''Elvis for Everyone!'' is a
compilation album
A compilation album comprises Album#Tracks, tracks, which may be previously released or unreleased, usually from several separate recordings by either one Performing arts#Performers, performer or by several performers. If the recordings are from ...
by American singer and musician
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...
, issued by
RCA Victor
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic ...
in mono and stereo, LPM/LSP 3450, on August 10, 1965. Recording sessions took place over a ten-year span at
Sun Studio in
Memphis,
RCA Studio B in
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...
, and
Radio Recorders in
Hollywood, California
Hollywood, sometimes informally called Tinseltown, is a List of districts and neighborhoods in Los Angeles, neighborhood and district in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles County, California, within the city of Los Angeles. ...
. It peaked at number 10 on the
Top Pop Albums chart.
Background
Sessions in late May 1963 failed to coalesce into his fifth
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...
of the 1960s, and by 1965 Presley's musical output had been focused exclusively on his movie career and soundtrack output. He had not released a proper studio album since ''
Pot Luck'' in June 1962, although seven non-movie
singles had been issued since (though several of them had featured recording session outtakes dating back as early as 1958). RCA Victor invented the concept of an "Anniversary Album" to celebrate Presley's tenth year with the label, which became ''Elvis For Everyone''. The album's cover depicts Presley standing next to the RCA Victor trademark
Nipper
Nipper ( – September 1895) was a British dog.
He is best known as the subject of ''His Master's Voice'' (1898), painted posthumously by his second owner, Francis Barraud. The painting became a worldwide entertainment trademark, with Nip ...
the dog, sitting atop a cash register. Since May 1963, Presley had only made one non-movie session in January 1964 that yielded a mere three tracks, two of which had already been issued as sides for singles. Bereft of new material, RCA Victor assembled this album from unused tracks going back to the
Sun Records
Sun Records is an American independent record label founded by producer Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee on February 1, 1952. Sun was the first label to record Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Jo ...
years, from sessions for both soundtracks and regular commercial releases. Possibly owing to its assembly from scraps and rejects, although it made the top ten on the LP chart, it was the first Presley album to sell fewer than 300,000 copies during the decade, but later would be certified Gold in the U.S. by the RIAA.
Content
Of the tracks on ''Elvis for Everyone!'' only "
Summer Kisses, Winter Tears," recorded for but not used in the film ''
Flaming Star
''Flaming Star'' is a 1960 American Western film starring Elvis Presley, Barbara Eden, and Steve Forrest, based on the book ''Flaming Lance'' (1958) by Clair Huffaker. Critics agreed that Presley gave one of his better acting performances as ...
'', had previously been issued, on the
extended play single ''
Elvis by Request: Flaming Star and 3 Other Great Songs''. Several tracks had appeared on film, but had not been issued on record before. "In My Way" had appeared in the 1961 film ''
Wild in the Country'', "Sound Advice" in the 1962 film ''
Follow That Dream'', and the traditional
Neapolitan ballad "
Santa Lucia" in the 1964 outing ''
Viva Las Vegas''. The remaining eight tracks had been unissued in any form. The Sun ballad "
Tomorrow Night" had overdubs added for release on this album; it would not be officially issued in its original form for another two decades with the compilation ''Reconsider Baby'' in 1985.
RCA had intended to include the unreleased Sun Records track "
Tennessee Saturday Night," but withdrew it from the album and replaced it with "Tomorrow Night". Neither has reference to a Presley Sun recording with this title ever been mentioned in any other source, nor has a Presley Sun recording with this title ever been discovered, although a song entitled "Tennessee Saturday Night" was slated for ''
Loving You'' but not recorded.
Goldmine Magazine published what appeared to be an acetate of the Sun Recording , in the early 1990s.
A live version was heard on YouTube in the 2000s, 9 seconds long , believed to be from the Louisiana Hayride radio show.
In its format as a compilation of mostly unissued leftovers from various sessions, and given its rather short running time, this album anticipated the Presley budget releases with a similar concept that would appear during the late 1960s and early 1970s on the low priced
RCA Camden RCA Camden was a budget record label of RCA Victor, originally created in 1953 to reissue recordings from earlier 78rpm releases. The label was named "Camden", after Camden, New Jersey where the offices, factories and studios of RCA Victor and its ...
label. RCA opted not to include it as part of its reissue program, appending its songs as bonus tracks to other albums as appropriate, with the overdubbed version of "Tomorrow Night" being ultimately replaced by the original Sun Records master version in general circulation.
Reissues
In 2014 ''Elvis for Everyone '' was reissued on the Follow That Dream label in a special 2-disc edition that contained the original album tracks along with numerous alternate takes from other albums and singles.
[Sources:
*
*]
Track listing
Original release
2014 Follow That Dream CD reissue
Personnel
* Elvis Presley – vocals, guitar
*
Scotty Moore
Winfield Scott Moore III (December 27, 1931 – June 28, 2016) was an American guitarist who formed The Blue Moon Boys in 1954, Elvis Presley's backing band. He was studio and touring guitarist for Presley between 1954 and 1968.
Rock critic ...
– rhythm guitar, lead guitar on "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Tomorrow Night" and "When It Rains, It Really Pours"
*
Tiny Timbrell
Hilmer J. "Tiny" Timbrell (January 15, 1917 – May 7, 1992) was a Canadian-born session musician, session guitarist.
Timbrell was born in Canada but moved to Los Angeles, California, to pursue his career in music. For a time, he sold guitars at ...
– guitar
*
Howard Roberts
Howard Mancel Roberts (October 2, 1929 – June 28, 1992) was an American jazz guitarist, educator, and session musician.
Early life
Roberts was born in Phoenix, Arizona to Damon and Vesta Roberts, and began playing guitar at the age of 8 — a ...
– guitar on “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears”
*
Hank Garland
Walter Louis Garland (November 11, 1930 – December 27, 2004), known professionally as Hank Garland, was an American guitarist and songwriter. He started as a country musician, played rock and roll as it became popular in the 1950s, and release ...
– guitar on “Sound Advice”
*
Neal Matthews Jr. – guitar
*
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), also known as "Mister Guitar" and "the Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson (musician), Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nash ...
– overdubbed lead guitar on "Tomorrow Night"
*
Harold Bradley – guitar
*
Grady Martin – lead guitar on "Memphis, Tennessee"
*
Billy Strange – lead guitar on "Santa Lucia"
*
Jerry Kennedy – lead guitar on "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers"
*
Dudley Brooks – piano
*
Floyd Cramer
Floyd Cramer (October 27, 1933 – December 31, 1997) was an American pianist who became famous for his use of melodic "whole-step" attacks. He was inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His signatur ...
– piano
*
Jimmie Haskell
Jimmie Haskell (born Sheridan Pearlman; November 7, 1926 – February 4, 2016) was an American composer and arranger for motion pictures and a wide variety of popular artists, including Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Steely D ...
–
accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...
* Gordon Stoker – accordion
*
Bill Black
William Patton Black Jr. (September 17, 1926 – October 21, 1965) was an American musician and bandleader who is noted as one of the pioneers of rock and roll. He played in Elvis Presley's early trio, The Blue Moon Boys. Black later formed Bill ...
–
double bass
The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...
on "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Tomorrow Night" and "When It Rains, It Really Pours"
* Meyer Rubin – double bass
*
Bob Moore – double bass
*
D. J. Fontana
Dominic Joseph Fontana (March 15, 1931 – June 13, 2018) was an American musician best known as the drummer for Elvis Presley for 14 years. In 1955, he was hired to play drums for Presley, which marked the beginning of a 15-year relationshi ...
– drums
* Bernie Mattinson – drums
*
Buddy Harman – drums
*
Boots Randolph
Homer Louis "Boots" Randolph III (June 3, 1927 – July 3, 2007) was an American musician. His 1963 saxophone hit " Yakety Sax" became the signature tune of ''The Benny Hill Show''. Randolph was a prolific session musician and member of the Nas ...
– saxophone, clarinet
*
The Jordanaires
The Jordanaires were an American vocal quartet that formed as a gospel group in 1948. Over the years, they recorded both sacred and secular music for recording companies such as Capitol Records, RCA Victor, Columbia Records, Decca Records, Vo ...
– backing vocals
*
Millie Kirkham – backing vocals
Charts
Album
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Albums produced by Steve Sholes
Elvis Presley albums
1965 albums
RCA Records albums
Albums recorded at Sun Studio
Albums produced by Chet Atkins
Albums produced by Sam Phillips
Albums produced by Hans J. Salter
Albums produced by Greg Stoll