Review Riding The Rainbow and Rock It Up

The U.K. based Rockwell record label has been around for many years, but somehow I had never gotten hold of one of their releases, until now. 

Let’s see of these two 2023 albums with fifties and sixties material “rock up the rainbow”. 
 
Design
 
The design follow the label’s standard with a big headshot. For the ‘Rock It Up’ LP we get a nice colorized version of one of the first Elvis Presley promotional pictures for SUN record from 1955. Elvis has a bit too much lipstick for my liking. On the back we get, next to the track information, a topless Elvis promotion picture, taken by William Speer. What a difference a few months can make, I would have used this one on the cover. 
 
The ‘Riding the Rainbow’ cover features Elvis from ‘It Happened at the World’s Fair’. A good headshot, but looking at the content of the LP, consisting mainly of songs from the ‘Follow that Dream’ and ‘Kid Galahad’ soundtrack, I would have opted for a picture from those movies. Both albums come with a matte finish, something you don’t see very often.
 

Part of the design of these releases is of course the blue and green colored vinyl. It feels solid, is nice and flat and plays without any problem. There was a little static on side A of the ‘Rock It Up’ LP, but nothing a little cleaning of a new record won’t solve. 

Overall the audio sounded good, with the B-side of ‘Riding the Rainbow’ perhaps mastered a little loud.  

 
Content
 
The ‘Rock It Up’ LP covers a selection of songs recorded by the new rocker at SUN studio’s in Memphis (1954) and RCA studio’s in Nashville, New York and Hollywood (all 1956). The selection ranges from ‘Harbor Lights’, ‘That’s All Right’ and ‘I Got A Woman’ to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on side A, and continues on the flip-side with classics like ‘I Was The One’, Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, ‘Shake Rattle and Roll’ and ‘Old Shep’. All versions are alternate takes, giving this release a little different sound than the usual versions we hear. 
 

‘Riding The Rainbow’ is a compilation with 1961 tracks primarily built from the ‘Follow That Dream’ EP, both sides of the ‘Good luck Charm’ single and ‘Night Rider’ as a bonus from the ‘Pot Luck’ LP. The label created a 1961 compilation, and is correct when you look at the recording dates for these tracks, but the songs were released in 1962 and 1963. So not all fans may consider these songs “1961 material”.
 
As for the music itself; the producers created a pretty upbeat and entertaining compilation that got several plays on my turntable. Listening to these songs you realize that not all of Elvis’ movie material was that mediocre or bad. And listen to that voice, beautiful!
 
Conclusion
 
The Rockwell label released two entertaining compilations that will please fans of the mid-fifties with ‘Rock It Up’ and early sixties with ‘Riding The Rainbow’. The colored vinyl adds to fun of buying a novelty record like this. I was pleasantly surprised by these two discs and may look for others in the future. 

The LPs are available from Amazon and the >>> Rockwell Records website.