Elvis Presley - Command Performances: The Essential 60's Masters II (CD)

All Music Guide

Elvis Presley's movie soundtracks have nearly become legendary, but not because they were groundbreaking -- they are undoubtedly Elvis's worst material and rank among the worst music ever recorded. Throughout the '60s, Elvis rapidly filmed movies, most of them quite lightweight. The soundtracks were either a full-length LP or an EP, featuring a title track and several other songs used in the movie. On the whole, the music is overwhelmingly bad, with such incredibly trite material as "The Bullfighter Was a Lady" and "He's Your Uncle Not Your Dad." Every once in a while, a genuinely worthwhile song popped up -- "Return to Sender," "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Viva Las Vegas," "Follow That Dream" -- but those incidents were few and far between. Command Performances -- The Essential 60's Masters boils down the songs from Presley's 27 movies to a two-CD, 62-track collection. As expected, the handful of great songs are here, as well as all of the passable material, but so is a fair share o...f the dreck, including "Do the Clam" and "Paradise, Hawaiian Style." None of the truly wretched material made it -- there was no room for "(There's) No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car" -- so there's very little camp value in Command Performances. What's left is a few great songs and seemingly endless amounts of mediocre material. However, the set is easily the best way to listen to Elvis's movie music and acts as a nice supplement to the '60s box set From Nashville to Memphis. - Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide Read more Less