Rate the Tracks - Elvis Country (1971) - ELVIS PRESLEY

Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback on the recent "Loving You - Rate the Tracks."

For this week how about we look at the album 'Elvis Country', which to me has to rank right up there as his best work.

On a scale of one to ten , ten being excellent, what ratings would you give for each of the album's tracks?

As for me :

Snowbird: 5/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 10/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 9/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 8/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 8/10
I Really Don't Want to Know: 9/10
There Goes My Everything: 9/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 4/10
The Fool: 8/10
Faded Love: 4/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 5/10
Make the World Go Away: 10/10

Optional :

I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago: 7/10
A Hundred Years From Now: 9/10
Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (extended version): 10/10

 

Snowbird: 7/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 8/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 9/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 8/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 1010
I Really Don't Want to Know: 8/10
There Goes My Everything: 9/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 6/10
The Fool: 5/10
Faded Love: 4/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 7/10
Make the World Go Away: 6/10

 

Snowbird: 8/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 9/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 9/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 9/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 1010
I Really Don't Want to Know: 8/10
There Goes My Everything: 9/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 5/10
The Fool: 7/10
Faded Love: 6/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 10/10
Make the World Go Away: 7/10

A little arbitrary, but something like that

 

Snowbird: 7/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 7/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 5/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 6/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 8/10
I Really Don't Want to Know: 5/10
There Goes My Everything: 5/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 7/10
The Fool: 7/10
Faded Love: 8/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 8/10
Make the World Go Away: 8/10

I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago: 1/10

 

Snowbird: 7/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 7/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 6/10
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On: 8/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 9/10
I Really Don't Want to Know: 5/10
There Goes My Everything: 8/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 6/10
The Fool: 5/10
Faded Love: 8/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 9/10
Make the World Go Away: 9/10

 

What stands out the most for me about Elvis Country isn't any of the songs (though many are great). But it's the first and only time Elvis really tried to make an "art" album, with the unconventional cover and the odd segues. Even the Memphis album, which was greater musically, was just packaged as a tie-in to the TV show. The experiments on Elvis Country didn't necessarily work, but it was really impressive that he made any.

 

I bought the legacy version of this album last year and it’s the first time I’ve listened to it. I was familiar with the (to me) stand out tracks of Funny How Time Slips Away and I Washed My Hands In The Muddy Water from the excellent Platinum: A Life In Music collection, plus I knew that the album had a mostly great reputation. After a listen I wasn’t disappointed and it now ranks as one of my top ten Elvis albums.

Snowbird: 7/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 6/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 8/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 7/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 9/10
I Really Don't Want to Know: 7/10
There Goes My Everything: 6/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 8/10
The Fool: 7/10
Faded Love: 6/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 9/10
Make the World Go Away: 7/10

 

Just curious.

Has anyone out there made themselvis a separate CDR copy of the twelve tracks plus I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago song as track 13 but minus the annoying inbetween fragments of the latter song? I have , back when the WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES 70 Masters box set was first released in 1995.

 

Snowbird: 6/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 10/10
Little Cabin On the Hill: 10/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 9/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 7/10
I Really Don't Want to Know: 10/10
There Goes My Everything: 9/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 9/10
The Fool: 10/10
Faded Love: 10/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 10/10
Make the World Go Away: 7/10

 

Snowbird: 7/10
Tomorrow Never Comes: 10/10
Little Cabin On The Hill: 8/10
Whole Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On: 8/10
Funny How Time Slips Away: 10/10
I Really Don't Want to Know: 10/10
There Goes My Everything: 9/10
It's Your Baby, You Rock It: 9/10
The Fool: 8/10
Faded Love: 9/10
I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water: 10/10
Make The World Go Away: 8/10

I am a bit surprised that there is not more universal acclaim for Tomorrow Never Comes, Funny How Time Slips Away, I Really Don't Want To Know, I Washed My Hands In Muddy Water, and It's Your Baby, You Rock It, the last song being the only original song on the album, and it likely could have even been a hit single in my opinion, if RCA had bothered to release it in that format. The other four songs rate among Elvis's finest cover versions from the era. The Elvis fandom is a very hard group to please sometimes.