The Commercial Appeal - Go Memphis
Unreleased Elvis ‘Jungle Room’ sessions coming out in Aug.
In early May, we reported some interesting Elvis Presley happenings afoot at the Phillips Recording Service. Although details were vague, officials from Sony/legacy — the custodians of the Presley catalog — and longtime Elvis band members were on hand at Phillips to work on tracks for an upcoming project. Though unconfirmed officially, the work was reportedly for a 40th anniversary package marking the King’s 1976 home recording sessions at Graceland’s Jungle Room.
This past week, Sony/ Legacy finally did confirm that a two-disc collection titled “Way Down in the Jungle Room” will come out Aug. 5, just in time for annual Elvis Week festivities. The double disc set rounds up the results of sessions Presley cut in the Jungle Room in winter and fall 1976, with a core of longtime TCB band members including guitarist James Burton and drummer Ronnie Tutt.
Material from the recording would be spread out over a pair of LPS at the time (1976’s “From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee” and 1977’s “Moody Blue”). While the first disc will include all those tracks, it’s the previously unreleased outtakes and alternate versions that are of particular interest. Those tracks were mixed by Memphian and Grammy-winning engineer Matt Ross-spang, the longtime Sun Studios ace, currently working out of Phillips Recording Service.
“I was recommended to (Sony’s) Rob Santos,” says Ross-spang of his involvement with the project. “He comes to Memphis quite a bit and knows the Phillips family. I mentioned that my favorite place to work was Phillips, and he’s always wanted to do something there, so it came together pretty perfectly.”
“We mixed 18 tracks from the Jungle Room sessions, and the really cool thing is James Burton, Norbert Putnam, David Briggs, Ronnie Tutt — all those guys who played with Elvis came to town and hung out while I mixed,” says Ross-spang. “It’s pretty interesting mixing with James Burton standing over your shoulder.”
Ross-spang’s work offers a sparer-sounding version of the Jungle Room material. “Those songs were originally done on 16-track at the house, but afterward, (Elvis producer) Felton Jarvis took the tracks back to Nashville and added strings and horns and overdubs. Which was cool, but it’s really great just to have the original kind of swamp-y tracks, real bare bones. I think that’s where some of the material really shines.”
The sessions find Presley in rare form, comfortable in his home environs and chatty with his band. “It was neat to hear that side of him and to hear all those guys in a room together playing,” says RossSpang. “It was pretty wild to solo tracks and hear Elvis laugh and joke around with the boys. Or listening and getting chills hearing him do ‘ Danny Boy’ or something. I’ve worked with a lot of people who thought they were Elvis, so it was really cool to work with the real thing.”
Ross-spang says he tried kept the project pure from a technical standpoint. “Obviously, with all my time at Sun, I’m a massive Elvis fan. I think oftentimes these (kinds of projects) go to people who maybe aren’t the biggest fans, and maybe they want to make it too modern. I’m such a fan of the old stuff that I wanted to keep it in that tradition. We mixed all analog; I used original tape slaps and the Phillips echo chambers and plate reverbs. We kept it mixed how it would’ve been done back then.”
The sessions were particularly special for Knox and Halley, Jerry and Jud and other members of the Phillips family, who have been working over the past couple of years to renovate and relaunch the family studio. “There’s three echo chambers at Phillips, and two of them we just rewired right before the session,” RossSpang says. “So the first thing to run through them was Elvis Presley. Elvis never recorded at Phillips, so it was a pretty magical thing to have him christening the chambers.”
“Way Down in the Jungle Room” is available for pre-order on CD, vinyl and digital now at shopgraceland.com. Engineer Matt Ross-spang (far right) with Jerry Phillips and James Burton during mixing sessions for Elvis Presley’s “Way Down in the Jungle Room” project at the Phillips Recording Service in May. SUN RISE
In related news, Phillips and Sun Studio were the sites last week of sessions for a new tribute album dedicated to Sun Records.
The project was spearheaded by the Americana Music Society of Memphis, funded by a group of local Memphis businesses, and helmed by Nashvillebased producer Tamara Saviano, who has won or has been nominated for