Early Elvis Tracks Get a Facelift

NEW YORK (Elvis Presley Fans Website) - A collection of historic early Elvis Presley recordings, aided by new instrumentation, will be released on August 13th as Roots Revolution: The Louisiana Hayride Recordings on Tomato Records. The sixteen-track set features songs recorded from radio performances in 1954, 1955 and 1956, prior to Presley's superstardom.

Broadcast from Shreveport, The Louisiana Hayride was an immensely popular radio program that launched the careers of numerous country and rockabilly performers, including Presley and Hank Williams.

The recordings, which were largely unheard among the public due to shoddy sound quality, were issued in 1982 as Elvis:
The First Live Recordings and The Hillbilly Cat, but issues with the sound kept all but completists away.

For Roots Revolution, Elvis' vocals and Scotty Moore's guitar parts were both cleaned up, while other components of the performances, which were virtually inaudible on the original recordings, have been restored with new parts performed note-for-note on actual period instruments. Jon Paris (who played with Bo Diddley, Link Wray, Johnny Winter and others) played new acoustic guitar parts for Elvis, while bassist Paul Nowinski (Keith Richards, Rickie Lee Jones) stepped in for Bill Black and Steven Wolf plays on "Hound Dog," the only one of the tracks to feature drummer D.J. Fontana. "Baby Let's Play House," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," Maybellene" and "Tweedle Dee" are among the other tracks included.

"We approached this much like that of restoring a master painting," says Kevin Eggers, who spearheaded the project, which is part of the flurry of releases that mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Presley's death. "Our intent was to bring out the original colors and energy of the music being created."