Pot Luck

Released just one year after his last studio album, Pot Luck was the product of a two-night Nashville session in March. All the songs were newly written save for the Leiber-Stoller catalog composition “Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello,” which Hill and Range rep Freddy Bienstock was so convinced was going to be a hit that it was saved for single release from the start. There were five Doc Pomus songs (including one newly written with Leiber and Stoller and very much in the Don Robertson vein); Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott made a significant contribution with “(Such An) Easy Question”; and even Elvis himself delivered his second co-write, “You’ll Be Gone,” a joint effort with Red West and Charlie Hodge (his first, “That’s Someone You Never Forget,” recorded the previous June, actually appeared on the album along with two other songs from that session, but “You’ll Be Gone” was temporarily shelved). To some extent the album really was “pot luck,” but it also represented one of his strongest showings of original album material to date. It was in addition a highly commercial mix, as underscored by the success of Pomus and Shuman’s “Suspicion” in a copy cover single by Terry Stafford some eighteen months later and the subsequent release of “(Such An) Easy Question” and “I’m Yours” as back-to-back Elvis singles in 1965 only further emphasized. Still, it sold no more than the by-now-predictable 300,000 copies, bearing out once again the sharp commercial distinction between soundtrack and non-soundtrack albums.