Overview: Elvis ’56 (Remastered Collector’s Edition) is the definitive documentary chronicling the year Elvis Presley transformed from a rising rockabilly singer into a cultural earthquake. Directed and produced by Academy Award® winners Alan and Susan Raymond, and narrated by Levon Helm of The Band, the film captures the raw electricity of 1956 - the breakthrough year that reshaped popular music and youth culture forever.

Blu-ray Verdict: Featuring rare television performances from The Dorsey Brothers Show and The Ed Sullivan Show - including the infamous appearances where cameramen were instructed not to film below Elvis’s waist - the film assembles nearly an hour of archival footage, early recordings, and behind-the-scenes material that documents the birth of a phenomenon.

Complemented by iconic photographs from Al Wertheimer, who toured with Presley during that pivotal year, and narrated by Levon Helm, and also inclusive of footage from his other years such as both 1968 and 1973, the documentary offers an intimate, ground-level look at Elvis at the dawn of superstardom.

As we quickly learn, although most all of us of a certain age already knew this, 1956 is the year that a 21-year-old truck driver exploded upon the music scene and began his legacy. And thus here in Elvis ’56 we follow the young man along his incredible early path of accomplishment. Indeed, it was just two solitary days after his 21st birthday that Elvis had his first recording session for RCA Victor. That very same session produced his first million seller Heartbreak Hotel.

Along with seeing Elvis on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, other TV appearances we get to witness here include The Milton Berle Show, The Steve Allen Show and now infamous The Ed Sullivan Show. After performing a very sensual Hound Dog on the Berle Show, Allen then has Elvis dress in a tux to sing a tame version to an actual basset hound. And, most definitely as we all know now, on Elvis’ final Sullivan Show, he was shown only from the waist up to please censors (so that his hips didn’t send the women of the nation into a teatime frenzy!)

The editing here between action footage and still shots is combined to perfection. Not like the musical documentaries shot and edited today, where the camera zooms in and out, back and forth, up top and from below at breakneck speeds, this one is mixed sedately and thus superbly. That aside, the music speaks for itself, as it always has done, and brings forth the story of that most magical year that we were all first introduced to Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog, Long Tall Sally, I Got a Woman, Blue Suede Shoes, Ready Teddy, and even the title song from Elvis’ first movie, Love Me Tender. Screened at the Sundance Film Festival and hailed by Rolling Stone as The best documentary ever on Elvis, this newly remastered HD edition presents the film with enhanced clarity and sound, making it the ultimate collector’s release for fans of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.

Official Elvis ’56 Documentary Trailer

Official Purchase Link

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