Elvis' Golden Records

Infobox Album |
Name = Elvis' Golden Records
Type = greatest
Artist = Elvis Presley


Released = May 21, 1958
Recorded = July 1954-September 1957
Genre = Rock and roll
Length = 47:03
Label = RCA LPM 1707
Producer = Steve Sholes
Reviews = * Allmusic Rating|4.5|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:f9ftxqr5ldse link]
Last album = "Elvis' Christmas Album"
(1957)
This album = "Elvis' Golden Records"
(1958)
Next album = "King Creole"
(1958)

"Elvis' Golden Records" is the fifth album by Elvis Presley issued on RCA Records, LPM 1707, in March 1958, recorded mostly at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, with one session at RCA Studios in New York on January 30, one at 20th Century Fox Stage One in Hollywood on August 24, and three at in January and April 1956 at RCA Studios in Nashville. It is a compilation of hit singles released in 1956 and 1957, and is widely believed to be the first greatest hits album in rock and roll history. It is the first of five "Elvis' Golden/Gold Records" compilatons, four of which would be released during Presley's lifetime. It peaked at #3 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart.

Content

"Golden Records" comprises eight #1 A sides along with five b-sides, "Hound Dog," "Loving You" "That's When Your Heartaches Begin," "Treat Me Nice, "Anyway You Want Me," and one album track, "Love Me," originally issued on the 1956 LP "Elvis". Every flip-side also hit the chart separately from its parent hit side, with four making the Top 40 and "Hound Dog" also topping the chart; chart positions noted for those tracks individually.

In the 1950s, a gold record awarded for a single referred to sales of one million units, different from the definition in use by the late 1970s for albums, where a gold record came to mean sales of 500,000 units. Exact figures from the RIAA are difficult to confirm, but in the press conference from September 22, 1958, originally released on the EP "Elvis Sails" in 1958 and included on disc four of the , the interviewer asks Presley for a tally of his gold records. Presley responds, saying "I have 25 million sellers, and two albums that have sold a million each."

The July 15, 1997 reissue added six tracks, with "Blue Suede Shoes" an unusual release in that it was issued simultaneously in conjunction with every track from Elvis' debut LP "Elvis Presley" in singles form, more than five months after the release of the album on March 23. Two more charting RCA b-sides, "I Was the One" and "My Baby Left Me," and three Sun Records tracks rounded out the compact disc. RCA had purchased the rights to reissue Sun material when buying Elvis' contract from Sam Phillips in 1955, using Sun recordings to fill out album tracks throughout the decade.

Although RCA executive Steve Sholes was the in-house A&R man for Presley, and nominally in charge of his recording sessions at RCA, accounts by Presley historian Peter Guralnick and Presley discographer Ernst Mikael Jorgensen indicate that Presley himself acted as the producer for his RCA sessions in the 1950s.

The unified Billboard Hot 100 singles chart was not created until August, 1958, after the release of this compilation, and of course after the release of all of these singles. Chart positions referenced would be taken from the Best Sellers In Stores chart, although early measurement of rock and roll records also came from the Most Played In Jukeboxes chart.

Track listing

"Chart positions for singles taken from Billboard Pop Singles chart except as indicated."

ide One