TODAY’S QUORA QUESTION is “What was Elvis Presley’s first album?” Everyone who knows much of anything about Elvis thinks they know the answer: LPM-1254 with Red Robertson’s iconic photograph of Elvis in 1955. But that’s not the actual answer, as anyone who knows more than much-of-anything-about-Elvis realizes. Confusion exists because the term “album” has taken on non-format-related meanings in the intervening decades.
But first, here is some background information. In the early ’50s, there were two formats for albums: the 33⅓ rpm, long-play album (LP) and the 45 rpm, extended-play album (EP). Introduced in 1948 by Columbia Records, the standard LP included two parts:
1. a record
2. a cardboard jacket
The jacket normally had a photograph or artwork on the front cover and liner notes, photos, or advertisements on the back cover.
RCA Victor introduced the seven-inch EP album in early 1952. A standard EP included two parts:
1. a record
2. a cardboard jacket
The jacket normally had a photograph or artwork on the front cover and liner notes, photos, or advertisements on the back cover.
The term “album” has taken on several meanings since the release of Elvis’s first albums, including ones that have nothing to do with the format.
In the US, most LPs included a paper inner sleeve to protect the record as it slid in and out of the cardboard jacket. EPs rarely included a paper inner sleeve.
Record companies manufactured LPs in both ten-inch and twelve-inch sizes. By 1956, most of them had discontinued the ten-inch record but the twelve-inch album had grown steadily in popularity and sales (although sales of a million copies was unheard of).
The EP had not established itself as a very profitable format and was not as common as the LP.
That is, until March 1956.
This advertisement from the March 31, 1956, issue of The Billboard lists the three new Elvis albums with their suggested retail prices. Note that at the time the that this ad was composed, Heartbreak Hotel / I Was The One had not sold a million copies.
A red hot star is born
Then, in the fourth week of March 1956, RCA Victor shipped three Elvis Presley albums simultaneously. One was an LP, two were EPs. They were very similar packages:
• Each album had the same title.
• Each album had the same cover photo and design.
• Each album featured tracks from the same pool of recordings.
Knowing this, here is a list of those three records that make up the correct answer to the question, What was Elvis Presley’s first album? As they were shipped by RCA Victor on the same day, they are listed alphabetically by catalog number.
EPA-747, Elvis Presley
Released: March 23, 1956
Format: Seven-inch, 45 rpm extended-play (EP) album with two tracks per side (four tracks total).
Charts: There were no EP charts in the US in 1956. When Billboard introduced an EP chart in September 1957, EPA-747 made the Top 10 five times in 1958-1959.
Because the Billboard Top 100 tallied radio plays and jukebox plays along with sales, “Blue Suede Shoes” from this album made it to #24 on that chart.
Sales: EPA-747 sold 400,000 copies straight off, an unheard-of number for an EP at that time.
EPB-1254, Elvis Presley
Released: March 23, 1956
Format: Seven-inch, 45 rpm extended-play (EP) album with two records with two tracks per side (eight tracks total).
Charts: There were no EP charts in the US in 1956. When Billboard introduced an EP chart in September 1957, EPB-1254 made the Top 10 three times in 1958-1959.
Sales: EPB-1254 sold 150,000 copies. It may be the biggest selling two-record EP in the US.
LPM-1254, Elvis Presley
Released: March 23, 1956
Format: Twelve-inch, 33⅓ long-play (LP) album with six tracks per side (twelve tracks total).
Charts: This reached #1 on the Billboard LP chart, the first rock & roll album to top that survey.
Sales: LPM-1254 sold an unprecedented 360,000 copies in six weeks, making it RCA Victor’s fastest-selling pop LP up to that point. Domestic sales topped a million copies, making it one of the biggest-selling LPs of the ’50s.
Vee-Jay released The Beatles (VJEP-1-903) during the height of Beatlemania in 1964. Known by the blurb on the front cover (“Souvenir of Their Visit to America”), Vee-Jay priced it the same as a single (99¢ instead of the usual $1.49) and sold more than a million copies.
RCA misplaced what?
EPA-747 and the other Elvis EP titles released in 1956 changed the way the industry looked at the format when each sold hundreds of thousands of units. Elvis – Volume 1 (EPA-992) even passed the million mark in domestic sales when its featured track, “Love Me,” made the Top 10 on the national pop charts!
Sales of EPs by established sellers like Fats Domino, Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson, etc, are not known. What is known is that no other EP aside from Presley’s has been certified by the RIAA for a Gold Record Award (250,000 sales).
RCA Victor issued its last commercial EP in 1967 with Presley’s Easy Come, Easy Go. Supposedly, it sold considerably less than 100,000 and the EP was discontinued as a viable commercial format in the US. Such was not the case elsewhere, as the Beatles released the two-record Magical Mystery Tour EP album in 1967 and sold more than 600,000 copies in a year!
The generations growing up in the past few decades have tended to use the term “album” to mean a vinyl LP only.
Because the EP was a defunct format in the states, Capitol combined the six tracks on the EP album with five sides previously released as singles and issued them as the Magical Mystery Tour LP in the US.
RCA Victor continued manufacturing the better selling Elvis catalog EPs until 1969, by which time even they were no longer selling enough to keep them in print.
The generations growing up in the past few decades have tended to use the term album in a very constricted sense for a vinyl LP only. Hell’s Belles, I have seen learned people restrict the term even more to have nothing to do with the format but instead refer to the presentation of the recorded material.
But that’s another story . . .
In the ’50s, there two formats for albums: the 33⅓ rpm LP album and the 45 rpm EP album. Three Elvis albums were released simultaneously using these formats. Click To Tweet
FEATURED IMAGE: The photo of Elvis at the top of this page is probably the most iconic photo in rock & roll’s history. It was taken by William “Red” Robertson on July 31, 1955, at a performance at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Florida.
I read recently that an RCA album released in 1955 in South Africa ( I think) contained two Elvis Sun tracks among other artists’ songs. I sadly cannot remember much detail. Even Elvis’s last EP, Easy Come, Easy Go, was different in the UK to elsewhere with only 4 tracks on the one I purchased in 1967.I daresay I may have been the only 13 year old boy in Leeds that bought it in the year of Sgt Pepper etc.I must say that I never thought of an EP as an album.
Thinking about the first album Elvis should have been the Sun sessions which of course was issued many years later and found its way into the Rolling Stone Top 20 of all-time albums.
Rightly so too.