the first rca elvis record was “I forgot to remember to forget”

Es­ti­mated reading time is 11 minutes.

RCA VICTOR SIGNED ELVIS as a recording artist on No­vember 21, 1955. The first RCA Elvis record they re­leased was a reissue of Sun 223, “I Forgot To Re­member To Forget” / “Mys­tery Train.” It had been among the best-selling country records for sev­eral weeks and RCA was de­ter­mined to take it to the top.

De­spite the ob­vious po­ten­tial ap­peal of Presley to the teenage pop market, his record was al­ready a big hit in the country market so that is where RCA con­cen­trated its pro­mo­tion.

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

This ar­ticle is an overview of RCA Victor 20-6357 and 47-6357, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train, which in­cludes a price guide to the cur­rent market value of the var­ious ver­sions of the record.

But first, there is a short time­line of a few per­ti­nent events (“From Sun to RCA”) that led up to the suc­cess of RCA taking the Presley platter to the top of the na­tional country charts.

 

From Sun to RCA

This is a brief time­line of a few im­por­tant events that took place in the final weeks of 1955 that led Elvis Presley from tiny Sun Records to one of the largest record com­pa­nies in the world, RCA Victor. 

November 10

At the Country Music Disc Jockey Con­ven­tion in Nashville, Elvis bragged that he would be signing with RCA Victor. At this time, well-known song­writer Mae Boren Axton sup­pos­edly of­fered Elvis a new song she had just written, Heart­break Hotel. Elvis sup­pos­edly as­sured her that it would be his first new single for his new record company.

November 21

Sam Phillips of Sun Records sold his ex­clu­sive recording con­tract with Elvis Presley to RCA Victor. Phillips re­ceived an un­prece­dented $35,000 for the con­tract plus the rights to all the ma­te­rial that Elvis had recorded for Sun, in­cluding un­re­leased recordings.

Sun was al­lowed to con­tinue man­u­fac­turing and selling I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train (Sun 223) through the end of the year. This meant that there would be a pe­riod where Sun and RCA com­peted to sell the same product in the same market.

Elvis then signed an ex­clu­sive recording con­tract with RCA Victor and a pub­lishing con­tract with Hill & Range Songs. These con­tracts were the cul­mi­na­tion of a se­ries of ne­go­ti­a­tions by Colonel Tom Parker that in­volved the Presley family (as Elvis was legally a minor), Pres­ley’s man­ager Bob Neal, Sam Phillips, RCA Victor, and Hill & Range Songs.

Parker used a decade’s worth of con­nec­tions with RCA Victor to get the record com­pany ex­ec­u­tives to agree to what many people in the recording and en­ter­tain­ment in­dustry thought was outrageous.

December 3

In the De­cember 3, 1955, issue of Cash Box, the ar­ticle “Victor Signs Elvis Presley” noted, “Presley has been the rage of the country ‘bobby-soxers’ wher­ever he has per­formed. In ad­di­tion, the chanter has been a double threat on wax inas­much as his plat­ters have a rhythm and blues fla­voring and have been spilling over into that field and it’s also quite pos­sible that the ver­sa­tile Presley could well be­come a big pop name.” 

In the De­cember 3, 1955, issue of Bill­board, the ar­ticle “Double Deals Hurl Presley Into Stardom” stated, “Sun has re­tained the right to press a cer­tain ad­di­tional number of [I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train] under its own label until the first of the year. At the same time, Victor ex­pects to re­lease the disk under its label within the next eight days.”

In the same issue of Bill­board, RCA Victor ran a full-page ad in­tro­ducing Presley as the “most talked-about new per­son­ality in the last 10 years of recorded music.” Be­neath a photo that would be­come in­ter­na­tion­ally fa­mous on the front cover of the artist’s debut al­bums in a few months, the ad­ver­tise­ment an­nounced that Elvis Presley was “now on RCA Victor records with I Forgot To Re­member To Forget [and] Mys­tery Train.”

December 10

For the first time, Cash Box listed RCA Victor 6357 along with Sun 223 on their var­ious country charts.

December 24

For the first time, Bill­board listed RCA Victor 6357 along with Sun 223 on their var­ious country charts.

 

 

The first RCA Elvis record

I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train
Cat­alog number: 20-6357 (78 rpm)
Cat­alog number: 47-6357 (45 rpm)
Re­leased: late No­vember or early De­cember 1955

RCA Victor re­leased the first Presley record as both a 78 rpm single (20-6357) and a 45 rpm single (47-6357) ei­ther during the last week of No­vember or the first week of De­cember 1955. As it was a reissue of Sun 223, which was still in the Top 10 of the three country & western charts (best sellers, most played in juke­boxes, and most played on the radio) of both Bill­board and Cash Box, it wasn’t re­viewed as a new record by ei­ther publication.

The Bill­board ar­ticle above  stated that “Victor ex­pects to re­lease the disk under its label within the next eight days.” That ar­ticle was date­lined No­vember 26, so the next eight days were No­vember 27 through De­cember 4. If Bill­board was ac­cu­rate, then the re­lease date of late No­vember or early De­cember 1955 that I as­signed to this record is like­wise accurate.

The two records that sur­round the Presley record—RCA Victor 6356, Vaughn Mon­roe’s Don’t Go To Strangers, and 6358, the Tur­tles’ ver­sion of Mys­tery Train—were re­viewed in the De­cember 17, 1955, issue of Bill­board. This would in­di­cate a re­lease date for these two records during the first two weeks of De­cember 1955.

Nor­mally, we would ex­pect 6357 to have been re­leased with 6356 and 6358 but the Pre­sely platter was a big deal and could have been rushed into release.

For more on the mys­te­rious Tur­tles’ ver­sion of Mys­tery Train, click here.

 

Promotional pressing

RCA Victor man­u­fac­tured pro­mo­tional copies of 47-6357 but not 20-6357. These white-label 45s were shipped to radio sta­tions around the country. Ac­cording to an RCA Victor Record Bul­letin dated No­vember 28, 1955:

“Pro­mo­tion is being spear­headed with disc jockey records to the en­tire Pop and C&W ‘A’ lists, an ini­tial cov­erage of more than 4,000 destinations.”

So, we can prob­ably safely as­sume that at least 4,000 copies of the white label promo 45 ex­isted at one time. This would be the last promo pressing of a reg­u­larly re­leased Elvis single from RCA Victor until 1964.

I Forgot To Re­member To Forget and Mys­tery Train were also in­cluded on sev­eral spe­cial pro­mo­tional records: two LP records and a set of EP records. (These records are also sub­jects of ar­ti­cles on this blog; see “Post­scrip­tu­ally” below.) 

 

The Avid Record Collector’s Price Guide

Here is where the Avid Record Col­lector weighs in with a few things about the records above, in­cluding as­sessing their value in the cur­rent col­lectibles market. The values below are for records with near-mint la­bels and near-mint vinyl. Finding these records in that con­di­tion can take a lot of time and effort. 

Please note that by the time RCA Victor re­leased their first Elvis record, 45s were out­selling 78s in the Amer­ican mar­ket­place. Plus, shellac 78s were not as durable as vinyl 45s and showed wear and tear faster and easier. So, while the 45s of most rock & roll records from the ’50s are the more de­sir­able to most people, the 78s are often much rarer.

In 1954, RCA Victor began adding a “New Or­tho­phonic High Fi­delity” motto to the la­bels of most of their records. This motto should have ap­peared on all Presley plat­ters of the time but 0ccasionally printers forgot to add it to a batch of la­bels. In the para­graphs below, this motto is ab­bre­vi­ated as “NOHF.”

RCA Victor 20-6357

RCA Victor 20-6357 has black la­bels that should have NOHF on them. La­bels were not re­quired to have the record’s speed printed on them but some do. There are three major label vari­a­tions for this 78 rpm record:

•  NOHF on the right side
•  NOHF on the left side
•  NOHF and “78 R.P.M.” on the right side

On Pop­sike, I counted 125 copies of 20-6357 that had sold on eBay since 2004. I took a sample from these sales to get an idea of the scarcity of the three label vari­a­tions. (If you take a look at how tiny the im­ages are on Pop­sike, you should un­der­stand why I did a sam­pling in­stead of squinting at every listing.) I came up with the fol­lowing tallies:

•  Thirty copies with NOHF on the right side.
•  Ten copies with NOHF on the left side. 
•  Only one copy with “78 R.P.M” on the label.

Clearly, there should be a great dif­fer­ence in prices paid for these three vari­a­tions but there is not. I as­signed the values above to re­flect the wide va­riety of prices paid on eBay over the years but as­signed dif­ferent values to the three vari­a­tions to il­lus­trate their rel­a­tive rarity:

•  NOHF on the right side: $100-200
•  NOHF on the left side: $200-300
•  NOHF and “78 R.P.M.” on the right side: $300-400

Also, as the three photos of 20-6357 above il­lus­trate, there are also vari­a­tions in where the cat­alog and ma­trix num­bers and “New Or­tho­phonic High Fi­delity” are placed on the label along with dif­fer­ences in the type­face used for the text/information.

RCA Victor 47-6357 (promo)

There is one known pressing of the 45 rpm record with white la­bels and “Record Prevue” at the top. It is cur­rently valued at $500-600.

RCA Victor 47-6357

RCA Victor 47-6357 has black la­bels that should have NOHF on them. La­bels were ap­par­ently re­quired to have the record’s speed printed on them as all copies do. There are three major label vari­a­tions for this 45 rpm record:

•  NOHF and “45 RPM” on the right side
•  NOHF on the right side without “45 RPM”
•  NOHF and “45 R.P.M.” on the right side

Copies of 47-6357 with “45 R.P.M.” also have a hor­i­zontal line across the label.

On Pop­sike, I counted 135 copies of 47-6357 sold on eBay since 2004. I took a sample from these sales to get an idea of the scarcity of the three label vari­a­tions. I came up with the fol­lowing tallies:

•  Fifty copies with “45 RPM” on the right side
•  Five copies without “45 RPM”
•  Fifty copies with “45 RPM” and a hor­i­zontal line

Like the 78s, there should be a great dif­fer­ence in prices paid for these three vari­a­tions but there is not. The Avid Record Col­lec­tor’s values above re­flect the wide va­riety of prices paid on eBay over the years for these records but dif­ferent values are as­signed to the three vari­a­tions to il­lus­trate the records’ rel­a­tive rarity.

•  NOHF and “45 RPM” on the right side: $40-60
•  NOHF on the right side without “45 RPM”: $60-100
•  NOHF and “45 R.P.M.” on the right side: $60-100

Also, as the three photos of 47-6357 above il­lus­trate, there are also vari­a­tions in where the cat­alog and ma­trix num­bers and “New Or­tho­phonic High Fi­delity” ap­pear on the label along with dif­fer­ences in the type­face used for the text/information.

Picture sleeves

De­spite the fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment in their new singer and his ob­vious pho­to­genic qual­i­ties, RCA Victor did not spend an­other penny to in­clude a custom pic­ture sleeve with 47-6357. Nonethe­less, there are sev­eral such sleeves as­so­ci­ated with this record—three are bootlegs and one is a bit more con­tro­ver­sial. I will ad­dress these sleeves in a sep­a­rate article.

Things were about to change

After twenty-three weeks on the chart, on Feb­ruary 25, 1956, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget made it to #1 on the C&W Best Sellers in Stores survey on Bill­board. On March 3, Mys­tery Train joined it at the top and the record was listed as a double-sided #1. One week later, the record fell back to #2 on its slow de­cline down that survey.

On March 3, 1956, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget pooped out at #2 on the Country Best Sellers chart in Cash Box. It re­mained there for an­other week and then began its de­cline down that survey.

But by then, Heart­break Hotel had been re­leased and things were about to change.

This ar­ticle about the first Elvis record that RCA Victor re­leased is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from 1955 and early ’56. Click To Tweet

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The image at the top of this page is a scan of a copy of a pro­mo­tional pressing of RCA Victor 47-6357, Mys­tery Train with white la­bels. As there are other photos of a pro­mo­tional copy of this record, I am using the full photo of Elvis taken at RCA Vic­tor’s studio in New York City on De­cember 1, 1955.

 

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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