Saturday, January 31, 2009

Yahoo LAUNCHCAST Song Of The Day-Elvis Presley

Artist:Elvis Presley
Song:Return To Sender
Album:30 #1 Hits




When I featured Elvis Presley last year, I said that RCA has released so many different Elvis comps that it's hard to make any sense of his catalog. I'm a little more comfortable recommending this comp to beginners. The idea was that Capitol was very successful releasing The Beatles 1 comp and this is similar to that. It's not perfect because it doesn't have any Sun Records recordings but those are worth getting on their own anyway. For me, the 1962 hit Return To Sender was one of Elvis' last really good songs before his music became unlistenable. Elvis always said he wanted to be a great actor but that wasn't going to happen with the kind of movies manager Colonel Tom Parker was getting for him. Yes, they were popular but they weren't good. Return To Sender was in the 1962 film Girls! Girls! Girls!. The song was written by legendary songwriter Otis Blackwell and his partner Winfield Scott. It would be Scott's biggest hit but Blackwell was a proven hitmaker and had written other Elvis hits like Don't Be Cruel & All Shook Up. Elvis was a big fan of Blackwell. Return To Sender is a great song but the soundtrack albums to the movies were usually pretty bad and maybe had one decent song on them. Girls! Girls! Girls! is no different so getting it on a comp like this is the best route. Return To Sender reached #2 on the Billboard singles chart but did reach #1 on Cashbox. RCA has released versions of this comp with bonus tracks and one edition with a DVD interview. Here's Elvis Presley performing Return To Sender in the film Girls! Girls! Girls!

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