Love Letters From Elvis

Cover Art The cover art of this release is is one of the lesser of Elvis. It looks like The Colonel cut out three (good) live photos of his protégée and added the title on a white peace of cardboard. It does differ from the covers of other releases before and after this one on which we mainly find one full image of Elvis on the cover.  Content The eleven songs on this album were recorded in the same recording sessions (June 4 to 8 1970) as the tracks released on "Elvis Country" and tracks for the "That's The Way It Is" soundtrack. With this selection of songs Elvis shows his focus on ballads, the kind of material that fitted his voice at the time.  Listening to the songs you can hear him lifting even lesser songs like "When I'm Over You" and "I'll Never Know" to an higher level, pure with his performance and the quality of his voice. Next to the ballads on this album there also are two rockers, the Muddy Waters classic "I Got My Mojo Working", in a medley with "Keep Your Hands Off Of Her" and "I washed My Hands In Muddy Water" and the up-tempo 'Cindy Cindy".. The first is one of the most interesting songs on this release. It is an accidentally recorded pulverizing studio jam in which Elvis lays down his version of Muddy Waters veneration of the metaphysical macho-man.  A strange choice on this release is "Heart Of Rome", a weaker song of which the best "dirty" version ("I take a piss in every fountain") is released on the bootleg "Brightest Star on Sunset Boulevard". Besides the hit 'Love Letters", previously a hit for Kitty Lester, which reached the Top 10 all over the world, the single 'Life" was a strange attempt to set Darwinism to music ... but Elvis got away with it.  With this release Elvis used the remaining songs of a great recording sessions which were used on three albums, "Elvis Country", "That's The way it Is" and this one. We won't say these were the "leftovers", but this album cannot stand in line with the other two albums on which songs from these sessions were used.