Elvis (1956 album)

Infobox Album
Name = Elvis
Type = studio
Artist = Elvis Presley


Released = October 19, 1956
Recorded = January and
September 1956
Genre = Rock
Length = 29:47 44:48 (reissue)
Label = RCA Records
Producer =
Reviews = Allmusic Rating|5|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:43rx281c054a link]
Last album = "Elvis Presley" (1956)
This album = "Elvis" (1956)
Next album = "Loving You" (1957)

"Elvis" is the second album by Elvis Presley, released on RCA Records in mono, LPM 1382, in October 1956. Recording sessions took place on September 1, September 2, and September 3 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, with one track leftover from the sessions for Presley's debut album at RCA recording studios on January 30 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. [Miller, Jim, ed. "The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll". New York: Random House, 1980; ISBN 0-394-51322-3, p. 34] Presley decided upon three Little Richard covers, and selected three new country ballads respectively from regular Everly Brothers writer Boudleaux Bryant and guitarist Chet Atkins, Sun staff musician and engineer Stan Kesler, and Aaron Schroeder and Ben Weisman. The latter two, contracted to the Colonel's publishing company, Hill and Range, would write dozens of songs for Presley through the 1960s. 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. [Guralnick, Peter. "", insert booklet, p. 32 and 34] 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 sessions were attended by a few outsiders, namely his current girlfriend at the time, actress Natalie Wood and actor Nick Adams, both of whom had starred in "Rebel Without a Cause", Presley's favorite James Dean film. No producer was officially listed for the album sessions, leading to the belief that Presley himself produced them. [Jorgensen, Ernst. "Elvis Presley, A Life In Music". New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998; ISBN 0-312-18572-3, pp. 38 and 60-61]

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, six bonus tracks were added that were both sides of three singles, altering the running order. Four of the tracks were chart-toppers, the title song to Presley's debut film, "Too Much," and the double-sided classic "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel." Bonus tracks recorded on July 2 at RCA Studios in New York City, in September at Radio Recorders, and "Love Me Tender" at 20th Century Fox Stage One during the sessions for "Love Me Tender". On January 11, 2005, Sony BMG reissued the album again, remastered using DSD technology with the six bonus tracks appended in standard fashion, in the following order: "Playing for Keeps," "Too Much," "Don't Be Cruel," "Hound Dog," "Any Way You Want Me (That's How I Will Be)," and "Love Me Tender."

Personnel

* Elvis Presley – vocal, guitar, piano
* Scotty Moore – guitar
* Shorty Long – piano
* Gordon Stoker - piano
* Bill Black – bass
* D.J. Fontana – drums
* The Jordanaires - backing vocals

Track listing

ide One

Charts

AlbumSingle

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