Jon Weisberger writes:
>It's a double-CD in one of those flip cases, released a couple of
>weeks ago. Basically, it's The Sun Sessions plus - the plus being
>a number of live cuts from 1955, pre-Sun stuff and a couple of
>alternate takes that didn't appear on The Sun Sessions. The
>notes consist of a good essay by Peter Guralnick and not much
>else; there is, for instance, no date, definite or speculative
>(beyond the year), for the live cuts, and no discussion of where or
>why they were recorded.
>
>Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, there are a couple of
>outtakes/alternate takes on The Sun Sessions that don't appear on
>Sunrise, so a completist will want to hang onto the former (is this a
>new strategy to reduce the traffic in used copies of The Sun Sessions
>that might otherwise result?).
These are all points that I made in my "C.S.T." review. The good
points are that a) "Sunrise" collects - for the first time - all four of
Big E's pre-Sun acetate recordings in one place, b) it puts "Fool, Fool,
Fool" and the early version of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" (both recorded
in Lubbock for a radio station) in their proper context for the first
time, c) it includes an unreleased alternate take of "Blue Moon," and d)
the Louisiana Hayride recordings are pretty damn rough, but interesting
nonetheless.
There are two huge problems in my book. First of all, the
sessionography, such as it is, gives absolutely no information about
release numbers, take numbers, release dates, etc. You get recording
dates and not much else. Personally, I'm not sure what the problem was,
considering that all of this information was included with "The Sun
Sessions" back in '87. The other big problem, as Jon W. mentioned, is
the greatly reduced number of alternate takes that appeared on the
original CD, which already had fewer alternates than the 2-record LP
version due to space constraints. Since "Sunrise" is a 2-disc set,
there's absolutely no excuse for this as far as I'm concerned. There was
plenty of room to make "Sunrise" the last word on this era of Elvis'
career. And, sure, maybe Joe Consumer isn't going to care about
listening to seven barely distinguishable versions of "I'm Left, You're
Right, She's Gone," but I do. "Sunrise" is worth picking up but I'm
absolutely stumped as to why RCA didn't do a better job, particularly
considering the hugely improved quality of their Elvis releases since '86
or so and the fact that Ernst Jorgensen was involved with this. More
than anyone else at RCA, you'd have thought that *he* would have known
better.
--Jon Johnson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Wollaston, Massachusetts
