Following the spectacular career resuscitation of the ’68 Comeback TV special and subsequent high calibre studio recordings in Memphis, Presley travelled across Tennessee for his next notable sessions. Over five nights in June 1970, he cut close to three dozen songs at RCA’s famed Studio B in Nashville, which both celebrated country music’s roots and offered a signpost for the genre’s future.
Though not as exhilarating as the previous year’s Elvis In Memphis album, a crack team of session men, including the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and guitarist James Burton, helped Presley breathe new life into dusty country standards. Ernest Tubbs’ honky-tonkin’ Tomorrow Never Comes is transformed into a rousing marching ballad, Willie Nelson’s Funny How Time Slips Away oozes bluesy torch, while Songbird benefits from the strummed flightiness of Glen Campbell’s hits from the same period.
This two-disc set brings together all of the songs from the sessions, so inevitably the tracks that didn’t make the cut for the original album – many packaged together for 1971’s Love Letters From Elvis – aren’t of quite the same high standard. Having said that, there’s a pleasing melodrama to When I’m Over You and a soulful twist to the hymnal Only Believe.
