Elvis Presley - S/T 1st Album - LPM 1254 - Orig. 1956 Vinyl LP - Pink/Green
$
44
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Description
Elvis Presley
Self-Titled
LPM 1254
Original 1956 US pressing of Elvis Presley's Self-Titled debut LP on the RCA label. "Long Play" on labels, Pink/Green boxed RCA logo on front cover.
Grading:
Sleeve: G Not horrible, no seam splits, but the spine area has seen some water damage and is missing a portion of the front & back slick - no mildew or water warp, just missing graphic
Vinyl: VG Sounds great, but has some scattered light background crackles - overall a very respectable copy of this vinyl
Notes:
By the second half of 1955, singles on Sun Records by Elvis Presley began making the national country and western singles chart. Colonel Tom Parker, the new manager of Presley, had extensive dealings with RCA through his previous client, singer Eddy Arnold. At the urging of Parker, on November 21, 1955, RCA bought Presley's contract from Sam Phillips, the head of Sun Records and Studio, for the unprecedented sum of $35,000. Presley and rock and roll were still untested properties for the major labels in the music business, but this album, along with the number 1 single "Heartbreak Hotel", proved the selling power of both: it was RCA's first pop album to earn more than $1,000,000, and by 1966 it had sold over one million units.
Presley made appearances in four consecutive weeks on the Dorsey Brothers television program Stage Show in early 1956. RCA wanted an album in the stores fast to capitalize both on the nationwide TV exposure and the success of his first hit single on the pop charts with "Heartbreak Hotel", swiftly climbing to the top after its release on January 27. At the same time, there had only been two series of Presley recording sessions for RCA Victor by the end of the Dorsey stint, after which Presley and his band were back on the road. Those two sessions yielded an additional eleven tracks, almost enough to fill an entire LP, although some tracks had singles potential. In the 1950s, general practice dictated tracks having greater commercial potential to be released as singles, with tracks of lesser appeal placed on albums; as such, RCA Victor neither took all eleven tracks and simply made an album, nor placed the already released and briskly-selling "Heartbreak Hotel" on it. The rights to the Sun Studio tapes had transferred to RCA with the sale of his contract, so five previously unreleased Sun songs, "I Love You Because", "Just Because", "Tryin' to Get to You", "I'll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin')", and "Blue Moon" were added to seven of the RCA sessions tracks to bring the running time of the album up to an acceptable length. A rockabilly number that was believed to be a potential hit and could hold its own with the R&B material, "Blue Suede Shoes", was not initially released as a single from a promise by Sholes to Sam Phillips to protect the career of another Sun artist, Carl Perkins, the author of the song. Instead, it was diverted into being the opening track on the album.
The album spent ten weeks at number 1 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart in 1956, the first rock and roll album ever to make it to the top of the charts, and the first million-selling album of that genre. In 2003, it was ranked number 56 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
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