This year is the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth. When Elvis hits a milestone, the good people at Elvis Presley Enterprises and Sony Music repackage and re-release the hits. Each new package is touted as being bigger and better than the last. Col. Tom Parker would approve. Good Rockin’ Tonight is simply the latest in a long line.
Sony began revamping Presley’s catalog almost 20 years ago with the release of The Complete 50s Masters. After the success of the first box, they released sets of his ‘60s and ‘70s work. The decade box sets were intended for the devoted. The amount of material is daunting to casual fans because they have to wade through the b-sides, rarities and alternate takes to get to the songs they know. Good Rockin’ Tonight remedies this by condensing Elvis’s career into 100 tracks. The songs are arranged in chronological order, starting with “That’s All Right” and finishing up with JXL’s remix of “A Little Less Conversation.”
Chronological order can be cumbersome, but it works in Elvis’s favor. It dispels the popular myth that Elvis never made any worthwhile music after he joined the army. As he got older his voice matured from a raw force of nature into an extremely powerful instrument. The arrangements got quieter as he got older, but he had more control over his voice. He figured out how to use his range for maximum impact. He was able to hit incredible notes, but only used them when it was absolutely necessary, like at the end of “An American Trilogy.
The biggest selling point of the box is that it culls songs from every aspect of Elvis’s career. For instance, The Essential ‘60s Masters omitted his gospel songs and movie hits. Good Rockin’ Tonight has plenty of both, including “Crying in the Chapel” and “How Great Thou Art.” It also includes some of his lesser known hits, like “Marie’s the Name (His Latest Flame),” “Bossa Nova Baby” and “Don’t.”
As with any Elvis collection, there are a few bad choices. “Polk Salad Annie” rears its ugly head once again, and “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” wants to rock, but it doesn’t have the swing of the early singles. Even when the material was mediocre, Elvis still sang the hell out of it. That’s a large part of what makes him so endearing. He loved to sing so much that he would sing anything put in front of him. Elvis has been criticized for this, sometimes rightfully so (“No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car” anyone?), but music is the only thing Elvis understood. He was a tremendously flawed and lonely man, but his voice never let him down.
Good Rockin’ Tonight is a perfect collection for a casual fan that wants more than a single disc, but isn’t devoted enough for the decade sets. If you have the decade sets, you are paying for new packaging.
Since this is Elvis’s 75th anniversary, there has been a lot of talk about his place in the modern music world. If you don’t understand his place in American culture, I could pontificate about how everything springs from Elvis and another five million words about how he brought black and white cultures together, but I won’t. His true legacy is almost never mentioned. Whenever I hear “That’s All Right,” “Baby Let’s Play House,” or “Don’t Be Cruel,” my day gets a little bit brighter. It’s as simple as that. Fifty million Elvis fans can’t be wrong.