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In 1995 RCA/BMG released the box set
"Walk A Mile in My Shoes-The Essential '70's Masters". The box
was the natural follow up to the respective '50's and '60's collections,
but it's compilers felt that in this case a different approach was
needed. Like the 50's and '60's sets the '70's box would be a five disc
collection. However, whilst the 50's collection had included the
complete masters, and it's'60's counterpart had concentrated on all the
secular recordings from that decade, things were a little more
complicated with Elvis' 70's recordings. Firstly, the complete secular
'70's studio recordings would not fit onto a 5 disc set, and the
producers were not allowed to exceed this. Secondly, a number of
essential 1970's Presley recordings including songs such as "I Just
Can't Help Believin'", "Walk A Mile In My Shoes",
"Proud Mary", "Polk Salad Annie", "You Gave Me
A Mountain", and "Never Been To Spain" were only recorded
during concert appearances. To exclude performances of this calibre on
the basis that they were not studio masters, would have been detrimental
to the overall quality of the set. Elvis' '70's output was often
criticized by the serious music press, and it was important that this
set showed Elvis in the most positive way, in order to re-address the
balance on this period of Elvis' career.
Another point that certainly seems to have been considered when compiling the set is that throughout the '70's Elvis' manager and record company did him no favours with their release policy. In today's music industry it's highly unlikely that an artist of Elvis' standing would release one new album a year, but back in the '70's Elvis' record company was putting out three our four albums a year. This meant that a productive session like the June 1970 Nashville session, which had already produced two great albums in "Elvis - That's The Way It Is" and "I'm 10,000 years Old - Elvis Country", was also responsible for the much weaker "Love Letters From Elvis", when RCA decided to issue most of the leftovers as a full priced album in 1971. It wasn't that every track on the album was bad. It included a great cover of "Got My Mojo Working/Keep Your Hands Off Off It ", for example, but the songs collectively just weren't up to the standard of the previous two releases. |
For these reasons it was decided that the 70's box would be split into three different themes. Two discs would cover the '70's single releases, with all the A & B sides being included except for a couple of gospel performances which would appear on a gospel collection. Two discs would cover the rest of the studio highlights from 1971 - 1976, with a few previously unissued recordings added to make the set more appealing to the collector, and the final disc would concentrate on the best of the 70's live cuts, and showcase the songs mentioned earlier in this article amongst others. This made for a very entertaining set which showed that Elvis still made some great music during the last seven years of his life, and most music critics agreed with this assessment in their reviews of the set. For these reasons I think the decision to present the '70's masters in this way was the correct one, but as an Elvis fan I would have liked remastered versions of the complete studio recordings for my own collection.
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