The most comprehensive collection yet of Elvis Presley’s earliest recordings will be released July 28 in a three-CD and digital set comprising 85 tracks, representing everything Presley is known to have recorded from 1953 to 1955.
“Elvis Presley — A Boy From Tupelo: The Complete 1953-1955 Recordings” will be dominated by songs the young singer put down mostly at Sun Studio in Memphis, but it will also include early radio interviews and songs he paid to record before Sun founder Sam Phillips signed him as a recording artist.
Among the highest-profile components of the new set, which has been overseen by longtime Presley archivist Ernst Mikael Jorgensen, is the first acetate he made in July 1953 at Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service of the songs “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.”
Six months later, he was back to pay for another recording session, where he sang “I’ll Never Stand in Your Way” and “It Wouldn’t Be the Same (Without You),” both of which also are included.