Go to main content

Peace In The Valley

October 10, 2000 | Music
After a few chords of "His Hand in Mine" you'll notice that somehow BMG managed to improve the sound (again). The "Amazing Grace" -2CD, which is only 6 years old sounds less clear than "Peace in the Valley". That might be a reason to buy yet another Elvis (gospel) collection. Are there any other reasons?

Besides the collectors, who want to have everything, a large group of people will might the CD attractive. Basically the set is formed by the already mentioned "Amazing Grace", completed with tracks that were released the past 6 years, together with "The Million Dollar Quartet"-gospels. The completeness of the set will probably attract a lot of people. Gospel wasn't only important to Elvis himself, but also a large audience seems to enjoy this side of The King of Rock'n'Roll. A good example is the popularity if the "He Touched Me"-video's, which are high in the charts for a pretty long time now.

Among the more or less recently released tracks, mainly "homerecodings", are even "Farther Along" and "Oh Happy Day" from the new TTWII. We wonder if the target audience, we assume that to be a larger audience than the collectors, are waiting for such primitive recordings like these. More or less the same counts for the "Million Dollar Quartet"- and homerecordings. It's a pity that Elvis' first official gospel-recordings from 1957 are in such big contrast with these, but on the other hand... it eases the ear a little in between the lesser quality tracks.

People that didn't buy the FTD-release "In a Private Moment" will get "He" for the first time. Other "rare" tracks are "Sing You Children", "Swing Down, Sweet Chariot" (movie-version) and "Let Us Pray", that were only released in the "Double Features"-series. Also included is the complete medley from the NBC-TV special. "How Great Thou Art" is represented on each of the 3 CD's: the studioversion on the first, the 1974-live version on the second and the third contains the live version from 1977 (In Concert).

The booklet gives a nice read, and pretty complete information, like we are used to with the later BMG-releases. Everybody will have to answer the question whether to buy the set or not themselves. The quality and completeness are the biggest pros we can think off.

Related links


Buy at Amazon.co.uk
Sandman wrote on February 01, 2010
The complete gospel recordings contains some of Elvis' greatest vocal performances.