This is why Elvis is still the king of Rock and Roll and why he caused so much controversy in 1956. The raw sensuality of Elvis' voice is richly captured on this compliation. Makes me want to travel back in time and see him as he was, at his best!

This album collects most of what Elvis Presley committed to tape during his first full year as a recording artist with RCA.

"Elvis 56" is filled with classics like "Heartbreak Hotel", "Hound Dog", "Shake, Rattle & Roll", "Don't Be Cruel" and "Love Me", as well as several equally excellent, if somewhat lesser-known songs ("Paralyzed", "Any Way You Want Me", "One-Sided Love Affair", and covers of Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and Arthur Crudup's "So Glad You're Mine").

This is a very enjoyable collection filled with good pop hooks and some fine musicianship (would have been nice with some more insightful liner notes and recording information). The only problem is that most Elvis fans probably already have most or all of this music.
But if you don't, and just want a bit of 50s rock n' roll, rockabilly and pop to keep your fingers tapping on the steering wheel on your way home from work, "Elvis 56" is a really fine purchase, although it's by no means a definitive early Elvis Presley retrospective.

This CD is a good sample of much of the best of 1950s Elvis. Though it covers only 1956, that was his biggest year in that decade. This is mostly a combination of his original albums ELVIS PRESLEY and ELVIS, minus the Sun Studio recordings of 1954-55 that were on those albums (which you can get separately). At 22 tracks it's quite sizable, and emphasizes rock and blues along with a few slower ballads. It's also got a nicely-done booklet with many photos. There's not a lot of unusual material here if you've already got most of his '50s stuff, but of the alternate takes of "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" and "Heartbreak Hotel," the latter is especially interesting. Sound quality is unusually clear, and the packaging is attractive. This album gives good evidence why the Beatles were huge Elvis fans in the '50s.

i just purchased this cd and i must say that elvis in 56 sounds just like the performer of the millenium .....this ia a very nice choice of music , hound dog ,lawdy miss clawdy ,i got a woman and I was the one are all very well done ,,,this whole cd is awsome not one bad cut ...real rockabilly,,,rock and roll i highly recommend ,,,,buy this one while you can ....

It's wonderful to hear these early Elvis recordings, when he was still raw and new and amazing, when he was still singing real music, before The Colonel turned him into a movie star singing songs like "Do The Clam". Even if you've heard all these before, and even if you already have most of them, this is still a great collection. Everything on this CD was recorded in the same year, and all I can say is that 1956 must have been amazing! (I was only 6 years old, so I can't really say much from personal experience.)

My only complaint isn't with the music, only with the liner notes, or rather the lack of liner notes. The booklet that comes with the CD is beautifully designed, with some very evocative photgraphs by Alfred Wertheimer - LordyLordy, Elvis was certainly somethin' to look at back then! But I would have enjoyed a little more discussion about the music - who wrote it, who recorded some of it before Elvis, how he took some of the repertoire of the black blues and R&B artists of the time and made it accessible to the white audiences of the time, what the rest of the popular music world was like at the time and how Elvis totally changed the landscape, and how that all really started in 1956. But unfortunately, that one run-on sentence I just wrote is more information than you'll get with this CD.

Yeah, well, liner notes would have been nice, but really it's all about the music. And the music on this CD is awesome!