RCA continues to release and rerelease Elvis albums like the plague. Selling you with new bonus, never before heard alternate takes, etc. It's not different at all really, from the single cd "The Complete Sun Sessions" recording done 13 years ago. The sound quality is touched up a bit, and the extras are interesting But.. not worth the investment if you have the previous recordings. Although.. These sessions capture rock & roll at its most basic [12-bar blues] and romantic. Much has been said about Elvis' greatness, but this is the ONE album that proves it. Never before has an artist been so exagerated as Elvis was in the 60's and 70's for mediocore at best material, but the songs on this album will have you falling head over heals in love with Elvis, and wondering just how great things might have been if he would have stayed at Sun and never met up with the, err, the colonel. This is the greatest rock & roll ever recorded.. Period.. I've heard them all. This is the mecca that so many artists go back to.. The Beatles, Van Morrison, The Clash, Otis Redding, etc. It's got soul.

The recordings Elvis Presley made for Sun Records in Memphis are considered among the finest rock n' roll records ever made. There's an undeniable freshness about the studio tracks on these two discs that still conveys energy and fun. They're all very simply songs, quickly recorded, but they'd be absolutely impossible to duplicate.
That's probably why they've been repackaged and re-released again. With a $30 price tag, everyone from Presley fanatics to casual listeners interested in music history would be better off picking up the 5-Disc Box Set: THE COMPLETE 50s MASTERS, which gives you all the master takes here as well as many of the alternates and demos (plus all his RCA recordings from 1956-1958, including movie soundtracks, Christmas and gospel tunes and great singles like "Heartbreak Hotel", "Love Me Tender", "Jailhouse Rock", "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" and "Hound Dog") for only $25 more. That collection is well worth it.
I don't feel the unreleased studio material justifies re-releasing these songs again. With a few exceptions, it's easy to see why these alternate takes were originally rejected.
The rough tapes also don't contain the priceless moment of Elvis cracking up on a take as Carl Perkins makes faces at him through the window of the Sun Records office that looked into the recording studio. That's the kind of informal spontaneity that made the Sun Recordings so vibrant (for Presley, Perkins and plenty of other great artists). That's why I bought this collection.
What is here is some incredibly racist studio dialogue between takes that is far more shocking to a modern listener than any pelvis-wiggling might've been at the time. It's incredibly embarrassing to the spirit of fun-for-all that this repackaging of the Sun material might be trying to market to.
There's also some live tracks to fill out the end of Disc 2. They sound like Elvis was giving a concert from a distant sewer while someone was sweeping gravel off the floor in the recording studio.
I love Elvis and the Sun material is arguably the greatest accomplishment in his recording legacy, but there are better packages to get all of the material anyone would want from this collection.

If you have all of Elvis and you're studying the history of his work starting at an early age, then this CD will be important. But if you just want to listen to some of
the best of Elvis, I only found one outstanding cut to recommend,
Mystery Train. The scratches, noise and repeated takes
on many songs limits the usefulness of this recorded history for most people.

I don't care if you love Elvis, you hate Elvis, youi dig rock, you loathe rock, you are 8 or you are 80, this music will go right to your heart. You are hearing a truly original artist create an art form on the spot with irresistable caring and appeal. There's little here that has much do with the Elvis RCA fashioned the minute they got his contract; he isn't sinigng "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck" here. What is here is pure, undiluted genius--a mixture of blues, soul, pop, country, folk and a lot else, all distilled into the most tender, gutsy, fascinating, honest music imaginable. And Elvis' taste in material is just fascinating--he has taken music from all sorts of sources here, nothing predictable, nothing linear, and fashioned it, bent it, molded it and delivered it with genius. And there is one noteworthy moment which has largely gone unnoticed. When he sings "I'll Never Stand In Your Way" he is all but imitating the original performer, Joni James, in the most affecting and complimentary way imaginable. He could even do THAT magnifiicently.

Along with Hank Williams undubbed MGM session sides and Jimmie Rodgers (the country star, not the pop star) recordings, these recordings make up one of the most essential peices of American music. These recordings are where rock began. You'll find several genres of music presented here-country, blues and gospel all rolled into one to make what we know today as rock 'n' roll. This is simply pre-army, pre-pop, pre-bloated Elvis at his best and rawest.

But, only regular Graceland fans need to get in line for this set. This set is troubled by the inclusion of many alternate takes that a lot of people won't find interesting and may even find rough listening. Some of the alternates are quite good- others, however, simply do not work. For instance, the slow take of "You're Right, I'm Left, She's Gone" just doesn't work well. The live recordings are certainly not essential in a set such as this-they would be better suited in a different context than alongside "official" takes of these cuts. If nothing else, BMG could've left off the live recordings & boiled this down to a one CD set. Leave off the live recordings (or even the 2nd disc altogether) & this suddenly becomes an essential, have to have set. Stick with "Complete Sun Sessions" to get an understanding of these recordings if you're new to this music (who really is new to it, though?).