Click to listen to "It Feels So Right" and "Surrender"

Recorded when Presley was 25, fresh off a two-year military stint and musically fit to burst, Elvis Is Back! might be the King's greatest noncompilation LP: wildly varied material, revelatory singing, impeccable stereo sound. This reissue includes other period singles (check out the crazily operatic 1961 hit "Surrender") and the entire follow-up album, Something for Everybody. Yes, it's the beginning of schmaltzy Elvis; see the spoken-word bathos of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Yet even there, the hook melodrama is dazzling. And when he rocks the hard-on blues "It Feels So Right," dude sounds like he could convert a nunnery.

Photos: Look Back at Elvis at 21

“Ambling Alp”

The "Ambling Alp" was the nickname of the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Primo Carnera. Though the song is named after the Italian-born 1930s heavyweight champion, Yeasayer are actually paying tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis with this first-person psychedelic dance-rock tune. “I was always interested in writing a song that had boxing mythology in it,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating said. “It’s pretty fascinating: There were so many amazing characters, and it was so closely entwined with 20th century history.” Yeaseyer also invokes German champ Max Schmeling and hints at the historical significance placed on the historic bouts between the Nazi-era boxer and the African-American Louis.