The box includes everything from the 1953 acetate of “My Happiness” he supposedly cut for his mother to the last songs he cut before being shipped overseas in October 1958. It contains two Elvis songs never released before. The early sides, recorded for the Sun label in Memphis, are still shocking. Presley’s snarling bravado on “Good Rockin’ Tonight” or his gleeful whoop at the end of “Mystery Train” are charges of pure volatility, glimpses of a man running roughshod over his own songs in restless pursuit of a bigger truth. The more polished songs that followed, from the urbane “All Shook Up” to the pandering “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” are no less remarkable for the way they sustain all the contradictions of the early stuff. The box paints an America in which nothing was certain: not the relationship between the races or classes, not romance or finance, not the role or shape of the music itself. We should all live to see a world as rich and full of possibility as the one invented in this music. Until then, five CDs go a long way.
