Seventy years ago this month, a shiny new record player started landing in stores across America. It had a famous name right on the lid. The name was Elvis Presley.
Elvis was the young singer from Memphis who had just turned the music world upside down. By late 1956 he was the biggest new star in the country, the man people were already calling the King of Rock and Roll. He was only 21.
RCA was his record company, and they had a bright idea. They built a portable record player, stamped his printed signature on top and called it the Elvis Presley Autograph Model. There were two to choose from that fall. A four-speed model sold for $32.95. An automatic 45 model cost $44.95. Both came finished in blue denim, so the whole thing looked like a little suitcase a teenager could carry over to a friend’s house.
Here’s what one of them looks like plugged in and spinning, signature and all.
A real 1956 Elvis player switched on and playing a record
For a lot of readers, or their big brothers and sisters, this was the thing you wanted more than anything that year. It had Elvis right on top of it, and it fit in your hand. And RCA knew exactly how to sell it.
They didn’t hire an announcer. They had Elvis himself talk you into it.
RCA sent radio stations a disc of short spots, and two of them are Elvis speaking in his own easy drawl. He tells you right off what they are. “They call ’em Elvis Presley Autograph Models, with my name stamped on top,” he says. Then comes the part that still makes people smile.
The records came free. And they were his.
On the cheaper four-speed player, Elvis says it’s “only $32.95, including eight of my records.” Step up to the automatic 45, he tells you, and “with this you get all twelve songs free.” He even describes the look himself, calling it “finished in blue denim with my name stamped on top.” Both spots wrap up with a plug for his first movie, “Love Me Tender,” which was about to open in theaters.
This came just two years after Elvis had to borrow the upstairs neighbors’ player to hear his own first record. Now his voice was the one selling the machine.
You can hear him do the whole pitch here, set to photos from the era.
Elvis’s voice on the actual RCA radio ad, over 1956 photos
The players are collector’s items now, and in good shape they don’t come cheap. In 2024 a working four-speed model, rated in fine condition, sold at one auction for $532.18. Not bad for a little blue box that once cost about thirty dollars at the store.
Give the clips a listen. His sales pitch is pure 1956, and it’s hard not to grin at how he talks you into buying his own records.