the elvis “this is his life” cartoon picture sleeve

Es­ti­mated reading time is 13 min­utes.

RCA’S CAR­TOON PIC­TURE SLEEVES of the ’50s fea­tured a “bi­o­graphy” that summed up each artist’s life in a few comic strip-like panels. While rather rare, these sleeves are not very col­lectible and there­fore are not valu­able, ex­cept for one: the Elvis “This Is His Life” sleeve is among the rarer Presley items of that time.

The Elvis car­toon sleeve has been a sought-after col­lectible for decades, fetching four fig­ures when­ever one in nearly near-mint con­di­tion pops up for sale. Col­lec­tors gen­er­ally refer to the sleeves for other artists as “car­toon sleeves” but Elvis col­lec­tors refer to the Presley sleeve as the “This Is His Life” sleeve. Note that all ref­er­ences to a “This Is His Life” sleeve in this ar­ticle are to the Elvis sleeve.

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

These car­toon sleeves ap­pear to have been used pro­mo­tion­ally. There was only one pro­mo­tional pressing of a stan­dard Presley 45 at that time: 47–6357, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train, from No­vember 1955. Yet the Presley sleeve ap­pears to have been man­u­fac­tured too late to have been in­cluded with this pro­mo­tional record.

After decades of re­search by col­lec­tors and com­pilers of price guides, sev­eral ques­tions about the “This Is His Life” sleeve remain:

•  When was the sleeve manufactured?
•  When was the sleeve issued?
•  Which Elvis record was it meant to accompany?

With this ar­ticle, I look at the other car­toon sleeves to see if I can de­ter­mine rea­son­able an­swers to these questions.

Be­fore reading this ar­ticle, I sug­gest that you read “RCA Vic­tor’s Car­toon Pic­ture Sleeves Of The ’50s,” which presents a lot of back­ground in­for­ma­tion on the “This Is His Life” sleeve. To read that ar­ticle, click here.

 

This Is His Life: RCA Victor comic-strip pictire sleeve for Kaye Starr from 1955.

This Is His Life: white label promo for Kaye Starr's If Anyone Finds This, I Love You / Turn Right (RCA Victor 47-5999) from 1955.
The ear­liest RCA Victor car­toon sleeve was for Kaye Starr’s If Anyone Finds This, I Love You / Turn Right from Jan­uary 1955. We know the sleeve be­longs to that single be­cause the two song ti­tles are printed on the sleeve. We be­lieve that the sleeve was used with pro­mo­tional press­ings of the record.

Promo records and cartoon sleeves

This sec­tion re­hashes what you hope­fully just read in the “RCA Vic­tor’s Car­toon Pic­ture Sleeves Of The ’50s” ar­ticle. In the early ’50s, RCA Victor pressed pro­mo­tional copies of most of their sin­gles. The first Presley platter that RCA Victor pressed was 6357, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train, in late No­vember 1955—just in time for there to have been a pro­mo­tional pressing.

During 1955–1956, RCA Victor man­u­fac­tured a se­ries of spe­cial sleeves for their pro­mo­tional records. The de­sign for each theme was the same:

•  The front cover fea­tured a nut­shell “bi­og­raphy” of the artist (and not nec­es­sarily a fac­tu­ally ac­cu­rate bi­og­raphy) in a few comic strip-like panels. Be­cause of this de­sign, they are re­ferred to as car­toon sleeves, al­though comic strip sleeves would be more appropriate. 

•  Along with the panels, there was a scroll with a por­trait of the artist. For male artists, the top of the scroll reads “This Is His Life”; for fe­male artists, it reads “This Is Her Life”; and for groups, it reads “This Is Their Life.”

 

This Is His Life: Elvis This Is His Life sleeve with square corners from 1956.
There may be two print­ings of the “This Is His Life” sleeve: one with squared cor­ners (above) and one with rounded cor­ners (below). Or one sleeve may be an unau­tho­rized reproduction.

This Is His Life

The “This Is His Life” sleeve has been pop­ping up on the col­lec­tors market for decades—sometimes with a record, some­times without. The art­work on the var­ious car­toon sleeves ap­pears to have been done by the same artist. Most of it is ex­cel­lent drawing in the slick style that was pop­ular in a lot of ad­ver­tising at the time.

To try to de­ter­mine when the Elvis sleeve was man­u­fac­tured, I dis­sected the “facts” in the bi­og­raphy of Pres­ley’s life on the sleeve. Here is a panel-by-panel breakdown:

First panel

Text: “A natural-born per­former, young Elvis Presley, only 19 years old, looms as a great per­son­ality in the en­ter­tain­ment field.

Elvis Presley was born on Jan­uary 8, 1935. For him to have been 19 at the time that this sleeve was made, the text would have to have been written in 1954. That would have been a year be­fore Elvis be­came an RCA Victor recording artist. So, this “fact” is of no use in de­ter­mining the man­u­fac­turing date.

As for “looming” as a great per­son­ality in the en­ter­tain­ment field, it may have been hy­per­bole at the time it was written, but it proved true.

Second panel

Text: “He hails from Tu­pelo, Mis­sis­sippi, and was singing for friends and folk gath­er­ings as a mere young­ster.”

The term “folk gath­ering” usu­ally re­ferred to an event that would later be called a “hoo­te­nanny.” While Elvis may have sung at gath­er­ings of family or friends, I am un­aware of his having done any hoots in the ’50s.

Third panel

Text: “Picking a $2.98 guitar, Elvis began ‘pro­fes­sion­ally’ singing on street cor­ners.”

Hah! Gladys would have died years ear­lier from a heart at­tack if she had found her son taking money from strangers on the streets of Mem­phis. Even Baz Luhrman didn’t make non­sense such as this a part of Elvis’ hy­per­bolized past in his movie!

Fourth panel

Text: “While in high school Elvis made a demon­stra­tion disk and was signed on the spot by an in­de­pen­dent record com­pany. He has to be seen to be be­lieved!

Elvis grad­u­ated from Humes High School on June 3, 1953. Some­time after that, Elvis paid $3.98 to the Mem­phis Recording Ser­vice to record him­self singing two bal­lads, My Hap­pi­ness and That’s When Your Heartaches Begin. Most re­searchers place this event in July 1953.

It was not a demon­stra­tion record and he was not signed by anyone.

On Jan­uary 4, 1954, Elvis re­turned to the Mem­phis Recording Ser­vice, paid an­other $3.98, and made an­other one-of-a-kind record. They were two more bal­lads, Ca­sual Love Af­fair and I’ll Never Stand In Your Way.

It was also not a demon­stra­tion record and, again, he was not signed by anyone. (Per­haps this data is an early ex­ample of “al­ter­na­tive facts.”)

But these record­ings did at­tract some­one’s at­ten­tion: a few months later, Sam Phillips called him back.

Fifth panel

Text: “Now on RCA Victor label, Elvis Presley is a recording sen­sa­tion, a TV star (Jackie Gleason Stage Show), and finds him­self mobbed by adoring fans on per­sonal ap­pear­ances.”

There are four facts in this statement:

1.  “Now on RCA Victor label” in­di­cates that the text for this sleeve was written after Presley signed with RCA Victor on No­vember 21, 1955. 

2.  “Elvis Presley is a recording sen­sa­tion” could refer to ei­ther his ear­lier suc­cess with Sun Records or his first few months with RCA Victor.

3.  “Elvis Presley is a TV star (Jackie Gleason Stage Show)” in­di­cates that the text for this sleeve was written after Jan­uary 28, 1956. That was the date of Pres­ley’s first ap­pear­ance on Stage Show, a va­riety show pro­duced by Jackie Gleason that fea­tured Jimmy Dorsey and Tommy Dorsey as hosts. Elvis made five more ap­pear­ances on that show in Feb­ruary and March 1956. 

4.  “Elvis Presley is mobbed by adoring fans on per­sonal ap­pear­ances” had been more or less true since he re­leased his first record on Sun in July 1954. It was one of the rea­sons RCA signed him in the first place.

 

This Is His Life: Elvis This Is His Life sleeve with round corners from 1956.
There may be two print­ings of the “This Is His Life” sleeve: one with squared cor­ners (pre­vious il­lus­tra­tion) and one with rounded cor­ners (above). Or one sleeve may be an unau­tho­rized reproduction.

When was the sleeve scripted?

Using the “facts” in the five panels above that are ac­tu­ally fac­tual, we can safely say that the “This Is His Life” sleeve was scripted no ear­lier than late Jan­uary 1956.

 

This Is His Life: RCA Victor comic-strip picture sleeve for Jaye P. Morgan from 1956.

This Is His Life: RCA Victor 47-6653, Jaye P. Morgan's Just Love Me, from 1956.
A copy of the car­toon sleeve for Jaye P. Mor­gan’s Just Love Me / The Call Of The Wild was found with a hand­written date on it: 8/23/1956. This is prob­ably when the radio sta­tion re­ceived it with a stan­dard black label 45.

This record or that record?

The “This Is His Life” sleeve has been found with sev­eral records on the col­lec­tors market. On Pop­sike, I found fifty-four sales listed under “Elvis this is his life sleeve” and “Elvis car­toon sleeve.” (There may be du­pli­cate sales under these two group­ings; I did not spend the time cross-checking each one to find out.)

In these ads, the sleeve was found with four records:

47–6357   I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train
47–6383  Baby Let’s Play House / I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone
47–6420  Heart­break Hotel / I Was The One
47–6540  I Want You, I Need You, I Love You / My Baby Left Me

I tried to count the number of times each of these records was found with the “This Is His Life” sleeve but there are too many “weird” sales—usually, the same item sold twice be­cause the win­ning bidder re­neged on making pay­ment the first time. Most of the time, it was ei­ther 47–6357 or 47–6540. (Again, I did not cross-check each one.)

Let’s look at all four:

RCA Victor 47–6357

As a Sun record, I Forgot To Re­member To Forget / Mys­tery Train had been in the Top 10 of the Bill­board C&W Best Sellers in Stores survey since Sep­tember 28, 1955. It peaked at #3 on No­vember 2, then began falling back down the chart.

As an RCA Victor record, it fi­nally reached the #1 spot on Feb­ruary 15, 1956, staying for two weeks. Then started its final, slow de­scent off the chart.

So, did RCA give a final push to the record in early Feb­ruary by sending a new batch of records with the “This Is His Life” sleeve to record sta­tions around the country?

Maybe.

RCA Victor 47–6383

Fans and col­lec­tors have long pon­dered the pos­si­bility that copies of the RCA Victor reis­sues of the other four Sun sin­gles might have been slipped into copies of this sleeve and shipped to radio sta­tions for air­play. This ar­gu­ment is bol­stered by the sale of at least one of the sleeves on eBay that in­cluded a copy of 47–6383.

RCA Victor 47–6420

Fans and col­lec­tors have also con­sid­ered the pos­si­bility that copies of Heart­break Hotel / I Was The One might have been used with this sleeve. This ar­gu­ment is also sup­ported by the sale of one of the sleeves on eBay that in­cluded a copy of 47–6420.

RCA Victor 47–6540

The record that is most often as­so­ci­ated with the “This Is His Life” sleeve is 47–6540, I Want You, I Need You, I Love You / My Baby Left Me. It was Presley’s second RCA Victor single of newly recorded ma­te­rial and was re­leased on May 4, 1956.

The last known RCA Victor car­toon pic­ture sleeve is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with s Jaye P. Mor­gan’s Just Love Me / The Call Of The Wild (47–6653) from Au­gust 1956. The copy of this sleeve found on the 45cat web­site has the record’s cat­alog number and date written on it as “47 6653 – 8/23/1956.” (See image above.)

This was prob­ably written on the sleeve by someone at a radio sta­tion when they re­ceived the sleeve and record. So, granting the in­scrip­tion as being from a radio sta­tion, then we know that these car­toon sleeves were used into the summer of ’56.

This means that the car­toon sleeves were in use at the time of the re­lease of 47–6540 and that the “This Is His Life” sleeve could have been used with it.

 

This Is His Life: full-page ad for Elvis Presley appeared in December 2, 1955, issue of Billboard.
This full-page ad ap­peared in the De­cember 2, 1955, issue of Bill­board and in­tro­duced the most talked about new per­son­ality in the last ten years of recorded music. Bob Neal was listed as Elvis’ man­ager but he is “under the di­rec­tion” of Colonel Parker.

When was the sleeve used?

So, I posed three ques­tions at the be­gin­ning of this ar­ticle and have ef­fec­tively an­swered them. Here is the nut­shell ver­sion of all the in­for­ma­tion above:

•  Given the ref­er­ence to Stage Show on the sleeve, it was prob­ably man­u­fac­tured no ear­lier than early Feb­ruary 1956.

•  Given the fact that sev­eral records have been found with the sleeve, it was prob­ably used from Feb­ruary through May 1956.

To be­lieve that this sleeve was used with white label promo 45s of 47–6357 in late 1955 re­quires us to be­lieve that “Elvis Presley is a recording sen­sa­tion” refers to solely Pres­ley’s Sun records in 1955 and “Elvis Presley is a TV star (Jackie Gleason Stage Show)” is based solely on the deal made in 1955 for Pres­ley’s ap­pear­ances on fu­ture ap­pear­ances on Stage Show in 1956.

This is unlikely.

To be­lieve that this sleeve was used with 47–6540 re­quires us to be­lieve that “Elvis Presley is a recording sen­sa­tion” refers to the ex­tra­or­di­nary suc­cess of Heart­break Hotel and that “Elvis Presley is a TV star (Jackie Gleason Stage Show)” is based on Pres­ley’s ac­tual ap­pear­ance on Stage Show in 1956.

So, which one was it?

Not only do I think it’s both, but I’m going with all four of them!

 

This Is His Life: full-page ad for Elvis Presley's second new RCA Victor single appeared in May 19, 1956, issue of Billboard.
This full-page ad­ver­tise­ment ap­peared in the May 19, 1956, issue of Bill­board. At the same time that RCA Victor was ad­ver­tising I Want  You, I Need You, I Love You as the A‑side, Bill­board noted that “Both sides have gotten gen­erous deejay play which has helped stim­u­late ac­tivity, but My Baby Left Me is cur­rently the pre­ferred side.”

Suggestions

I have two sug­ges­tions for discog­ra­phers and price guide editors:

1.  In­stead of trying to link it to one record, give the “This Is His Life” sleeve its own entry as a sep­a­rate col­lectible item.

2. In­stead of trying to pin the re­lease date down, list it as having been used from Feb­ruary through May 1956.

 

This Is His Life: back of Elvis This Is His Life picture sleeve with round corners from 1956.

This Is His Life: back of Elvis This Is His Life picture sleeve with square corners from 1956.
The Elvis Records site dis­plays two ver­sions of the back side of the “This Is His Life” sleeve. One has a pointed thumb-notch (top) and one has a rounded thumb-notch (bottom). This in­di­cates that these sleeves were man­u­fac­tured twice (un­less one is a counterfeit)

Two “This Is His Life” sleeves?

The Elvis Records site dis­plays two ver­sions of the back side of the “This Is His Life” sleeve:

•  One vari­a­tion has rounded cor­ners at the bottom with a pointed thumb-notch (top image above).

•  The other vari­a­tion has square cor­ners at the bottom with a rounded thumb-notch (bottom image above).

If both of these im­ages are of the le­git­i­mate sleeve (see “Re­pro­duc­tions exist” below), then it prob­ably in­di­cates that two dif­ferent printers were used by RCA Victor to man­u­fac­ture them.

 

This Is His Life: unauthorized reproduction (or bootleg) of Elvis This Is His Life picture sleeve.
Dif­fer­en­ti­ating au­thentic sleeves from re­pro­duc­tions is dif­fi­cult at this time but readers should be wary of sleeves in near-mint con­di­tion or with their white­ness un­touched by the aging of ox­i­da­tion or with point­edly square corners.

Avid Record Collector Price Guide

As the field of Elvis col­lecting is still con­fused about this sleeve’s origin, how many au­thentic ver­sions exist, and how to dif­fer­en­tiate be­tween au­thentic sleeves and re­pro­duc­tions, I will grace­fully de­cline to as­sign any kind of def­i­nite value to it.

How­ever, I will say that this sleeve should be worth thou­sands of dol­lars in near-mint condition!

Reproductions exist

Re­pro­duc­tions exist of the “This Is His Life” sleeve. These were made by dif­ferent sources over sev­eral years, if not sev­eral decades. I am un­able to pro­vide rea­son­able in­struc­tions on how to dis­cern the dif­fer­ence be­tween an au­thentic sleeve and a reproduction.

At this time, I can offer the time-honored “Caveat emptor” and ask that the reader be wary of copies in like-new condition.

This ar­ticle about the Elvis ‘This Is His Life’ car­toon pic­ture sleeve is one in a se­ries about col­lecting Elvis records from late 1955 and early ’56. Click To Tweet

This Is His Life: caricature of Elvis Presley from 1955 by Alberto Russo.

FEA­TURED IMAGE: Since the fea­tured image at the top of this page is a record label that al­ready ap­peared in this ar­ticle above, I am filling this space with a car­i­ca­ture of Elvis. This cool drawing of Elvis was done by the artist Al­berto Russo. I have pub­lished eleven col­lec­tions of Elvis car­i­ca­tures on this blog; to view the first one, click here.

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.

 


 

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