What do old ladies in Little Rock, Arkansas, talk about? Pets? Grandchildren? How to treat osteoporosis? Probably all of those. But when they get in a huddle where nobody else can hear, talk likely turns to an evening at the Robinson Memorial Auditorium back on May 16, 1956. That was the night Elvis Presley came to town.

Do they have the decency to blush, those old ladies? They ought to. For one night, all those years ago, the girls of Little Rock became a howling, weeping, shrieking, shaking maelstrom of sexual desire. The object of their unstoppable teenage lust stood in a spotlight with his legs apart, his eyelids lowered and a sneer on his lips. He seemed to reveal depths of carnality and sinfulness the girls had never imagined. In 1956, Elvis Presley arrived, and things were never the same again.

Seven songs taped at that wild show are among the highlights of Elvis: Today, Tomorrow & Forever, a sprawling new collection timed to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Presley’s death.

Most of the 100 previously unreleased songs here are alternate takes of studio sessions — covering his full career from the hillbilly hoodlum of 1954 to the blubbery Graceland inmate of 1976, a year before he gave out.

These four CDs tell the familiar, epic story of his career more loosely than previous collections — the false starts, interruptions and snatches of unguarded banter provide a refreshingly direct, engagingly human portrait of Presley at work. Throw in the scholarship of Colin Escott’s liner notes, and this new package compares favorably to the Beatles’ Anthology series.

In this case, “alternate takes” is not a polite way of saying “studio rejects” — most of these versions are powerful in their own right. Presley liked to record by gathering his band around him and playing a number “live,” again and again, until he had it nailed. For a man who could be so slack and distracted onstage, he shows a surprising sense of purpose in the studio. The rockers are gratifyingly packed with savage excitement, the ballads soaked in double-strength pathos.

The earliest cuts — “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “I Got a Woman” — are crude, alive with primitive violence. Rock & roll’s first detractors denounced this sound as having come from the jungle, and that’s just what the young people of Little Rock were responding to. (Presley knowingly introduces “Long Tall Sally” as being “real hot around the nation, and some parts of Africa.”) Probably nothing, before or since, has sounded so extreme. Even slow songs like “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” are loaded with sexual intent. Hell, even Presley’s gospel songs are looking for a way into your pants.

After his spell in the Army, Presley’s Hollywood years were marked by substandard soundtrack albums, and the corresponding CD dips accordingly. He returned to form around 1968 with such macho growlers as “U.S. Male,” “Big Boss Man” and the majestic “In the Ghetto” (all featured here). By then, he was the King, standing a world apart from the feminine hippie princelings of pop. The later recordings, however, find him a wounded lion. Stung by his wife Priscilla’s 1972 departure from Graceland, he excelled at bruised ballads of hurt, such as “Indescribably Blue.”

In short, this collection shadows the entire arc of Presley’s rise and fall. If you don’t already own the regular versions of his greatest hits, Elvis: Today, Tomorrow & Forever is clearly more detail than you require. If you’re ready for something more, though, you’ve found a new place to dwell. They’ll love it in Little Rock, too.<