RCA IMP 1254
Producer: None listed
Track listing: Blue Suede Shoes / I’m Counting on You / I Go a Woman / One-Side Love Affair / I Love You Because / Just Because / Tutti Frutti / Tryin’ to Get to You / I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry / I’ll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin’ / Blue Moon / Money / Money Honey
May 5, 1956
10 weeks
It’s only appropriate that Elvis’s debut album was the first rock ‘n’ roll LP to top Billboard’s Best Selling Popular Albums chart. After all, it was Elvis who brought rock ‘n’ roll to the masses.
Elvis Aron Presley was one of two twins born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi. This twin brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn. Throughout his youth, from church to grade school talent shows, music was a big influence on Elvis. One day in the summer of 1953, Elvis cut a record as a gift for his mother at the Memphis Recording Service, owned by Sun Records proprietor Sam Phillips, which allowed people to record a 10-inch disc for four dollars. When Elvis returned in January 1954 to cut another recording, he met Phillips.
Intrigued by his singing, Phillips signed Elvis to Sun Records and hooked him up with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, from the country and western group the Starlight Ramblers. Between July 1954 and August 1955, Sun released five Presley singles. On November 22, 1955, RCA Records purchased Elvis’s contract, including his singles and unreleased masters, from Phillips for $35,000.
By late 1955, Elvis was voted the most promising C&W artist by Billboard, as “Forgot to Remember to Forget” hit Number One on the country charts. The following year, Elvis would take over the pop charts as well.
In March of 1956, RCA issued Elvis Presley. “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis’s debut single for RCA, became his first pop Number One on April 21, 1956, but it wasn’t included on the album, which instead featured five tracks (including the ballads “Love You Because,” “Blue Moon,” and “I’ll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin’),” cut during the summer of 1954 and 1955, long before Elvis signed with RCA.
“We were just there to give Elvis a little accompaniment so Sam could hear what his voice sounded like on tape,” Moore says of the Sun sessions. “After we did the first single, ‘That’s All Right,’ we were trying to figure out what direction to go in. They were just auditions. We were just experimenting, but for some reason Sam kept those tapes.”
There were also some new tracks, cut in January 1956 at RCA’s studios in Nashville and New York, which made the album. “There wasn’t any pressure,” Moore says of the first RCA sessions. “They were just bigger studios with different equipment. We basically just went in and did the same thing we always did.”
The best known of the seven new recordings on Elvis Presley were covers of Carl Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes” and Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti.” Perkins’s version of “Blue Suede Shoes,” released on Sun Records, entered the singles chart on February 22, alongside “Heartbreak Hotel.”
In the midst of the friendly chart battle, tragedy stuck. In March 1956, Perkins was involved in a car accident that left him in the hospital for months and killed his brother and back-up singer, Jay. “We did ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ on a TV show as a tribute to Carl,” Moore says. As a show of respect for Perkins, Elvis would not allow his version to be released as a single. “Blue Suede Shoes” was included on the Elvis Presley EP, a top 20 best seller, but no match for Perkins’s single, which peaked at number three. Still the song remained an Elvis favorite. He would record it again as an album track [see G.I. Blues].
THE TOP FIVE
Week of May 5, 1956
1. Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley
2. Belafonte, Harry Belafonte
3. The Man with the Golden Arm, Soundtrack
4. Carousel, Soundtrack
5. Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, Frank Sinatra