore more of his music? Then maybe. If you're a deep fan you probably already have the masters in some form or another. This release would be a cohesive option to get all the masters in remastered sound. The outtakes are not essential, but interesting nonetheless. As for the cover, it's a riff on an FTD cover put out 16 years ago. Not many options to go with otherwise. The ID photo is not really of high enough quality for a cover shot, unless they did something like was done for Essential Elvis vol. 4, the "scrap-bookpage" look. Besides, neither of the original lifetime albums featured a 1976 (or 1977) shot of Elvis on the cover. From Elvis Presley Boulevard came closest in period relevance, it featured a live shot of Elvis on stage in Memphis mid-1975. It was re-touched to slim Elvis out a little. (Interesting how this worked out. 1974's Live On Stage In Memphis (recorded at the Mid-South Coliseum) features a photo of Graceland as the cover, and From Elvis Presley Boulevard (recorded at Graceland) features a live shot from the Mid-South Coliseum as the cover.) Moody Blue features a small shot from 1972.
Essential? No. The "Jungle Room" recordings do not represent Elvis at his best and do not contain essential recordings. If you are a casually interested fan and only want essential recordings, this is probably not the most ideal release.
Nothing really to add what's been said here but just a little aside, many moons ago I was listening to 'He'll have to go' off the 'Moody Blue' album on CD and for one reason or another the CD's time was counting backwards and it struck me in that moment it was effectively counting down to the end of the last song Elvis recorded in a studio*, on his last lifetime album and thus counting down, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, the final moments of Elvis' recording career in the 'studio'* all the way from 'My Happiness' and not only did I then listen more intently but I had a little pang of sadness. Not only because it was his last studio master ever but because for all his greatness, he could've been greater... * I know it was his home studio but you know what I mean... don't you?
That sums up some of the sentiment regarding Elvis' final several years as a recording artist; it could have been greater.
I agree with many of the responses and say this leans more towards essential. However, I would definitely give the essential "nod" to the two FTD classic album releases (EP Blvd and Moody Blue). But for $15, Way Down in the Jungle Room is a nice alternative compilation of just the sessions -- with some minor flare and remixes. And a bada$$ cover! The main reason I think it leans towards essential is because, if compared to the similar-styled Elvis Legacy releases -- this one is actually much better. While not a formal "Legacy" release or branded as such (it's not a reissued "album" per se, but rather the sessions that produced two albums) it does what the Legacy releases should have done and reissue some interesting artifacts surrounding the album/sessions. Many of the Legacy Elvis releases wound up just being "twofers." And here you get a great reimagining of the sessions masters, resequenced nicely -- then a whole disc of stripped-down session remixes. The remixes do give a new take on the sessions with a different room-vibe reverb and bits of added chatter. If you love these final sessions, it's good.
I've considered, and reconsidered, and considered again, getting this set... but given that I already have the relevant FTDs, and even more so, given the blatant, unashamed, sunny, whitewashing lies that the liner notes apparently tell about Elvis at this end-point of his career (and, basically, of his life), I can't justify the purchase to myself. I enjoy a good bit of the material in these sessions, and I'm curious to hear the remixes, but it breaks my heart that certain people who are in charge of promoting Elvis and his legacy to the public feel the need to push lies about the man and his personal struggles. For this fan, that only adds tragedy on top of tragedy.
Honestly the best set like that is the Great Performances DVD set: https://www.amazon.com/Elvis-Great-Performances-Box-Set/dp/B000069HST/ Three discs in that older package compared to two in the newer set. There's also https://www.amazon.com/Elvis-1-Hit-Performances-Presley/dp/B000SUKPGQ/ which is kind of a half-assed 15 track DVD that came out alongside the Elv1s 30 greatest hits set from last decade(!). Besides that, there's just the live performances, live performance movies and ye olde motion pictures.
Buy the download -- there's no liner notes! There's a hi-res download of this release that is really fantastic.
Buying the download would, indeed, be an effective way of dealing with my objection to the liner notes. Unfortunately, my computer has, of late, been running more and more slowly, so I'm trying to avoid taking up much more space on it with downloads. I do appreciate the tip for future reference though! In almost every case, I tend to be very old-school in my approach to music, preferring to buy the physical product, so as to enjoy the album cover, liner notes, etc., but from every report that I've heard, the notes for this set are so egregiously inaccurate that I'm not drawn to want to peruse them at all. It's such a shame. There could very well be interesting liner notes written about these sessions, but that would require a fearless honesty from the author about Elvis in this time period. I would have chosen Peter Guralnick for the task, but he might well have been too brutally honest for some fans! For myself, I'd rather read the sometimes-painful truth about Elvis and these sessions, presented in a thoughtful, well-written way, as opposed to comforting lies to supposedly "protect" Presley's reputation.
The liner notes I have never read in my CD collection must add up to hundreds. In my opinion, they will always be one-sided essays. From extreme ends of the spectrum sometimes. Only good for dates and personnel involved and take numbers etc. My take.
Here we go with apologists downplaying the historically revised liner notes as irrelevant because they choose not to read them. The reality is that many people read them, particularly consumers who are not well-versed with the background for a particular album or session, or who want to revisit the background of an album or session for a fresh perspective. If the liner notes were irrelevant, then Sony would not have commissioned someone to draft them, nor would the project managers have made sure that circumstances surrounding the sessions and Elvis' life and career were whitewashed and cleaned up. The CD release simply could have been a digipak with a listing of songs with dates recorded. I had not listened to Stevie Nicks' Bella Donna in years and loosely knew the backstory behind the album. I recently acquired the 3-disc deluxe edition of the album, and looked forward to reading the in-depth liner notes which were informative and added to the experience of listening to the music. The liner notes give the music additional context. I still enjoy the music, but feel like I understand it a bit better, particularly from Nicks' perspective and because I understand the creative process behind the album more than I did in the past. It would be very discouraging to find out that there were calculated and gross misrepresentations printed to mislead the reader and listener, like Sony did with Way Down In The Jungle. One might as well simply download the songs if the music and sound is all that matters, because if one acquires the CD, it does come with fairly elaborate packaging, and as a whole package, this set is not without its flaws, particularly because the liner-notes are so badly written.
I wish I could like this post one thousand times, especially if it would stop all the whining and moaning.
Indeed. And there have been some truly excellent and insightful pieces crafted for Presley releases over the years, shame some chose not to read them. Frankly one has to question the statements of contrarian-for-the-sake-of-it to be honest. In that world everything is flat and nothing matters anyway.
It could be argued the liner notes are full of distracting and needless special effects, like the outtakes on this release! ;-)
Totally hear ya, I prefer a physical product. When there's a hi-res download though, I usually opt for that over the CD. In rare cases, I'll get both. I would also recommend not putting your downloads on your PC. Instead buy two hard drives and keep the two drives in sync. Either way, you want to keep at least one copy of all your music - a playing drive and a backup drive. Big (ridiculously big) hard drives are pretty cheap.
I had no interest in this set since I'm happy with my FTD releases but now I want it for the misleading liner notes.
No one is singled out in my post, of course, but it would be nice if the nonsense I highlight was no more.
