I gave a letter to the postman - he put it in his sack

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

09/06/63 : Girls! Girls! Girls! - Elvis Presley

Yup - him again. Taking him up to NINETEEN visits - my expectations are not exactly sky high for this, particularly because it's another of his soundtrack albums.

For the most part, this is bang average - the tracks are incredibly uninspiring and feel like they've had the bare minimum effort put into them (which is almost certainly the case). However, this album does feature "Return To Sender" so it's not completely without merit - but it's very much mostly without merit. And what exactly is going on with that picture of him on the cover?!?

We're at #15 in the charts this week on the last week of a 21 week run, with it having peaked at #2 for six consecutive weeks, kept off the top by Cliff Richard for all of them. The top five this week were  The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and Frank Ifield, with the highest new entry being the Just For Fun soundtrack - which would have been nice to listen to because it actually featured some women, but I couldn't find it anywhere so it would have missed out anyway.

Wikipedia tells us this is his fifth soundrack album - and boy does it go off on his soundtrack albums, telling us "As soundtrack album sales far outstripped his regular album sales Presley found himself firmly entrenched in songs designed for a light-entertainment formula of beautiful scenery and girls galore...This formula for success would prove disastrous for Presley's career...Popular music was on the threshold of complete renewal and change and Presley would become 'lost in Hollywood'". However, it then also points out "yet he was the no.2 most charted act on Billboard's pop chart of the '60s" so it does somewhat undo its own argument.

The only other fact of interest is that Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller were no longer allowed to write songs for Elvis after "running afoul of the Colonel" - possibly not the wisest move (I also learned that Mike Stoller is still with us as the grand old age of 93). Critically, New Record Mirror dished out another five star review (they've gone mad!) and it got to #3 in the US. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up an original version for a couple of quid, but things get a lot more interesting at the higher end of the market. You can pick up a Spanish original version (Chicas! Chicas! Chicas!) for £70, a Japanese original for £96 or an 180 gm '21 reissue double album for £120! I will obviously not be spending anything on this - it was nice to hear "Return To Sender" but that was it for me from this.

16/09/63 - Better than expected

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