More casino recordings of Elvis released

los angeles: two dozen years after elvis presley's passing, a prodigious amount of his material continues to be released, with a few new titles each year. the latest is a four-disc overview of his casino recordings, elvis: live in las vegas, a field one would think has been pretty well covered, especially with the release of the three-disc elvis: that's the way it is: special edition to coincide with the recutting of the concert film of the same name.but because presley played two shows nightly for his stints of up to four weeks, there are scores of different performances of some songs. and, says michael omansky, senior vice present of strategic marketing for rca who oversees the presley catalog, "the hard-core fans want every performance. any variation of a song is almost a new song to them." of the 86 recordings on the live in las vegas set, 53 of them have been previously unreleased. and two songs have never appeared on any elvis recording previously - a cover of bobby darin's you're the reason i'm living, in march 1975, and a version of ed ames' when the snow is on the roses, from what seems to be an audience recording in august 1970. there's history there, omansky says. "unless you were there in las vegas, you didn't hear them before." though he had his greatest successes in 1969 and the early '70s, the box includes a handful of recordings from his less successful 1956 stint, when as a 21-year-old at the top of the charts he and his spare band were opening for shecky green. the boxed set starts with a complete show from august 24, 1969, that represents what elvis says is "my first appearance in nine years live." "i appeared dead a few times," he adds, sardonically, "but this is my first live performance." "we're constantly looking for unreleased stuff," omansky says. "we're always acquiring more tapes people find that have walked away from the studio somehow." with what it has already amassed, rca can keep issuing recordings with previously unreleased material until 2006, omansky says.