Elvis Is Back!

Elvis Is Back! is the fourth studio album by American singer Elvis Presley, released on April 8, 1960 by RCA Victor. It was Presley's first album of new material since 1958's King Creole soundtrack as well as his first to be recorded and released in stereophonic sound. The album marked Presley's return to music after his discharge from the U.S. Army.

During Presley's two-year military service in Germany, RCA Victor and Paramount Pictures progressively released material he had completed prior to enlistment. During his last months in the Army, Presley began preparing material and working on improving his performance for his first session in Nashville, scheduled to take place upon his return. Upon returning to the United States in March 1960, the singer reunited with guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana from his original band, the Blue Moon Boys, for two blocks of sessions in late March and early April. The material on the album has some influences from the rock and roll of Presley's early work, but it also offers a mix of sophisticated pop, blues, R&B and the "Nashville sound" production values associated with Chet Atkins, who co-produced the recording sessions with Steve Sholes.

With public anticipation high, RCA rushed Elvis Is Back! and the standalone single "Stuck on You" into release mere days after Presley finished recording. The LP topped the UK Albums Chart and reached number two in Billboard's Top LP's. Initially, the release received mixed reviews, but over subsequent years its critical reception became progressively more positive, with critics generally praising its stylistic variety, production quality and mature sound. Elvis is Back! was certified Gold on July 15, 1999, by the Recording Industry Association of America.Template:Sfn

Background and Army years

Following his third and last appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Presley received a notice from the Memphis draft board on January 8, 1957. The board announced his 1A classification and his possible draft before the end of the year.Template:Sfn During the first half of 1957, Presley had three number one hits with "Too Much", "All Shook Up", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear".Template:Sfn His second film, Loving You, opened on July 30 to box office success.Template:Sfn His Christmas album was released on October 15, and his third film, Jailhouse Rock, opened on October 17.Template:Sfn

On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment so he could finish the forthcoming film King Creole, which had already received an investment of $350,000 from Paramount Pictures and producer Hal Wallis. At the beginning of 1958, Presley's single "Don't" topped the charts.Template:Sfn

Presley was inducted into the Army on March 24, 1958.Template:Sfn Soon after starting basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, he received a visit from Eddie Fadal, a businessman he had met on tour in January 1956. According to Fadal, Presley "firmly believed" his career was finished.Template:Sfn After completing training, he joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1.Template:Sfn

Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA Victor producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year absence. Using unreleased material, they kept up a stream of regular, successful releases.Template:Sfn Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the best-selling "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night"Template:Sfn in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one hit "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959.Template:Sfn RCA Victor released four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis' Golden Records (1958) (which rose to third position on the LP chart) and 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong.Template:Sfn

Return to music

During his final months in the Army, Presley started to experiment with new material and thinking ahead to his anticipated return to recording. For his first scheduled recording session, Presley considered The Four Fellow's "Soldier Boy", the Golden Gate Quartet's "I Will Be Home Again", The Drifters' "Such a Night" and Jesse Stone's "Like a Baby".Template:Sfn His friend Charlie Hodge taught Presley techniques to improve his breathing and expand his range. For inspiration, Presley used Roy Hamilton's "I Believe" and his version of "Unchained Melody", the traditional Irish song "Danny Boy", and Tony Martin's "There's No Tomorrow" (an English adaptation of "'O sole mio").Template:Sfn Presley also studied the phrasing and notes of records by The Inkspots and the Mills Brothers.Template:Sfn By the end of his time in Germany, Presley had added a full octave to his vocal range.Template:Sfn

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5.Template:Sfn While Presley was in Germany, manager Colonel Tom Parker negotiated new terms with RCA Victor for Presley to fulfill his contractual obligations with film soundtracks. Parker also obtained an increase in Presley's salary and a profit share from producer Wallis and negotiated an appearance on The Frank Sinatra Show.Template:Sfn Meanwhile, to assure publishing royalties, Bienstock commissioned new lyrics for "O Sole Mio" since the tune was already in the public domain.Template:Sfn

Recording

On March 20, Parker sent a chartered Greyhound bus to transport Presley and his entourage from Memphis, Tennessee to Nashville. The session personnel consisted of guitarist Scotty Moore, drummer D.J. Fontana, pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Hank Garland, bassist Bobby Moore, percussionist Buddy Harman and the backing group The Jordanaires. Presley's original bassist Bill Black declined to join the sessions as he was enjoying success with the Bill Black Combo. To prevent possible disruption by fans, the musicians were initially told they were going to play on a Jim Reeves session. RCA executives Sholes and Bill Bullock were joined in the control booth by Parker, his assistant Tom Diskin, A&R head Chet Atkins, engineer Bill Porter and Hill and Range's Bienstock.Template:Sfn

File:Presley & Mahendra (1).jpg

Presley in May 1960 with Queen Ratna of Nepal and King Mahendra of Nepal

RCA Victor's Studio B had recently been equipped with a new three-track recorder.Template:Sfn To further improve the recording of Presley's voice, Porter had Telefunken U-47 microphones placed in the studio.Template:Sfn The U-47 was the first condenser microphone that could switch between omnidirectional and cardioid patterns. The microphone could be used for vocals, instruments and full area coverage.Template:Sfn The first song recorded was Otis Blackwell's "Make Me Know It", which was mastered in nineteen takes. "Soldier Boy" was later recorded in fifteen takes, followed by the non-album cuts "Stuck on You" and "Fame and Fortune". The last song recorded during the March session was a non-album cut, "A Mess of Blues".Template:Sfn A new session was arranged for April. Presley then left for Miami, Florida, where he taped The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: Welcome Home Elvis.Template:Sfn

The original musicians returned to the studio on the evening of April 3; they were joined by saxophonist Boots Randolph. Presley started the session with "Fever", accompanied only by the bass and drums.Template:Sfn He followed with the reworded version of "O Sole Mio", now titled "It's Now or Never". After Presley failed several times to achieve the full voice ending of the song, Porter offered to splice it for him. Presley refused and tried the song until he achieved the desired ending.Template:Sfn "Girl Next Door Went A-Walking", was recorded in ten takes, followed by "Thrill of Your Love".Template:Sfn The non-album cut "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" was followed by "I Will Be Home Again"—a duet with Hodge. For the last song of the session, Lowell Fulson's "Reconsider Baby", Presley played the lead using his Gibson Super 400 guitar.Template:Sfn

Content

Elvis Is Back! represented a new sound for Presley; it moved him further toward pop music, a direction he continued to take over much of the decade.Template:Sfn The album features a mixture of genres, including rock, rhythm and blues and pop ballads.Template:Sfn Critics generally agreed that Presley had acquired a "deeper, harder voice quality",Template:Sfn and said his interpretations were "increasingly sophisticated". The album includes a variety of material; Presley and the session musicians, known as "The Nashville A-Team", had the benefit of recording equipment that was state-of-the-art for its time.Template:Efn Elvis Is Back! was the first Presley album to be released in stereo.Template:Sfn The album's front cover shows Presley standing in front of a blue stage curtain, dressed in an Army trench coat and smiling as he glances to his left. The back cover features an image of Presley grinning; he is dressed in an Army regulation fatigue jacket and cap. The inside of the gatefold cover features fifteen photographs of Presley taken at various times during his Army service.Template:Sfn

The album contains twelve tracks; it opens with "Make Me Know It".Template:Sfn The second track is a cover of "Fever", which Presley based on Peggy Lee's version, although his recording incorporates finger-snappingTemplate:Sfn and the sounds of the two percussionists are divided between the two channels of the stereo mix.Template:Sfn On "The Girl of My Best Friend", Presley is supported with doo-wop backing vocals by The Jordanaires.Template:Sfn The fourth track is "I Will Be Home Again", a slow ballad performed as a duet with Charlie Hodge.Template:Sfn The fifth track is "Dirty, Dirty Feeling", a song characterized by its "raunchy rock sound" and satirical humor; it was written by Leiber and Stoller, and had been previously discarded from the soundtrack of King Creole.Template:Sfn The final track on side one is "Thrill of Your Love", on which Presley is accompanied by Cramer on the piano.Template:Sfn

The second side opens with "Soldier Boy", which features a change of key in the chorus. This is followed by "Such a Night", which has saxophone accompaniment by Randolph.Template:Sfn The next track is the blues number "It Feels So Right", which features lead guitar and heavy use of percussion. The following track is "Girl Next Door Went A-Walking", which was brought in by Moore.Template:Sfn The album closes with the rhythm and blues songs "Like a Baby" and "Reconsider Baby". Presley played the lead guitar on both tracks, the latter of which features long saxophone and piano solos.Template:Sfn

Release and reception

The first single from Elvis Is Back!, "Stuck on You", was released two days after its recording with "Fame and Fortune" on the B-side, attracting 1.4 million advanced orders.Template:Sfn The pre-printed single sleeve said, "Elvis' 1st New Recording For His 50,000,000 Fans All Over The World".Template:Sfn It was the first Presley single to be released in stereo.Template:Sfn

Elvis Is Back! was released on April 8, 1960, in stereo and monaural versions. The album reached number two on BillboardTemplate:'s Top LP's and topped the UK Albums Chart.Template:Sfn Despite this, its commercial performance was a disappointment, with fewer than 300,000 copies sold in the United States. The album was later certified Gold by the RIAA.

Initial reviews

Billboard magazine said, "Elvis is back and singing better than ever in the rock and roll style he made famous".Template:Sfn The New York Times called the record "drab and lackluster".Template:Sfn Referencing Presley's change of style, High Fidelity magazine said: "Presley obviously finds it hard to record his old gusto ... Perhaps [the recordings] are the first attempts to master new styles".Template:Sfn HiFi/Stereo Review magazine also remarked on the change in Presley's style, calling the album "musically schizoid" despite deeming the overall recording "good". The review said Presley's ballads were "the worst he's ever made" but lauded "his former vitality" in the "commercial rockabilly romps".Template:Sfn

Retrospective reviews

Template:Music ratings In his review for AllMusic, Bruce Eder wrote that the album "shows a mature Elvis Presley [who] displayed the rich, deep vocalizing that would challenge critics' expectations of Elvis Presley playing rhythm guitar throughout". Eder concluded that on Elvis Is Back!, Presley "comes off better than on any of his other albums since arriving at RCA".Template:Sfn Will Hermes of Rolling Stone praised its "wildly varied material, revelatory singing, impeccable stereo sound".Template:Sfn Writing for Rough Guides in 2004, Paul Simpson commented: "Among the 1800 or so records in Elvis's collection at Graceland is a copy of Elvis Is Back!, almost white from the number of times it was played. You can understand why this would be his favourite album." Simpson admired Presley's blues singing on "Like a Baby" and "Reconsider Baby", and added, "it's hard to believe that this commitment and exhilaration was to be heard only fitfully for most of the 1960s, often on songs buried on B-sides or as bonuses on dodgy soundtrack albums."

PopMattersTemplate:'s Steve Horowitz said the album helped Presley grow from "teen idol" to "adult entertainer". Horowitz continued: "Presley's voice was still strong and clear. He could belt out the blues one minute ... and then sound sophisticated the next ... without changing character."Template:Sfn The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also gave a favorable review, saying, "Elvis Is Back! finds [Presley] demonstrating both versatility and an affinity for handling a range of song styles".Template:Sfn

Writing in The Daily Telegraph in January 2015, Neil McCormick included Elvis Is Back! among the artist's essential works. McCormick wrote: "It is almost universally accepted that Elvis, who never saw active service, 'died' in the army. Yet Elvis Is Back ... is arguably Presley's masterpiece, in which he tackles ballads, blues, rock, pop and gospel with a quality of control that somehow makes his innate sensuality even more potent." Simon Gage of Britain's Daily Express described the album as "[Presley's] finest".Template:Sfn

Legacy

Critic Robert Dimery included the album in his book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.Template:Sfn

Reissues

RCA first reissued the original 12 track album on compact disc in 1990, and again in 1999 with bonus tracks. In 2005, Elvis is Back! was reissued on the Follow That Dream label in a 2 CD collection. This edition contains previously unreleased outtakes of the studio album and combines all previously issued versions of the masters and outtakes. Legacy Recordings released a remastered version of the album together with Something for Everybody in 2011.Template:Sfn

Track listing

2005 Follow That Dream reissue

Disc 1	Disc 2
Template:Track listing	Template:Track listing Template:Track listing *previously unreleased take

Personnel

• Elvis Presley – lead vocals, acoustic guitar
• Scotty Moore – electric guitar
• Hank Garland – electric guitar, electric bass
• Bob Moore – double bass
• Floyd Cramer – piano
• D. J. Fontana – drums, percussion
• Buddy Harman – drums, percussion
• The Jordanaires – backing vocals
• Boots Randolph – saxophone
• Charlie Hodge – harmony and backing vocals (on "I Will Be Home Again")

Charts

Weekly chart performance of Elvis is Back!

Chart (1960)	Peak positionTemplate:Sfn
UK Albums Chart	1
US Billboard Top Selling LP's	2

References

Sources

• Template:Cite magazine
• Template:Gilliland
• Template:Cite magazine

External links

• Template:Discogs master