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His Songs Of Praise, Volume One

By ElvisNews.com/ Lex, October 08, 2016 | Book

After the Best of British Trevor Simpson aims his arrows at Elvis’ “Songs of Praise”, resulting in the first volume of a FTD/ Flaming Star series

Design

I understand the font choice, but in my opinion the different colours and styles makes the cover a bit messy. Thankfully that is only the cover, since the layout of the book itself is great. Overall a two column layout, a wide one for the text and a smaller for decorating images. A lot of full page photos take care of a good balance.

Content

After a foreword by Elvis himself (compiled from several interviews) there is an introduction to Elvis and his love for gospel music. This turns soon out to be just that, an introduction to an amazing body of work. The monks in the monasteries would have been proud of Trevor, I am pretty sure of that.  

The religious songs (and more) are listed from A-Z. The amount of information mr. Simpson grabbed together is amazing. Common things like authors, recording date, location and master take are listed for every song. So far nothing really special, but then the cherries are placed on the cake. Gathering the background information on the songs must have been a real pain, especially on the ancient ones. Listed are history of the authors, who else recorded it, and so on. Of course it is not all essential information, but I for one like to know the background of things like this. I take a deep bow for Trevor Simpson, this research must have taken many, many hours (if not days, months, years).

Personally I would not have included the non-religious songs like America The Beautiful, Trilogy or Bridge over Troubled Water (to name a few), or one-liners like Ave Maria. On the other hand one can see them as a bonus tracks (on the soundtracks they were often better than the movie songs).

The CD contains mainly outtakes, a weird inclusion of only 55 seconds of Amen (too much in my opinion), and a radio show from 1967 (Palm Sunday). A fun listen every now and then.

Conclusion

Another treasure from the hand of Trevor Simpson, of which I am happy to have it in my collection. This is one of those books that I will thumb through regularly, finding myself back a couple of hours later.

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bennie wrote on October 10, 2016
What a great book. definitely a winner. Very detailed. can't wait for volume 2.
Yoshi wrote on October 12, 2016
If someone would stop me on the street and asks: If you give me 130 Euro I'll tell you who wrote "Ave Maria" .. I'm not sure if I would pay him. Most probably I would reply: I wouldn't want to know even if it was for free. These books have nothing to do with Elvis anymore. The pictures are well known. The CD is worthless. Keith Flynn wrote that the few unknown takes were taken from bootlegs. Well, I'll skip these before the next 130 Euros For 'The History Of His Rock Songs', 'The Ballad Side Of The Boy Who Dared To Rock' and 'Bound For Hollywood - Dumb Songs For A Smart Singer' get due.
bennie wrote on October 13, 2016
hai Yoshi, luckaly i paid only 65 euro. wouldn't 130 euro for any book. But if you're intrested about the song and the way Elvis would have been inspired by it this is the book
Yoshi wrote on October 13, 2016
bennie .. I've already included Vol. 2 in the price estimate. My way of getting involved in Elvis' inspiration is clicking on Youtube to see and hear what Elvis heard. Just enter the songtitle and Youtube will list numerous coverversion-clips of almost every song Elvis sang. For me it's fascinating to not read but listen to the original versions.
circleG wrote on October 14, 2016
I personally enjoyed the book. I'm all for anything that promotes the work of Elvis this book does that. If you like lots of background information that gives depth and doesn't involve ex-wives then this is superb. Pricey? yes, worth it ? very much. I unknowingly ordered mine from the author who very kindly signed it to me personally. I also bought a copy for a pastor who quite recently switched on to Elvis and loves it.
circleG wrote on October 14, 2016
American Studios 1969 HAS to be next!
Lex wrote on October 17, 2016
I prefer this type of book way above any by Priscilla, Linda, Ginger or whoever once knew him...