Elvis In California

Since a recording falls into public domain after 50 years according to the European copyright law, it was no surprise that Joseph Pirzada's Memphis Recording Service started to cover Elvis' 1974 concerts as soon as the year 2024 came to a close. In February 2025 the label released a tripple-disc called "Elvis On Tour 1974: California".

In May 1974 the king undertook a short concert trip through America's Golden State and this set covers three of the five shows. All of them have been released before by Follow That Dream Records, but all of them suffered of speed issues. Back in 2007 FTD released a book/cd combo called "Elvis Presley Live In LA", but the soundboard recording (May 11th, evening show) didn't just sound hissy and dull, but also ran noticably too slow. The fans were quite upset, but that didn't cause the label to fix the issue before re-releasing the concert four years later. WTF?!? In 2020 Follow That Dream Records did better with "Elvis In California", a double-disc featuring the shows Elvis gave on May 12th and 13th in Fresno and San Bernadino. The audio was much clearer, nevertheless these recordings, too, were running too slow. Just very slightly, but still.

As expected Pirzada's Memphis Recording Service once again did, what Sony's own collectors label should have done right from the start: Treating the recordings with care! On "Elvis On Tour 1974: California" the speed issues are solved and the mono recordings are enhanced in DES (Digitally Extracted Stereo). The combination of an able sound engineer and a good software created nicely sounding, punchy fake-stereo mixes. Especially the shows from May 12th and 13th now sound almost as good as the real multitrack recording on the official "Elvis Recorded Live On Stage In Memphis" album! The compact discs are housed in a hardcover book of 36 pages, which offers some (bland) liner notes, a contemporary review and lots of photos from the tour. By the way: Disc number 2 also includes two home recordings, which were taped on April 24, 1974 at Elvis' house in Palm Springs.

Verdict

Compared to March the set list was more rudimentary, but Elvis still was motivated and presented well paced concerts. Besides that, the man from Memphis was in fine voice.