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How RCA Brought Elvis To Europe

By ElvisNews.com/ Lex, March 17, 2016 | Book

The FTD/ Flaming Star cooperation just brought us another book, this time by Sigbjorn Stabursvik and Hans Otto Engvold. It handles the Nordic EP Discography 1956-1977.

Design

As all releases by this joint venture the presentation and quality is superb. Great lay-out, good balance between text and pictures. Another piece of eye candy on the design part of the release.

Content

To be honest I was afraid of a lot of repetition, more of the same, after the Best of British books. On the internet I saw I was not alone in that fear.

There is repetition, compared to those books, but also inside this book (it has separate sections for all nordic countries). Is it too much? NO WAY! There is so much new and different information that it is certainly worth its release.

Besides the lists of records for each Scandinavian country the book has to offer a lot more common information too. Like how to recognize releases from different European (not only the Nordic ones) countries, the general position of RCA in Europe, the background on playing speeds, sleeves and the history of the recording industry in general, starting with Edison himself. The book learned me that That’s All Right was not only Elvis’ first (commercial) record, but also the first vinyl record (Arthur Crudup’s version that is). In other words, there’s not only Elvis-related information but also a lot of interesting background.

Books like this do not lean on text only. The decoration is important too. Well, there is plenty of that! Pictures of the man himself, some well known, some rare, but also tons of memorabilia in the form of clippings, magazine covers and of course… records and sleeves.

The gathering of all information and decoration must have taken thousands of hours. The accuracy of the work is impressive.

The “unreleased third EP” is a nice gadget with the book. I didn’t play it (yet), since my player does not have a rpm-switch (and it is a pain to change the snare), but EPC-1254-3 brings you Money Honey, Blue Moon, Just Because and I Love You Because.

Conclusion

A great book to thumb through and enjoy the pictures every now and then, to read some background information and for collectors to look things up. I’d say another winner by Flaming Star/ FTD!

 

 

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Gladyslove wrote on June 28, 2016
A winner to me. Fantastic book. Thanks FTD.
LarsG wrote on June 30, 2016
This is a fantastic book. I suppose english fans can skip the chapter on the releases in Iceland!