[Elvis album reviews continued from here]]

It’s also telling that most of the songs on The Bluegrass Elvises date from the 1950s and ’60s. By the ’70s, the King had largely forsaken his hillbilly twang for the muscular funk, hot-foot boogie and melodramatic balladry heard on Viva Las Vegas, the soundtrack from an ABC-TV special of the same name. The 15 vivid live tracks here (recorded in Vegas between 1970 and 1972) find Elvis in fighting trim, before Sin City’s bombast and excess began weighing him down.