Director Thom Zimny’s HBO documentary on Elvis Presley sought to get past the clutter and cliché that have surrounded the star since he first took the national stage. Even without the movie it accompanies, The Searcher’s soundtrack goes a long way toward putting Elvis into a fuller perspective. He was the victim of many things including the dumbed-down aspects of Southern working-class culture and the repressive philistinism of his manager, Tom Parker.
The densely packed three-CD set is a smartly curated, career-spanning collection of recordings that puts the highs and lows in sharp relief. It shows Elvis as a musical omnivore whose sensibility ran the gamut from gritty blues to laughable schmaltz, from hard-punching rock and roll to tearful country balladry. His duet with Frank Sinatra (“Love Me Tender”/ “Witchcraft”) proves he was no match for Sinatra in lyrical expression, but “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” shows he was as good a crooner as Dean Martin.
What The Searcher finds is that—unlike the history written by rock critics in the 1970s—there wasn’t a good Elvis followed by a pathetic Presley, a golden age that dissolved into ruin. As Zimny insists in the illustrated booklet accompanying the CDs, “there is no period in Presley’s career that doesn’t offer major recordings.” The evidence is in the music chosen for this collection.
