RCA 2999
Musical director: Joseph Lilley
Track listing: Roustabout / Little Egypt / Poison Ivy League / Hard Knocks / It’s a Wonderful World / Big Love Big Heartache / One Track Heart / It’s Carnival Time / Carny Town / There’s a Brand New Day on the Horizon / Wheels on My Heels
January 2, 1965
1 week
With Roustabout, Elvis Presley’s first Number One album since Something for Everybody, the King proved that he could compete with such new pop forces as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys on the sales charts. Yet while those acts had yet to lay down their most impressive and influential recordings, by the mid-’60s it was clearly apparent that Elvis was past his prime artistically and that his days as a serious chart-topping force were winding down.
Roustabout, Elvis’s ninth full-length film soundtrack, was what guitarist Scotty Moore terms a “rubber stamp” effort. Following the success of films and albums like G.I. Blues and Blue Hawaii, Elvis continued to make albums and films that followed the mold. Aesthetically, the films and the albums were nothing to rave about, but Elvis’s legion of fans ate them up, so he continued to crank out the films and soundtrack albums at the rate of two or three a year.
Between Blue Hawaii and Roustabout, Presley hit the top 10 of the album chart with four soundtracks: Girls! Girls! Girls! in 1962, It Happened at the World’s Fair and Fun in Acapulco in 1963, and Kissin’ Cousins in 1964. Only the latter, which stalled at number six, failed to make the top five.
Roustabout was recorded at sessions held February 24-28 and March 2-6, 1964, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood. Elvis’s frequent collaborators, guitarist Scotty Moore, drummer D.J. Fontana, pianist Floyd Cramer, and backing vocalists the Jordanaires, were once again joined by an army of session players, including guitarists Tiny Timbrell and Billy Strange, bassists Bob Moore and Ray Siegel, pianist Dudley Brooks, and drummers Buddy Harman, Bernie Mattinson, and Hal Blaine.
As Blaine recalls, the sessions were usually relatively relaxed with Elvis in a playful mood, despite the fact that he wasn’t thrilled by the material. Blaine says that songwriters were frequently invited into the studio while Elvis gave their material a go. “They would just be beaming because Elvis was going to sing their song,” Blaine says. “But sometimes, maybe halfway into a tune, he would say, ‘I don’t think I like this song,’ and walk away from the mic. Then you would just see this songwriter, or song-writing team, melt. It was really kind of sad.” Presley’s dissatisfaction with the material was also apparent in the finished takes. On the CD version of Roustabout, Elvis can be heard breaking into mock blues singing, “We gotta end” at the close of “Carny Town.”
The influence of Elvis was quite apparent on his entourage, Blaine says, “Elvis was quite heavily into karate at the time and sometimes he would walk across the room and do a karate kick and let out a scream,” Blaine says. Eventually, others in Elvis’s camp caught the karate bug. “All of a sudden, everyone would be into karate and there would be these karate fights in the studio,” Blaine says. “Everyone became a karate expert.”
The film Roustabout, which featured the big-screen debut of a young Raquel Welch, opened on November 11, 1964. Nearly two months later, the album became Elvis’s fourth and final Number One soundtrack album during its eighth week on the chart. It was also his final chart-topping album of the ’60s. Fittingly, it was knocked from the summit by Beatles ’65.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 2, 1965
1. Roustabout, Elvis Presley
2. The Beach Boys Concert, The Beach Boys
3. 12×5, The Rolling Stones
4. Mary Poppins, Soundtrack
5. Where Did Our Love Go, The Supremes