Elvis' Golden Records
Greatest hits album by  Elvis Presley
Released	March 21, 1958
Recorded	January 1956 – September 1957
Genre	Rock and roll
Length	32:03
Label	RCA Victor
Producer	Steve Sholes, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley chronology
Jailhouse Rock (1957) Elvis' Golden Records (1958) King Creole (1958)

Elvis' Golden Records is a compilation album by American rock and roll singer Elvis Presley, issued by RCA Victor in March 1958. It compiled his hit singles released in 1956 and 1957, and is widely believed to be the first greatest hits album in rock and roll history. It is the first of five RCA Victor Elvis' Golden/Gold Records compilations, the first four of which were issued during Presley's lifetime. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart and was certified 6× platinum on August 17, 1999, by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Songs

Elvis' Golden Records collects nine number one A-sides along with four B-sides, "Loving You", "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", "Treat Me Nice" and "Anyway You Want Me", and one album track, "Love Me", originally issued on the 1956 LP Elvis. Every flip-side also hit the chart separately from its parent hit side, with four making the Top 40; chart positions noted for those tracks individually. "Love Me" was also included on the Elvis Vol. 1 EP single which made the top ten on the singles chart.

In the 1950s, a gold record awarded for a single referred to sales of one million units, different from the definition in use by the late 1970s for albums, where a gold record came to mean album sales of 500,000 units. Exact figures from the RIAA are difficult to confirm, but in the press conference from September 22, 1958, originally released on the RCA Victor EP Elvis Sails in 1958 and included on disc four of the RCA CD boxed set The King of Rock 'n' Roll: The Complete 50s Masters, the interviewer asked Presley for a tally of his gold records. Presley responded, "I have 25 million sellers, and two albums that have sold a million each."

Most of the songs in the compilation were recorded at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, with other sessions at the RCA Victor studios in New York City, at 20th Century-Fox's Stage One in Hollywood, and the RCA Victor studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Although RCA Victor executive Steve Sholes was the in-house A&R man for Presley, and nominally in charge of his recording sessions at RCA Victor, accounts by Presley historian Peter Guralnick and Presley discographer Ernst Mikael Jorgensen indicate that Presley himself acted as the producer for his RCA Victor sessions in the 1950s.

The unified Billboard Hot 100 singles chart was not created until August, 1958, after the release of this compilation, and of course after the release of all of these singles. Chart positions referenced were taken from the "Best Sellers in Stores" chart, although early statistics for rock and roll records also came from the "Most Played in Jukeboxes" chart.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Encyclopedia of Popular Music

In a review for AllMusic, Bruce Eder commented:

This was rock & roll's first greatest-hits album, and it set the standard for all others to follow ... Each of the 14 songs had earned a Gold record award for a million sales, a record unequaled at that time by anyone else in rock & roll ... Elvis' Golden Records does give a bite-sized glimpse of where Elvis had come from and where he was going (for better or worse) musically on the eve of heading into the Army.

Track listing

Details are taken from the 1958 and 1997 RCA Records albums liner notes and may differ from other sources. See singles discography and song list for additional information.

Original LP