Elvis is the second album by Elvis Presley, released on RCA Records, catalogue number LPM 1382, in October 1956. Recorded at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, with a single session in January at RCA Studios in New York, it spent four weeks at #1 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart that year.
Content
RCA executive Steve Sholes had commissioned two new songs for this batch of sessions, "Paralyzed" from Otis Blackwell, and "Love Me" from Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the authors respectively of both sides of Presley's monster summer hit of 1956, "Don't Be Cruel" backed with "Hound Dog," the first record to top all three of the Billboard singles charts then in existence: pop, R&B, and C&W.[1] Presley decided upon three Little Richard covers, and selected three new country ballads respectively from guitarist Chet Atkins and regular Everly Brothers writer Boudleaux Bryant, Stan Kesler, and two writers, Schroeder and Weisman, contracted to the Colonel's publishing company, Hill and Range. Also included was the song with which Presley won second prize at a fair in Tupelo when he was ten years-old, Red Foley's 1941 country weeper about a dead dog, "Old Shep." With all but one track on the album recorded at a single set of sessions over three days in September, Presley and his touring band of Moore, Black, and Fontana, along with The Jordanaires, managed to recreate the loose feel from Sun Studio days, mixing rhythm and blues and country and western repertoire items as they had on all of his Sun singles.[2] They reinforced this effect by including material echoing his very first Sun record: a blues by Arthur Crudup, author of "That's All Right (Mama);" and a song recorded by bluegrass founder Bill Monroe, "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again." The album was reissued for compact disc in an expanded edition on May 18 1999, and again on January 11 2005. For the 1999 reissue, "Hound Dog" "Don't Be Cruel," and "Anyway You Want Me" started off the disc, followed by the album proper, followed by the remaining three bonus tracks. Those tracks were taken from singles recorded at the same sessions for or between those for the LP, with "Love Me Tender" recorded at 20th Century Fox stage one for the film of the same name. The 2005 reissue appended the bonus tracks to the end of the album in standard fashion, in the following order: "Playing for Keeps," "Too Much," "Don't Be Cruel," "Hound Dog," "Anyway You Want Me," and "Love Me Tender."
Personnel
Track listing
Side One
Side Two
1999 and 2005 Reissue Bonus Tracks
Chart positions for singles from Billboard Pop Singles chart
| Track |
Recorded |
Catalogue |
Release Date |
Chart Peak |
Song Title |
Writer(s) |
Time |
| 1. |
7/2/56 |
47-6604b |
7/13/56 |
#1 |
Hound Dog |
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller |
2:16 |
| 2. |
7/2/56 |
47-6604 |
7/13/56 |
#1 |
Don't Be Cruel |
Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley |
2:02 |
| 3. |
7/2/56 |
47-6643b |
9/28/56 |
#20 |
Anyway You Want Me (That's How I Will Be) |
Cliff Owens and Aaron Schroeder |
2:13 |
| 4. |
9/2/56 |
47-6800b |
1/4/57 |
#1 |
Too Much |
Lee Rosenberg and Bernard Weinman |
2:31 |
| 5. |
9/1/56 |
47-6800b |
1/4/57 |
#21 |
Playing for Keeps |
Stan Kesler |
2:50 |
| 6. |
8/24/56 |
47-6643 |
9/28/56 |
#1 |
Love Me Tender |
Vera Matson and Elvis Presley |
2:41 |
Charts
Album
| Year |
Chart |
Position |
| 1956 |
Billboard Pop Albums |
1 |
Single
| Year |
Single |
Chart |
Position |
| 1956 |
"Love Me" |
Billboard Black Singles |
7 |
| 1956 |
"Love Me" |
Billboard Country Singles |
10 |
| 1956 |
"Old Shep" |
Billboard Pop Singles |
47 |
| 1956 |
"Love Me" |
Billboard Pop Singles |
2 |
| 1956 |
"Paralyzed" |
Billboard Pop Singles |
59 |
Notes
References
Jorgenson, Ernst. Elvis Presley: A Life In Music - The Complete Recording Sessions, 1998. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-18572-3
Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, revised first edition, 1980. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-73938-8
