rca victor 47–6357 bootleg picture sleeves

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THERE ARE FOUR PIC­TURE SLEEVES as­so­ci­ated with RCA’s first Elvis record, “I Forgot To Re­member To Forget” / “Mys­tery Train.” One is a le­git­i­mate item while an­other is of ques­tion­able au­then­ticity; they are cov­ered sep­a­rately in their own ar­ti­cles. There are also a pair of RCA Victor 47–6357 bootleg pic­ture sleeves ad­dressed in this article.

RCA Victor re­leased their first Presley record in late 1955, a reissue of his final Sun record. Both sides of that record, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train, had been among the best-selling records on the country & western charts in both the Bill­board and Cash Box mag­a­zines.

This ar­ticle is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from late 1955 and early ’56.

But RCA Victor pinched a few pen­nies and did not man­u­fac­ture a custom pic­ture sleeve to ac­com­pany the new single. But they did not have a custom pic­ture sleeve made to ship with the record. This is baf­fling, es­pe­cially in hind­sight. Had the girls seen a pic­ture sleeve with the hand­some singer on it, the record might have ex­ploded in sales and reached the top of the chart earlier.

In fact, RCA Victor didn’t man­u­fac­ture a custom sleeve Presley until his eighth record, Hound Dog / Don’t Be Cruel, re­leased in July 1956. Years later, sleeves for these records were made for all the sleeve­less Elvis 45s from 1956 by un­der­ground entrepreneurs.

As men­tioned above, two such sleeves exist for 47–6357.

 

 47-6357 Bootleg: B-side of yellow bootleg picture sleeve for RCA Victor 47-6357.

47-6357 Bootleg: A-side of yellow bootleg picture sleeve for RCA Victor 47-6357.
The yellow pic­ture sleeve for 47–6357 was sup­pos­edly made in 1968. It looks like a bootleg.

47–6357 bootleg sleeves

Ac­cording to Bootleg Elvis, the first sleeve for 47–6357 was man­u­fac­tured in 1968. It fea­tured two photos of Elvis against a yellow back­drop and looks like a bootleg. This would seem to make it one of the ear­liest known Elvis bootlegs of any kind.

Ten years later, an­other pic­ture sleeve was made, this time with one photo set against a white back­ground. The photo used was the same one found on the front cover of RCA Victor LPM-1990, FOR LP FANS ONLY, from 1959. This sleeve ac­tu­ally looks like what an RCA Victor sleeve from 1955 might have looked like.

 

47-6357 Bootleg: B-side of white bootleg picture sleeve for RCA Victor 47-6357.

47-6357 Bootleg: A-side of white bootleg picture sleeve for RCA Victor 47-6357.
The at­trac­tive black-on-white pic­ture sleeve for 47–6357 was sup­pos­edly made in 1978. It looks like a gen­uine RCA Victor product.

Avid Record Collector price guide

There’s not a lot to say for these two sleeves ex­cept that col­lec­tors pay about $25–35 for ei­ther in near-mint condition.

Re­pro­duc­tions of the orig­inal bootleg sleeves may exist.

This ar­ticle about bootleg pic­ture sleeves for RCA Victor 47–6357 is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from late 1955 and early ’56. Click To Tweet

47-6357 Bootleg: Sun Records publicity photo of Elvis from 1955.

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page was cropped from this pro­mo­tional photo of Elvis from 1955. This was one of the two photos used on the first bootleg pic­ture sleeve above. To read more about this photo, click here.

 

Elvis GoldSuit 1959

Postscriptually

The first four­teen ar­ti­cles in this se­ries are al­most com­pleted and listed below with links to each. Should you ac­cess one of these ar­ti­cles and re­ceive an Error Page, try back a week later.

01  RCA Vic­tor’s “SPDSeries of Spe­cialty Records
02  What Was the First Elvis Record That RCA Victor Released?
03  The Biggest Country & Western Record News of 1955
04  The First RCA Elvis Record Was “I Forgot to Re­member to Forget”
05  The RCA Victor Car­toon Pic­ture Sleeves of the ’50s
06  The Elvis “This Is His Life” Car­toon Pic­ture Sleeve
07  RCA Victor 47–6357 Bootleg Pic­ture Sleeves
08  The “Record Bul­letin” Pic­ture Sleeve for RCA’s First Elvis Record Is a Fake
09  Did RCA Re­lease Other Ver­sions of Elvis’ Songs to Com­pete With Elvis’ Records?
10  A New Kind of Hit Re-run With Elvis Presley
11  Was “E‑Z Pop Pro­gram­ming 5” the First LP to Fea­ture an Elvis Track?
12  Was “E‑Z Country Pro­gram­ming 2” the First LP to Fea­ture an Elvis Track?
13  Was SPD-15 the First EP to Fea­ture an Elvis Track?
14  Is the Country & Western Jukebox Pro­mo­tion Kit a Fake?

More ar­ti­cles ad­dressing the early RCA Victor re­leases are planned. Each will con­tain the block­quote, “This ar­ticle is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from late 1955 and early ’56,” like the one at the be­gin­ning of this article.

To find all the ar­ti­cles in the se­ries, copy the block­quote, paste it into the Find op­tion (the mag­ni­fying glass in the nav­i­ga­tion bar at the top of each page), and then press Re­turn or Enter on your keyboard.

Fi­nally, thanks to Paul Combs (Elvis Records), Frank Daniels (Frik­tech), Dave Reynolds (Elvis Rare Records), and Joe Spera (Elvis Presley Tapes) for their input in some or all of these articles.

 


 

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