LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) Capitol/UMe is expected to release the lost album Sings For The King, a compilation of songs Glen Campbell recorded for Elvis Presley in 1964-68.
Campbell, in between recording sessions with the Wrecking Crew, touring with the Beach Boys and recording his own albums, was recruited to record songs for the King, songs that were only intended for Presley’s ears. Eighteen of these recently unearthed and unreleased songs will be released on CD, LP and digitally, more than a half-century later, on Nov. 16. The collection will also be available on limitied edition 180-gram clear vinyl exclusively at GlenCanmpbell.com.
Many of the songs are written by the team of Ben Weisman and Sid Wayne, who wrote 56 recorded Presley tunes. The songs were discovered by executive producer Stephen Auerbach, who found the recordings on reel-to-reel tapes tucked away in a storage space by Weisman, Auerbach’s uncle-in-law. Twelve of the recordings went on to be recorded and released by Presley during his Hollywood movie phase, including “Stay Away Joe,” “Clambake,” “Spinout” and “Easy Come, Easy Go.”
The songs were recorded while Campbell’s own career was skyrocketing, having released albums Gentle On My Mind and By the Time I Get to Phoenix and their No. 1 title songs by 1967.
“With their genre-bending musical exploration and rural Southern roots, it’s no surprise that Glen Campbell and Elvis Presley formed something of a mutual admiration society,” music journalist Alan Light says in the liner notes. “‘Elvis and I were brought up the same humble way,’ Campbell once said, ‘picking cotton and looking at the north end of a south-bound mule.’ The friendship between the Rhinestone Cowboy and the King of Rock and Roll spanned three decades, and they often orbited each other professionally.”
Campbell and Presley met in 1956, when Elvis performed in Albuquerque, where Glen had recently moved to join his uncle’s band, Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys. “I saw him in the rough,” Glen later said. “He was so electrifying.” In 1960, Glen headed to Los Angeles to find work as a session musician and took a regular gig at a club called the Crossbow, where Elvis and his friends would sometimes come watch from a small private room upstairs. As a member of the incomparable group of LA studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, Glen appeared on dozens of immortal hits, from “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’ ” to “Strangers in the Night.” In 1963 alone, he added his guitar to almost 600 sessions, including his one and only recording with Elvis, for the “Viva Las Vegas” soundtrack.
