People often recall Elvis Presley as the early rock 'n' roller in the mid-1950s, or the less rocking star of some (sometimes) decidedly dodgy movies from the 1960s, or as the Las Vegas singer of the 1970s. One style of music which straddles all of these time periods though is gospel.
Elvis was always a great lover of gospel music, and often spent hours singing this type of music with his backing singers in his own private time.
Elvis' record company, BMG, have spent the last 29 years (since his death) repackaging his recorded material, and still release many CDs each year, collecting together already released material and unreleased material from the archives (this unreleased music is often distributed through their specialist Elvis label FTD - short for 'Follow That Dream' which was the title of one of Elvis' movies from the 1960s).
ULTIMATE GOSPEL is one such repackaging. There is no new material on this release, just the same old gospel songs which have been released time and again. But this is not a complaint - if this re-releasing is what keeps the music on the market, then so be it, as the music itself is wonderful.
On this CD we get wonderful renditions of classics such as AMAZING GRACE, YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE, and SWING DOWN SWEET CHARIOT, along with other, lesser-known examples of Elvis' gospel music, such as HELP ME. It is a fantastic collection of music and should belong in everyone's collection.
Whether or not it is worth buying this CD if you already own the tracks on one of the many other gospel released over the years is debatable, and probably only dedicated Elvis collectors would want to buy it in this case. But if you have yet to sample this neglected area of Elvis' output, this is a fantastic starting point.
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