was “e‑z country programming 2” the first LP to feature an elvis track?

Es­ti­mated reading time is 8 min­utes.

E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING was the title of a se­ries of pro­mo­tional LPs man­u­fac­tured by RCA Victor in the 1950s. Each record col­lected sides from cur­rent sin­gles by var­ious country artists. One of these records fea­tured “I Forgot To Re­member To Forget” and “Mys­tery Train” by Elvis Presley. It is a rather rare and valu­able record.

Ex­actly when this record was shipped from RCA to radio sta­tions across the country has long been be­lieved to have been as early as No­vember or De­cember 1955. If true, that would make this record po­ten­tially the first long-playing record to fea­ture a Presley recording and there­fore make it im­por­tant, es­pe­cially to com­pletist collectors.

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

In this ar­ticle, I an­swer the ques­tion, “Was E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track?” The an­swer is com­pli­cated be­cause the ques­tion also ap­plies to an­other record.

That record was part of an­other se­ries of pro­mo­tional com­pi­la­tion al­bums from RCA Victor ti­tled “E‑Z Pop Pro­gram­ming.” These records fea­tured the latest sin­gles from the com­pa­ny’s roster of pop artists. The second LP in that se­ries fea­tured the same two Presley sides. That record is ad­dressed in a sep­a­rate ar­ticle (see below).

 

E‑Z Country Programming No. 2

Here is the tech­nical in­for­ma­tion about this record:

Cat­alog number: none
Ma­trix num­bers: G7OL-0108 / G7OL-0109
Format: 10-inch, 33⅓ rpm record (is­sued without a jacket)
Man­u­fac­tured: prob­ably Jan­uary 1956
Shipped: prob­ably Jan­uary or Feb­ruary 1956

Here is a listing of the twelve tracks on the record: 

Side 1
Eddy Arnold: When You Said Goodbye
Nita, Rita & Ruby: Hi De Ank Tum
Elvis Presley: Mys­tery Train
Chet Atkins: Honey
Hank Snow: These Hands
Sons Of The Pi­o­neers: The Last Frontier

Side 2
Elvis Presley: I Forgot To Re­member To Forget
Anita Carter: I Wore Dark Glasses
Homer & Jethro: Love And Marriage
Skeeter Bonn: Rock-A-Bye Baby
Hank Locklin: Love Or Spite
Stuart Ham­blen: Handful Of Sunshine

Here are the same twelve tracks listed in order of their cat­alog numbers:

6332   Nita, Rita & Ruby: Hi De Ank Tum
6333   Stuart Ham­blen: A Handful Of Sunshine
6347   Hank Locklin: Love Or Spite
6352   Skeeter Bonn: Rock-A-Bye Baby
6357   Elvis Presley: I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train
6364   Anita Carter: I Wore Dark Glasses
6365   Eddy Arnold: When You Said Goodbye
6366   Chet Atkins: Honey
6374   Homer & Jethro: Love And Marriage
6376   Sons Of The Pi­o­neers: The Last Frontier
6379   Hank Snow: These Hands

The last track, RCA Victor 6379, Hank Snow’s These Hands, was re­viewed in the Jan­uary 21, 1956, issue of Bill­board. This would nor­mally in­di­cate a re­lease date in the first third of that month.

These tracks are an in­ter­esting and en­ter­taining cross-section of the country music that RCA Victor of­fered in the mid-’50s. Most are bal­lads and show no aware­ness of the rock & roll rev­o­lu­tion that was about to take place. Pres­ley’s I Forgot To Re­member To Forget was the closest thing to a “straight” country & western record that had been re­leased on any of his five Sun records. It fits just fine with the rest of the sides on this record al­though it doesn’t “feel” like the others.

A few tracks are sort of up­tempo (no­tably Skeeter Bonn’s Rock-A-Bye Baby and Nita, Rita & Ruby’s Hi De Ank Tum) but only Pres­ley’s Mys­tery Train re­ally moves. It doesn’t sound or feel re­motely like any­thing else on this album!

 

Manufacturing date

There are im­por­tant data found in the record’s ma­trix num­bers that tell us a few things about this record, es­pe­cially the four-character prefix for each number. The prefix for E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING No. 2 is G7OL. This con­sists of three let­ters (G, O, and L) and one number (7). The third char­acter was often er­ro­neously printed as a nu­meral (0 in­stead of O). Con­se­quently, G7OL (G‑seven-O‑L) often looks like G70P (G‑seventy‑L).

This com­pany code tells us the following:

1.  The first char­acter tells the year that the record was made.
2.  The second char­acter tells the RCA im­print it was re­leased under.
3.  The third char­acter tells the record’s category.
4.  The fourth char­acter tells the size, speed, and groove of the record.

To de­ter­mine the in­for­ma­tion below, I used “Ma­trix Num­bers Ex­plained” on Keith Fly­nn’s Elvis Presley Pages web­site. (The ar­ticle “RCA Victor Master Se­rial Number Codes” on Discogs may be easier to un­der­stand al­though it has less detail.)

The first four char­ac­ters of the ma­trix number for E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 5 tell us the following:

First char­acter
G = 1956

Second char­acter
7 = custom job

Third char­acter
O = phonograph

Fourth char­acter
L = ten-inch, 33⅓ rpm record

So, the G7OL prefix tells us that the record is a twelve-inch phono­graph record that plays at 33⅓ rpm. It was man­u­fac­tured in 1955 as a custom job—here, for RCA Victor to use for pro­mo­tional purposes. 

 

Shipping date

What­ever pa­per­work that RCA Victor had re­garding pro­mo­tional records like E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 is long gone. Trade pub­li­ca­tions like Bill­board and Cash Box rarely men­tioned pro­mo­tional records un­less it was part of some spe­cial cam­paign. Con­se­quently, I was un­able to find any di­rect in­for­ma­tion about this record in the old copies of these mag­a­zines. But there is some in­di­rect in­for­ma­tion that might help:

•  An ad for RCA Vic­tor’s “Country & Western Pace Set­ters for the New Year” ap­peared in the Jan­uary 7, 1956, issue of Bill­board mag­a­zine. Eight of the twelve sides on this record can be found in this ad. I as­sume that the ad­ver­tise­ment and the record are related.

•  The latest single on the record is 47–6379, Hank Snow’s These Hands, which was cou­pled with I’m Moving In. The Snow record was re­viewed in the Jan­uary 7, 1956, issue of Bill­board, which would nor­mally in­di­cate a re­lease date during the last week of the pre­vious month (De­cember 1955).

So, copies of E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 were prob­ably shipped in Jan­uary or Feb­ruary 1956. 

 

The Avid Record Collector’s Price Guide

E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING No. 2 is a rather rare record in any con­di­tion! Ac­cording to Pop­sike, there have been only eight sales of this record on eBay in the past four­teen years! On Discogs, there has only been one sale in the same pe­riod. Here are the most re­cent sales:

•  In 2022, a copy graded VG sold for $85.

•  In 2020, a copy graded P fetched $50 on Discogs.

•  In 2019, a copy graded VG with “mod­erate wear [and] small writing and two tears on one label” sold for $70.

•  In 2019, a copy graded “overall ap­pear­ance G+/VG-” sold for $48.59.

•  In 2018, a copy graded VG to VG+ and de­scribed as “still fairly shiny with a few random light scuffs” sold for $165.

Using these ex­am­ples, I ex­trap­o­late a sug­gested near-mint value of $400–600 for E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 5.

 

About that question

At the be­gin­ning of this ar­ticle, I said that I would try to an­swer the ques­tion, “Was E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track?” Well, that ques­tion needs to be rewritten as two ques­tions with two answers:

“Was E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track that was man­u­fac­tured by RCA Victor?”

No.

“Was E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track that was re­leased by RCA Victor?”

Maybe.

These ques­tions are com­pli­cated be­cause of an­other record man­u­fac­tured and re­leased around the same time, E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5. That record was man­u­fac­tured in 1955 whereas E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 was made in 1956. So, the country record was def­i­nitely the second LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track that was man­u­fac­tured by RCA Victor. 

Until better ev­i­dence sur­faces, I am of the opinion that E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2 was the second LP with an Elvis track to have been both man­u­fac­tured and re­leased by RCA Victor in early 1956.

This ar­ticle about ‘E‑Z Country Pro­gram­ming 2’ is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from late 1955 and early ’56. Click To Tweet

FEA­TURED IMAGE: Since the fea­tured image at the top of this page is a record label that al­ready ap­peared in this ar­ticle, I am filling this space with a car­i­ca­ture of Elvis. This cool drawing of Elvis on stage in the ’50s was done by the artist who signs his work simply as George. I have pub­lished eleven col­lec­tions of Elvis car­i­ca­tures on this blog. To read the first ar­ticle (which in­cludes a list of the other ten ar­ti­cles with links), click here.

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 “SPD” Series 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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