Great album, nice variety! Lacking a couple of the more popular songs, but definately an album any Elvis fan would want to buy!

This is the slimmed-down version of "Top Ten Hits," which means you're getting the "best of the best." Being "the King," and having a recording career covering two decades, there is a lot of good Elvis to choose from.

We gauge the Beatles by their albums, but we gauge the King by his songs, since their careers and styles were different. None of the Beatles did time in the Army, or focused on a movie career like Elvis. Elvis was not a recording artist, or a composer/songwriter, but an entertainer. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that Elvis put the "E" in entertainment.

This CD has the hits listed chronologically, so you are hearing the evolving Elvis, as he gets his feel for the studio, and adds that to his natural talents and irreplaceable voice. The only down-side it that you aren't getting some of his popular songs that were not #1 hits, such as "Kentucky Rain," or "In the Ghetto (the Vicious Circle)," which are better than some of the songs on this CD. If you want a deeper run into Graceland, then get the "Top Ten Hits," which should have anything you could ever want in a Elvis survey CD.

The copies are flawless, and have a clean re-mastering process, so they tracks almost sound fresh. The linear notes are also helpful. It is a nice picture of the thin Elvis, which looks like a potage stamp, even though I prefer the later Elvis that I remember seeing on TV as a lad.

While some of the more soulful songs are here, the emphasis here is on the real rockin' side of Elvis. I would like to make a couple of observations. First, "In The Ghetto", regrettably, is not in this collection as one reviewer said. Secondly, the version of Suspicious Minds is the short version, though it does run over three minutes. The other version is one minute and ten seconds longer. The party sound on this record is helped by the inclusion of some songs that just don't show up on all the Elvis collections such as "I Want You, I need You, I love You," "Too Much," "Teddy Bear," "Don't," "Hard Headed Woman," "A Big Hunk of Love," and "Stuck on You." This is a great starter for an Elvis collection, but chances are that even those with two compilations are lacking most of those seven.

This is a good sounding disk. It has been remastered 23 years ago by Rick Rowe.

Since then they have located most if not all the master tapes and today transfer them at 24 bit 96Hz to get the best out of the master tape. There are much better sounding disks remastered today, But with all that said. There is something very rare to this and the "The Top Ten Hits" that came out at the same time 1987-88. Suspicious Minds is an rare take. There are no horns, only strings and a bass drum that is very prominent in the mix. For this alone I would buy the disk.

By that I obviously don't mean the music contained in this volume which delivers all 18 of his # 1 hits on the Billboard Pop Top/Hot 100 charts. But for the record, five of those also made # 1 on the R&B charts, as did Wear My Ring Around Your Neck which scored at # 2 Top 100 in spring 1958 and so didn't qualify for this volume. Six of the 18 also made # 1 Country, but then so too did I Forgot To Remember To Forget (fall 1955), Moody Blue (early 1977), Way Down (summer 1977), and Guitar Man (early 1981 remix by Felton Jarvis).

And if you really want to get technical, he also had # 1's on the Adult Contemporary (AC) charts with the following: Can't Help Falling In Love (early 1962); Crying In The Chapel (June 1965); (Such An) Easy Question (August 1965); I'm Yours (fall 1965); The Wonder Of You (June 1970); You Don't Have To Say You Love Me (December 1970); and My Boy spring 1975).

So, where is volume 2? Also, if they ever decide to re-release this one, try putting in some liner notes to provide a bit of background on the tracks, including a discography. Seems to me a release providing the # 1 Pop hits for the most significant singing artist of the 20th Century deserves that much attention.