I saw old Pharaoh's daughter bring Moses from the water

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

02/05/71 : Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old) - Elvis Presley

It may be the '70s but the UK was very much still under the spell of Elvis, so we welcome him back for a twentieth visit, extending his lead at the top over Frank (who's still very much around this year but I've been able to get away with ignoring him). I do have to admit to being slightly intrigued by this one though because apparently it's his country album - which I feel could go either way.

Hmmm - I'm not entirely sure I'd quite describe it as his country album because to me it sounds like a pretty normal Elvis album but just with some additional banjo, fiddle or something similar shoehorned into the tracks. I do have to say that none of the tracks are dreadful though (which is pretty good going for Elvis albums of this period) and his voice sounds good on it too - so I'd argue it's a pretty decent normal Elvis album (which is much better than I was expecting). One thing that's weird though - all the tracks segue into different tracks for the last ten seconds or so and I've got absolutely no idea why anyone would think that was a good idea. I assumed it was a digitising issue, but it was the case on all the versions I found, so I'm a bit confused - apart from that, it was all surprisingly bearable.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on his fifth week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #6 in its debut week - he no longer has the stranglehold on the chart he once did, but he's still very much there or thereabouts. The top five this week were The Rolling Stones (a rare new entry at the top), Motown Chartbusters Vol 5, Simon & Garfunkel, Andy Williams and Leonard Cohen, with the next highest new entry being James Last (#25).

Wikipedia tells us this is his thirteenth studio album, which seems like an awfully low number until you realise this doesn't include the seventeen soundtrack albums and the countless compilation and live albums that he's also put out by this time. It also tells us that his usual recording process was to go into the studio, record whatever he felt like/was given and then let everyone else decide what worked together on an album - and in this case they realised they'd recorded a load of country stuff so decided to put it all out together. 

And apparently it most definitely is a country album because "nearly every style of country music is represented: bluegrass, honky tonk, Western swing, rockabilly, countrypolitan, and even the then-nascent "outlaw" movement" - so that's me told. However, it also tells me that quite a lot of overdubbing went on, so I have a suspicion that several of the tracks were "countrified" to fit the brief. It also tells me that the random snippets at the end of each song are intentional and they're snippets of "I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago" which gives the album its title, but isn't on the original release (all of which seems most odd). Critically, it was pretty well received and commercially it did best here, but also got to #12 in the US, selling over a million copies (which feels very generous of people).

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a copy of this for four quid, with it only going up to about £25 for a mint copy, unless you want an original Japanese vinyl (and who doesn't?) in which case you're going to have to hand over £71.99. I found this completely unnecessary but surprisingly pleasant - with the main element of surprise being that it wasn't shit.

09/05/71 - Coulda been a lot worse