The King's Ransom

By JAY COCKS

PERFORMER: ELVIS PRESLEY

ALBUM: ELVIS, THE KING OF ROCK 'N' ROLL: THE COMPLETE '50s MASTERS

LABEL: RCA

THE BOTTOM LINE: Music that changed music; a myth that begot other myths; bedrock-'n'-roll classicism that still shakes.

"What kind of singer are you?" the office assistant at Sun Records inquired of the 18-year-old in 1953 as label boss Sam Phillips set up the disk-cutting machine in the other room. "I sing all kinds," he answered. "Who do you sound like?" she persisted. "I don't sound like nobody."

What happened in that room that summer was, by popular reckoning, the beginning of rock: not its musical genesis (some folks believe that started with the 1951 rhythm-and-blues hit Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston) but its first seismic stirrings into pop apotheosis. Elvis Presley didn't sound like nobody then, and 39 years later, he still doesn't. He didn't simply make his legend, and he didn't merely live it. All rock-'n'-roll mythology started with him and was shaped by him. And for all its powerful sources in the cult of his personality, it was the vibrancy of his music that exalted him and made him the once and future King.

That music -- 140 tracks, including My Happiness and That's When Your Heartaches Begin, the two tunes he cut that day back in 1953, as well as 14 performances never before released -- is available in this hefty, have-to- have-it compilation, which features a scrupulous discography, an excellent essay by critic Peter Guralnick and, in a nod to recent postal madness, a "limited edition" stamp sheet made up of Elvis record covers from the '50s. These stamps are suitable for framing or pasting but not posting, which suits just fine: it's the music that carries the message anyhow.

The people at RCA, along with the Presley estate, have long proved themselves experts in recycling Presley material: every scrap, jot and studio aside seems already to have been preserved and released in one form or another. It's a surprise then to discover that so much of the scarce material organized here under the title "Rare and Rockin' " is fresh. Even excerpts from a press conference in which Elvis explains his Army ribbons are beguiling. The sound quality has been spruced up to a nice funky shine, and the cuts are ordered chronologically, so there is a clear sense of Elvis' trajectory. Some of the tracks may stretch the definition of rare -- "previously only released from lacquer source" doesn't exactly have the full dimension of an epochal archaeological find -- but when a song sounds as supercharged as the outtake of King Creole, no one will fret about semantics.

At first hearing, the slickness of the sides from his Hollywood sound tracks contrasts joltingly with the joyous homespun soul of the Sun sessions and the easy virtuosity of the early RCA material. No matter. It soon comes clear that it was all the same: music. Elvis music. American music. He was rewriting the rules and changing the definitions. On this collection, It Is No Secret (What God Can Do) is followed by the good-times raunch of Blueberry Hill, and Elvis is right at home in both. He was, and remains, the high priest of the holy honky-tonk.