Elvis’ Golden Records

With Elvis scheduled to go into the army for two years as of March 24, and Colonel Parker still adamantly refusing to make any concessions to the record company’s need for a recording schedule – any kind of schedule – during his time in service, RCA put together a Greatest Hits package consisting of the A-sides of his first eight RCA singles together with six B-sides. It was a dramatic reversal of the Colonel’s one ironclad, if somewhat inexplicable, rule to date: never allow a hit single to appear on a non-soundtrack album. Initial sales of 150,000 (comparable to sales of the Christmas album) seemed to bear out the wisdom of the previous policy. But the album has sold more than six million copies domestically over the years – and it continues to sell.