Girls! Girls! Girls! (album)

Content

As soundtrack album sales far outstripped his regular album sales (Blue Hawaii outselling Pot Luck with Elvis by ten to one) Presley found himself firmly entrenched in songs designed for a light-entertainment formula of beautiful scenery and girls galore. With this discrepancy in sales, the formula of the soundtrack music became the focus.

Sixteen songs were recorded at the sessions in March, of which thirteen were used for the soundtrack album. Banished from the kingdom after running afoul of the Colonel, songs from favored writers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller could only be those already written for someone else, in this case the title track being a hit for The Coasters in 1961 before being adapted for the Presley film. This song and two others, "Return to Sender" and "Because of Love," appear on the 1995 soundtrack compilation Command Performances: The Essential 60's Masters II.

The tracks "Return to Sender" and "Where Do You Come From" were issued as both sides of a single in October 1962, one month before the release of the soundtrack LP. "Return to Sender" became a substantial hit for Presley, peaking at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the b-side "Where Do You Come From" peaked at only number 99 independently of the hit side.

The Presley fan-club label Follow That Dream released an expanded version of the album in 2007, including alternate takes and songs recorded but not used for the soundtrack. The outtake "Plantation Rock" saw a performance by actor Rob Schneider on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 1996. The songs performed by Stella Stevens in the film — "Never Let Me Go", "The Nearness Of You" and "Baby, Baby, Baby" — were in fact mimed to the singing voice of Gilda Maiken and have yet to be commercially released.

Personnel