Awesome

Back in '97 when I purchased this, I can remember saving up money that I had gotten for my birthday and 12 days later going to the store and buying it the day it came out. I got home shortly after and listened to it start to finish. I was completely amazed. From disc one 1954 to disc four 1977, this collection spans The King's career wonderfully featuring 77 previously unreleased performances sprinkled in with 23 essential studio and live recordings. There's little to zero fill on here and this collection gives a wonderful insight to what went out between songs in many Presley recording sessions and his live performances also. Too bad the "Today, Tomorrow and Forever" collection didn't follow in Platinum's footsteps.

Elvis: A Cultural Revolutionary, Box Shows It Again

RCA trots out another boxset of Elvis, and, yes, it still works!
To the silly charge of racism of a man who famously crossed racial barriers in the '50s, get with it. Start with Alexander Cockburn's piece in "Counterpunch" from last August, which states "Was Presley A Racist? On the occasion of the recent 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death I read a truly stupid piece in the London Guardian, "He Wasn't My King" by Helen Kolawole, to the effect that Elvis stole songs like Hound Dog from black folks, that Willie Mae (Big Mama) Thornton wrote Hound Dog and sang it better and that anyway Elvis was a racist, noted for having said, The only thing Negro people can do for me is to buy my records and shine my shoes.
Wrong on every count. Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, white men, wrote Hound Dog and Big Mama Thornton's version is markedly inferior to Presley's, made three years after her's. Peter Guralnick, in his Last Train to Memphis, The Rise of Elvis Presley (1994), cites a good story that appeared in Jet magazine on August 1, 1957.
"Tracing that rumored racial slur to its source was like running a gopher to earth", Jet wrote. Some said Presley had said it in in Boston, which Elvis had never visited. Some said it was on Edward Murrow's on which Elvis had never appeared. Jet sent Louie Robinson to the set of Jailhouse Rock "When asked if he ever made the remark, Missisissippi-born Elvis declared: 'I never said anything like that, and people who know me know I wouldn't have said it ."
Robinson then spoke to people "who were (itals) in a position to know" and heard from Dr W. A Zuber, "a Negro physician in Tupelo" that Elvis Presley used to "go round to Negro 'sanctified meetings'; from pianist Dudley Brooks that he "faces everybody as a man" and from Presley himself that he had gone to colored churches as a kid, like Reverend Brewster's and that "he could honestly never hope to equal the musical achievemets of Fats Domino or the Inkspot's Bill Kenny." "To Elvis," Jet concluded in its Aug 1 1957 issue, "people are people regardless of race, color or creed."
Visiting Memphis, Ivory Joe Hunter was invited by Presley to visitiwithhim in Graceland and Ivory Joe was worried about the stories of prejudice that had been circulating about Elvis through the spring of 12957. Presley received him with warmth and admiration, sang his composition "I almost lost my mind" with him, and they hung out for the day singing. Hunter said later, "He showed me every courtesy and I think he's one of the greatest." (Jimmy T-99 Nelson told Jeffrey St Clair the other day that Ivory Joe had the biggest feet he'd ever seen. Bigger than Howlin' Wolf's, Jeffrey asked. Bigger by far, said Nelson. When Ivory Joe stamped, the whole stage shook.)
If you want to look at some great photographs of Elvis in black locales and with black musicians in Memphis in the 1950s (with BB King, Bobby "Blue" Bland & Junior Parker), get Daniel Wolff's wonderful edition of Ernest Withers' photos, The Memphis Blues Again.When my daughter Daisy was around 12, in the course of a couple of chance encounters, I was able to get Lieber to play her Hound Dog and Yip Harburg to sing her "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", all in one summer. Oh, just something any Dad would do."That, this boxset, and Peter Guralnick's book also addresses this bogus charge. Still, start with the main boxsets first or ELV1S' 30 # Hits.

Great Elvis set!!

This 4 cd Elvis set is delightful!The rarities and outtakes are fabulous,as well as the previously released material,too!I don't think Elvis ever sung a bad song.Do yourself a favor and get this set,Elvis fan,or not!!