From His Roots

Thanks to eBay most releases are available to everyone, so we can review the “From His Roots” long box too.

Design

For US fans the long box may look familiar, unfortunately the producers stopped releasing these. Part of the fun in collecting music is the special package it comes in. The long box was only available at a few selected stores, the 3 CD set is available at more places.

The producers from Timeless Music picked a good image of our man for the cover of this box. Looking at the content, mainly gospel and country style tracks, this photo fits the package. For the 3CD jewel case inside they used only Elvis’ head and photoshopped part of his upper body away. That is a pity, his head now kind of floats on the cover.

The producers also forgot to add a booklet; when you make the effort of a long box, why not invest a few cents in a booklet too? The CD’s inside all have a picture of Elvis from the same era as the music on that disc.

Content

The three discs in this set all feature songs from one era, the fifties, sixties and seventies. With a title like “From His Roots” we have certain expectations, and they are met. The collection of gospel and country style songs make up three very relaxed compilations, these discs will remain in our CD player a while.

You can’t go wrong with “Blue Moon Of Kentucky", “Peace in The Valley”, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, "Kentucky Rain”, “I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago”, “Snowbird”, ”He Touched Me”, “Green Green Grass Of Home” and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” to name a few personal favorites. Fortunately BMG allowed the addition of a few songs which Elvis recorded after 1972.

The big minor is that all CDs only containing twelve tracks, so with a little effort, and deleting a few, the complete compilation might have fitted on one disk (saving us the trouble of changing them).

Conclusion

A very well designed, well packed, well chosen compilation that we’ll pick up more often than others. Too bad it is not compressed on one disc.