2. Elvis Presley — Elvis Presley (1956)
Here we go. The King comin’ in hot as the second album in the list. Nothing against Frankie Sinatra, but that album was a bit of a drag. I have a Spotify playlist of all of these albums as I listen to them, and it was a shocking transition to go from Sinatra crooning to this:
Not that I’m complaining. You know what’s a great song? Elvis’s “Blue Suede Shoes” is a great song.
I’d never listened to an Elvis album in its entirety before, and I’m glad the first was his debut. This was the first Rock & Roll album to top the Billboard charts, where it hung around for 10 weeks. It was kind of a big deal.
It’s not hard to see why. This version of “Blue Suede Shoes” is better in every way than Carl Perkins’ original. I prefer Ray Charles’ version, but the cover of “I Got A Woman” here is really well adapted to Elvis’s rockabilly style. That’s true of his “Tutti Frutti” as well. And “Blue Moon” is simply perfection.
It’s wild to hear how Elvis uses his voice on the album. It’s all over the place; there are songs here that I might not realize were Elvis if I heard them in isolation. That’s both a plus and a minus — the album ends up uneven and inconsistent, almost like a work in progress.
But that’s a minor complaint. The peaks here are astounding, and I’ll return to this record again.
One Essential Song:
Listen on Spotify:
