Elvis Presley Songwriting Credits by Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley is the debut studio album by Elvis Presley, released in March 1956 on RCA Victor Records, produced by Sam Phillips (for the Sun sessions that comprised the first half) and Steve Sholes (for the RCA sessions). It is the album that launched rock and roll as a commercially mainstream phenomenon and introduced Presley to a national audience that had previously known him only through regional radio play and television appearances. Presley did not write any of the 12 tracks, drawing instead from the existing gospel, country, and rhythm and blues repertoire that he had absorbed in Memphis ('Tutti Frutti,' 'Blue Suede Shoes,' 'I Got a Woman,' and 'Money Honey' among the covers) and his earlier Sun-era recordings including 'I Love You Because' and 'Blue Moon.' The album spent ten non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Best Sellers chart, sold over one million copies, an extraordinary figure for an album in 1956, and was the foundation on which RCA built the most commercially successful artist acquisition in the history of the music industry to that point. Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (bass), Presley's original backing musicians, appear throughout, and their sparse rockabilly arrangements gave the album a raw energy that distinguished it from the more polished country and pop records of the period. Elvis Presley is the founding document of rock and roll's commercial era, and its cultural impact, transmitted through Presley's TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in the same year, changed popular music more fundamentally than any other single album release of the decade.