was “e‑z pop programming 5” the first LP to feature an elvis track?

Es­ti­mated reading time is 9 min­utes.

E‑Z POP 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 pop 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 POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 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 Country Pro­gram­ming.” These records fea­tured the latest sin­gles from the com­pa­ny’s corral of country 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 Pop Programming No. 5

Here is the tech­nical in­for­ma­tion about this record:

Cat­alog number: none
Ma­trix num­bers: F7OP-9681 / F7OP-9682
Format: 12-inch, 33⅓ rpm record (is­sued without a jacket)
Man­u­fac­tured: prob­ably No­vember or De­cember 1955
Shipped: prob­ably De­cember 1955 or Jan­uary 1956

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

Side 1
Eddie Fisher: Dun­garee Doll
Dinah Shore: Stolen Love
Rhyth­mettes: Take My Hand (Show Me The Way)
Jaye P. Morgan: Not One Good Bye
Vaughn Monroe: Don’t Go To Strangers
Kay Starr: The Rock And Roll Waltz
Elvis Presley: I Forgot To Re­member To Forget
Henri Rene: The Little Laplander

Side 2
Mike Pedicin: The Large Large House
Perry Como: All At Once You Love Her
Eddy Arnold: When You Said Goodbye
Jaye P. Morgan: My Be­wil­dered Heart
Elvis Presley: Mys­tery Train
Dinah Shore: That’s All There Is To That
Chet Atkins: Jean’s Song
Eddie Fisher: Every­body’s Got A Home But Me

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

6294   Perry Como: All At Once You Love Her
6329   Jaye P. Morgan: Not One Good Bye / My Be­wil­dered Heart
6337   Eddie Fisher: Dun­garee Doll / Every­body’s Got A Home But Me
6349   Rhyth­mettes: Take My Hand (Show Me The Way)
6357   Elvis Presley: I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train
6358   Vaughn Monroe: Don’t Go To Strangers
6359   Kay Starr: The Rock And Roll Waltz
6360  Dinah Shore: Stolen Love / That’s All There Is To That
6361   Henri Rene: The Little Laplander
6365   Eddy Arnold: When You Said Goodbye
6366   Chet Atkins: Jean’s Song
6369   Mike Pedicin: The Large Large House

The last track, RCA Victor 6369, Mike Pedicin’s The Large Large House, was re­viewed in the De­cember 31, 1955, issue of Bill­board. This would nor­mally in­di­cate a re­lease date in the middle of that month.

These tracks are an in­ter­esting and en­ter­taining cross-section of the pop­ular music that RCA Victor of­fered in the mid-’50s. Most are bal­lads and show no aware­ness of the rock & roll rev­o­lu­tion that was al­ready in its nascent stage.

Cer­tainly, the major record com­pa­nies kept abreast of trends: Kay Starr’s Rock And Roll Waltz and Eddie Fish­er’s Dun­garee Doll were the types of record­ings that the major com­pa­nies thought would sell to teenagers. And it worked—to a degree. 

Then there is Pres­ley’s Mys­tery Train, which doesn’t sound or feel re­motely like any­thing else on this album. In fact, it makes the Fisher and Starr tracks sound anemic! Still, the Starr and Fisher records were big hits in the early months of 1956.

While billed as a pop sam­pler, the LP in­cluded a nod to the country market with tracks by Eddy Arnold and Chet Atkins along with the Presley sides.

 

Manufacturing date

There are im­por­tant data found in the record’s ma­trix num­bers that tell us about this record. The num­bers for E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 are F7OP-9681 for the first side and F7OP-9682 for the second side. The first four char­ac­ters con­sist of three let­ters (F, O, and P) and one number (7). The third char­acter was often er­ro­neously printed as a nu­meral (0 in­stead of O). Con­se­quently, F7OP (F‑seven-O‑P) often looks like F70P (F‑seventy‑P).

It’s the first four char­ac­ters that matter:

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 POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 tell us the following:

First char­acter
F = 1955

Second char­acter
7 = custom job

Third char­acter
O = phonograph

Fourth char­acter
P = twelve-inch, 33⅓ rpm record

So, the F7OP 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 POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 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 “Coming or Going It’s RCA Victor” ap­peared in the De­cember 31, 1955, issue of Bill­board mag­a­zine. Nine of the fif­teen 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 47–6369, Mike Pedicin’s The Large Large House, which was cou­pled with Hotter Than A Pistol. The Pedicin record was re­viewed in the De­cember 31, 1955, issue of Bill­board, which would nor­mally in­di­cate a re­lease date during the second week of that month.

So, copies of E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 were prob­ably shipped in De­cember 1955 or Jan­uary 1956. 

 

The Avid Record Collector’s price guide

E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 is a rather rare record in any con­di­tion! Discogs does not list any copies having been sold there. Ac­cording to Pop­sike, there have only been six­teen sales on eBay in the past four­teen years! Here are the most re­cent sales:

•  In 2022, a copy graded VG- sold for $94.

•  In 2020, a copy graded G sold for $71.

•  In 2020, a copy in “hor­rible con­di­tion” nonethe­less sold for $165.

•  In 2019, a copy graded “good to very good [with] sev­eral large scratches” sold for $57.

• In 2018, an un­graded copy with a “nice sheen but some scratches” sold for $105.

Using these ex­am­ples, I ex­trap­o­late a sug­gested near-mint value of $500–1,000 for E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5.

 

About that question

At the be­gin­ning of this ar­ticle, I said that I would try to an­swer the ques­tion, “Was E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track?” That ques­tion needs to be rewritten as two ques­tions with two answers:

“Was E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track that was man­u­fac­tured by RCA Victor?”

Yes.

“Was E‑Z POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 the first LP record to fea­ture an Elvis track that was re­leased by RCA Victor?”

Prob­ably.

These ques­tions are com­pli­cated be­cause of an­other record man­u­fac­tured and re­leased around the same time, E‑Z COUNTRY PRO­GRAM­MING 2. That record was man­u­fac­tured in 1956 so it 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 POP PRO­GRAM­MING 5 was the first LP with an Elvis track to have been both man­u­fac­tured and re­leased by RCA Victor in late 1955.

This ar­ticle about ‘E‑Z Pop Pro­gram­ming 5’ 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 David O’­Keefe. 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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