Elvis (1956) Review

Almost everything about how this was made argues against it being good. It was recorded in a handful of days between film work and television appearances, the material was picked from whatever publishers could supply, and the goal was to have a second album in shops before Christmas. It works anyway because the group behind him was excellent and because he was, at this exact moment, singing better than he ever would again.

Rip It Up and Ready Teddy are straight rockers taken faster than the originals. Old Shep, a maudlin song about a dead dog that he had sung as a child, is included in complete sincerity and is genuinely strange in context. Anyplace Is Paradise and How's the World Treating You show a control in the low register that the hits never asked for. It is less historically loaded than the debut and less cohesive than what came in 1960, a very good second record made under absurd conditions.