Obviously the success of Time Life's country collection inspired BMG to release "The Country Side Of Elvis". Another collection directed for a broad audience and not the avid Elvis-fan.

Design

The cover art for this new collection is simple but tasteful. A few expected pictures from "Love Me Tender", " Stay Away, Joe" and "Charro!" decorate the liner notes by Colin Escott. As usual with Escott's contributions it's solid and pretty interesting for a general audience, but nothing new to most fans.

Content

Of course we can debate about the inclusion (e.g. " T-R-O-U-B-L-E") and exclusion (e.g. "Gentle On My Mind") of songs, but that would not make much sense. BMG doesn't claim this to be "The Complete Country Collection" (maybe they save that for later), so we focus on what is actually included. After listening we can't say anything else than "It's a damned good collection!". A very pleasant 2CD set, with as biggest pro that the songs are put in chronological order, almost. The result is that the second CD contains songs from the seventies only, which gives it a more balanced feel, since Elvis' voice didn't change much, like it did before.

Conclusion

Again, this is not aimed for the fans, but those that like Elvis' country flavoured songs will enjoy it nonetheless.