Clambake is the sixteenth soundtrack album by American singer and musician
RCA Victor in mono and stereo, LPM/LSP 3893, in October 1967. It is the soundtrack to the 1967 film of the same name starring Presley. He entered RCA Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee on February 21, 1967, for recording sessions for his twenty-fifth film. Supplemental material sessions took place on September 10 and 11, 1967. It peaked at number 40 on the Billboard 200.[2]
Content
By the end of 1966, Presley no longer commanded the same level of sales or artistic respect as he had during the first ten years of his career.[3] But Elvis had little enthusiasm at this juncture for more soundtrack sessions, the project already in jeopardy before it started.[4] The sessions turned out a fiasco; of the eight songs recorded, two had been edited out of the film, and even with "How Can You Lose What You Never Had" restored to the soundtrack, that left an album of merely seven songs.[5]
The album would prove to be a turning point in Presley's career. After many years of churning out forgettable songs for forgettable films, he was clearly past his prime. All realms of popular music had totally bypassed him during the 1960s while he had been "lost in Hollywood". So Presley decided to begin recording music written by accomplished songwriters. A session to record additional material in
Guitar Man." After it was recorded, Reed refused to turn over the usual publishing percentages to Freddy Bienstock, another assault on the soundtrack formula that had been in place throughout the decade.[9]
Five songs were selected from this session to bring the album up to a total of twelve tracks.
Including this LP, of his fifteen albums since
Double Trouble which had been his lowest-charting album so far.[10]
Reissues
In 2006 Clambake was reissued on the Follow That Dream label in a special edition that contained the original album tracks along with numerous alternate takes.[11]
