did rca release other versions of elvis’ songs to compete with elvis’ records?

Es­ti­mated reading time is 8 min­utes.

DID RCA RE­LEASE OTHER VER­SIONS ofMys­tery Train’ and ‘I Forgot To Re­member To Forget’ by other Victor artists at the same time they re­leased Elvis Presley’s ver­sions of those songs as his first RCA record?” Why would they do that? Were they hedging their $40,000 bet on pur­chasing the con­tract of the fledg­ling singer?

I dis­cov­ered these record­ings while pe­rusing old is­sues of Bill­board and Cash Box for in­for­ma­tion on what RCA Victor had done to pro­mote their first Presley platter. I was hoping to find any men­tion of any pro­mo­tional projects the record com­pany might have done for Elvis.

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

Lo and be­hold, I dis­cov­ered that Toni Arden had in­cluded a ver­sion of I Forgot To Re­member To Forget as the flip-side to her single Are You Sat­is­fied? After that, I found a group called the Tur­tles that had re­leased Mys­tery Train as one of the sides of their only single.

I was cu­rious about these records. The fact that both artists were with RCA Victor and both records were re­leased within days of the record com­pa­ny’s first Presley record could not have been a coincidence.

It ap­pears that both the Arden and Tur­tles’ sides were recorded be­fore RCA signed Presley and were re­leased at about the same time as RCA Vic­tor’s reissue of Sun 223.

 

Release other versions: RCA Victor 47-6346, Toni Arden's "I Forgot To Remember To Forget" from 1955.
RCA Victor 6346, Toni Ar­den’s “I Forgot To Re­member To Forget,” was re­leased around the same time as Elvis’ first RCA record.

Toni Arden

Are You Sat­is­fied? / I Forgot To Re­member To Forget
RCA Victor 20–6346 (78 rpm single)

RCA Victor 47–6346 (45 rpm single)
Re­leased: No­vember 1955

Toni Arden was a pop singer who had a few hits in the early ’50s. She had a pow­erful set of pipes, as the blues-based A‑side of this record dis­played. Are You Sat­is­fied? was com­peting for air­play with sev­eral other ver­sions of the same song, no­tably Rusty Drap­er’s which wound up a Top 20 hit.

RCA Victor 6346 was re­viewed in the De­cember 3, 1955, issue of Cash Box. This nor­mally in­di­cates a re­lease date in the last two weeks of No­vember. The re­view stated,This side is a good shuffle de­livery of a high-flying country hit. Dra­matic treat­ment of pow­erful number.” (page 12)

Nei­ther side was a hit.

 

 
Release other versions: white label promo copy of RCA Victor 47-6346, Toni Arden's I Forgot To Remember To Forget from 1955.
White label promos exist for RCA Victor 47–6346 and are worth a bit more than their black label coun­ter­parts on the col­lec­tors market.

The Avid Record Collector Price Guide

The Arden record is not easy to find, es­pe­cially in near-mint con­di­tion. It should not be a sur­prise that there aren’t many trans­ac­tions on the in­ternet from which to base an as­sess­ment of cur­rent market value. Of course, there is not much de­mand for Toni Arden records at this time nor is there likely to be any time soon. I used what was avail­able and the basic price eval­u­a­tion system that I used in my price guides.

20–6346
There have been no sales of the 78 on eBay or Discogs from which to de­rive an es­ti­mated value. So I as­signed this record a near-mint value of $20–30, which is a rea­son­able price for just about any 78 in near-mint con­di­tion from the ’50s.

47–6346 (promo)
Three copies of this pro­mo­tional white-label 45 have sold on Discogs in the last seven years, each graded VG. The prices re­al­ized were $4 in 2021, $3 in 2018, and $9 in 2016. Using these sales, I as­signed this record a near-mint value of $20–25.

47–6346
There have been no sales of this 45 on eBay or Discogs so I as­signed this record a near-mint value of $10–15. This is a rea­son­able price for just about any 45 in near-mint con­di­tion from the ’50s.

 

Released other versions: RCA Victor 47-6356, the Turtles' Mystery Train from 1955.
RCA Victor 47–6356, the Tur­tles’ “Mys­tery Train,” isn’t known by many so there isn’t much of a de­mand for it at this time.

The Turtles

Mys­tery Train / Say You Care
RCA Victor 20–6356 (78 rpm single)

RCA Victor 47–6356 (45 rpm single)
Re­leased: De­cember 1955

Nothing is known about the Tur­tles and they may have been put to­gether just for this recording. Mys­tery Train is a group vocal with ac­com­pa­ni­ment by Hugo Win­ter­hal­ter’s or­chestra. The singing sounds a bit like the com­mer­cial folk-pop music that would be­come pop­ular a few years later (and which was lov­ingly lam­pooned in Christo­pher Guest’s movie A Mighty Wind).

There is a “sing-along-with-Mitch” quality to the singing at odds with a dri­ving rockabilly-like in­stru­mental un­der­pin­ning. In fact, it’s dif­fi­cult to as­cer­tain ex­actly what Win­ter­hal­ter’s or­chestra con­tributed to this recording (un­less they had a rock & roll rhythm sec­tion buried among their members).

RCA Victor 6356 was re­viewed in the De­cember 17, 1955, issue of Bill­board. This nor­mally in­di­cates a re­lease date in the first week of De­cember. The re­view stated, “The Tur­tles do a pop ver­sion of the song which cut a swath in the country field when recorded by Elvis Presley on Sun.” (page 56):

Nei­ther side cut any swaths anywhere.

 

Released other versions: white label promo of RCA Victor 47-6356, the Turtles' Mystery Train from 1955.
White label promos exist for RCA Victor 47–6356 and are worth a bit more than their black label coun­ter­parts on the col­lec­tors market.

The Avid Record Collector Price Guide

The Tur­tles record is not easy to find, es­pe­cially in near-mint con­di­tion. It should not be a sur­prise that there aren’t many trans­ac­tions on the in­ternet from which to base an as­sess­ment of cur­rent market value. The Tur­tles’ record isn’t known by many so there isn’t much of a de­mand for it at this time. I used what was avail­able and the basic price eval­u­a­tion system that I used in my price guides.

20–6356
There has been one sale of the 78 doc­u­mented on eBay. In 2014, a copy graded VG++ sold for $50. Using this sole sale as my guide, I as­signed this record a near-mint value of $50–100.

47–6356 (promo)
Three copies of this pro­mo­tional white-label 45 have sold on Discogs and eBay in the last six years. The prices re­al­ized were $6 for a VG copy in 2021, $18 for a VG+ copy in 2020, and $21 for a VG copy in 2017. Using these sales, I as­signed this record a near-mint value of $50–100.

47–6356
Three copies of this 45 have sold on Discogs in the last five years, each graded VG+. The prices re­al­ized were $12 in 2020, $7 in 2019, and $9 in 2018. Using these sales, I as­signed this record a near-mint value of $20–25.

 

Released other versions: ad from December 1955 Cash Box for the Turtles' "Mystery Train."
This is a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment for RCA Victor artists from the De­cember 17, 1955, issue of Cash Box. It has the Tur­tles singing group rep­re­sented by a car­toon drawing of a turtle. This is the only image of the group that I could find!

RCA did release other versions!

It would have been un­der­stand­able if other record com­pa­nies had swooped in and in­structed a few of their artists to cut pop or country ver­sions of I Forgot To Re­member To Forget and Mys­tery Train to try and ride the coat­tails of the Presley hit. It was common for mul­tiple ver­sions of the same song to com­pete for air­play and sales in the ’50s.

What made this an in­ter­esting move was that it was Pres­ley’s own record com­pany is­suing ver­sions of two songs that would then com­pete with that com­pa­ny’s first Presley record! Why would a record com­pany make such a decision?

It is part of the Elvis legend that there were people at RCA who ques­tioned signing the young singer, es­pe­cially for $40,000. Even if they had doubts about Presley, why would they at­tempt to tor­pedo his success?

 

Released other versions: copy of RCA Victor 47-6357, Elvis Presley's I Forgot To Remember To Forget from 1955.

Released other versions: copy of RCA Victor 47-6357, Elvis Presley's Mystery Train from 1955.

Coda

Steve Sholes was in charge of Pres­ley’s recording ses­sions and record re­leases. Sholes was also head of Spe­cialty Sin­gles for RCA, which in­cluded country, R&B, gospel, and chil­dren’s music. Didn’t he have a say in the matter? If so, why would he agree to the re­lease of these sides?

If anyone has an­swers to these questions—especially an­swers backed by documentation—please let me know.

This ar­ticle about other ver­sions of Elvis’ songs on RCA Victor is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from late 1955 and early ’56.. Click To Tweet

Released other versions: publicity photo of Toni Arden from 1949.

FEA­TURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page was cropped from this 8 x 10-inch pub­licity photo of Toni Arden. The photo was in­scribed: “Kenny, Nice working with you at the Roxy. Lots of suc­cess, Toni Arden.” This in­scrip­tion may date from Sep­tember 1949, when Arden ap­peared on stage at the Roxy as part of Ed Sul­li­van’s Toast Of The Town tele­vi­sion show.

Elvis GoldSuit 1959Postscriptually

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.

 


 

Leave a Comment