Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old) Review

The sessions that produced this were enormous, several nights of continuous recording that generated multiple albums, and someone had the sense to pull the country material into one place. What arrived is a strong, unfussy record. Snowbird and Funny How Time Slips Away are sung straight and land. There Goes My Everything is the kind of ballad he could do in his sleep and he does not sleep through it.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On is taken at a gallop and is the loosest he had sounded on tape in years. The gimmick is the framing device, a few bars of an old song about being ten thousand years old faded in and out between every track, which is either charming or maddening depending on your patience and which becomes maddening around track eight. The band is excellent, the singing is committed, and the material is chosen with genuine affection for the form. Not a landmark, but the last consistently good album he made.