The story of 'Memphis': How new Elvis box set brings listeners closer than ever to the King

During the course of a 20-year recording career, Elvis Presley would cut at the top studios in New York, Nashville and Hollywood, but his most uniquely powerful work was captured in his hometown of Memphis. RCA Records and Legacy Recordings will celebrate that body of work with a new Elvis box set titled, fittingly, 'Memphis'.

' Memphis ' includes 111 tracks spanning Presley's recordings in the city, with 88 of those tracks newly remixed by local Grammy-winning engineer/producer Matt Ross-Spang at his Crosstown studio, Southern Grooves.

Produced by noted Elvis archivist Ernst Jørgensen , the five-CD set - which will also be released digitally and in a pared-down two-LP vinyl package - marks the first 'fully comprehensive collection' of the recordings Presley made in the Bluff City. The box set chronicles Presley's 1954 and 1955 sessions at Sun, his comeback at American Sound Studios in 1969, the music he made at Stax Records in 1973, live recordings from a 1974 show at the Mid-South Coliseum, and a final set of songs cut in the Jungle Room of his Graceland home in 1976, a year before his passing.

Aside from the iconic Sun recordings, all the tracks on 'Memphis' were newly mixed by Ross-Spang, removing overdubbed strings, horns and additional backing vocals, offering a unique 'fly-on-the-wall' glimpse of how the studio material sounded as Elvis was first laying down his vocals.

For Ross-Spang - who has worked on various Elvis projects, mixing live shows and de-mixing studio recordings, for nearly a decade - the 'Memphis' box set allowed him to employ modern technology to bring the listener closer than ever to the King.

'On these recordings, I do a little bit of audio cleanup where I get any major tape hiss, clicks, pops or anything like that out of the way', says Ross-Spang. 'And then I've kind of developed a technique to really add a lot of presence to Elvis' voice, so you can really hear the detail. I think that's the part I'm most excited about, for the listener to really hear Elvis loud and proud with all the nuance in his voice better than ever'.

'Stripping the overdubs from the Memphis sessions only makes them more Memphis', says author and historian Robert Gordon, who wrote the liner notes to the new box set. 'Whereas Nashville and Los Angeles are all about the icing, Memphis is about the muscle, it's about the rawness and the edge. I think this box makes us feel Elvis more than has ever been possible because there's less in the way. We literally are hearing what Elvis heard in the moment and hearing Elvis' response to it. So it puts us in his shoes in a way that's never been possible before'.

The magic of Elvis and The Memphis Boys

Following his historic Sun sessions with producer Sam Phillips in the mid-'50s, it would be another 15 years before Elvis recorded in Memphis again. Presley had spent the bulk of the '60s in Hollywood making films and recording mostly lightweight songs for those movies.

While Presley was busy turning out his musicals, producer Chips Moman and his American Sound Studios - located on Thomas Street in North Memphis - had grown into a monster. Moman had recruited a crack unit of players from the house bands at Hi Records and Phillips Records to form the American Studio group, dubbed The Memphis Boys: guitarist Reggie Young , drummer Gene Chrisman, pianist Bobby Wood , organist Bobby Emmons and bassists Mike Leech and Tommy Cogbill.

The lineup, mostly with Moman behind the board, would become a hit-making machine in the latter half of the '60s, working up a series of chart smashes for artists like the Box Tops ('The Letter'), Dusty Springfield ('Son of a Preacher Man'), Neil Diamond ('Sweet Caroline'), B.J. Thomas ('Hooked on a Feeling') and Bobby Womack ('Fly Me To The Moon'). When Elvis decided it was time to get serious about making music again, he decided to go back to Memphis and work at American.

'Imagine it's 1969 and Elvis is walking into American studio', says Gordon. 'He's spent a decade in Hollywood, been in state-of-the-art recording studios, world class facilities. And he steps into this ramshackle Memphis recording studio and he's got to be taken aback, and he's got to wonder what he's gotten into.

'But I think also he's got to be thrilled. Like, OK, I understand this - and especially as he gets to know The Memphis Boys and Moman, he realizes how basically they're just like him. Now, he's recording with Southern boys who were raised like he was raised, to understand what he understands, who share the same musical affinities. I think that there's this moment where Elvis' heart has to soar because he's gone from the shiniest and maybe falsest situation to the funkiest situation and he feels great about it. You can hear that in his performances'.

'One of the big takeaways for me on the American material', says Ross-Spang, 'was that these were the best music session musicians, the