By late 1955, Elvis Presley was becoming impossible for the music business to ignore. His Sun Records singles were spreading beyond Memphis, his live shows were creating increasingly wild reactions and Billboard had named him its most promising new country and western artist. Colonel Tom Parker believed Elvis had outgrown a small independent label and began pushing for something much bigger.
On November 21, RCA purchased Elvis’s recording contract and Sun material from Sam Phillips for an unprecedented $35,000, with another $5,000 going to Elvis. The deal also gave RCA control of his five released Sun singles and unreleased recordings from those sessions. For a 20-year-old singer who had not yet scored a No. 1 pop hit, it was an enormous bet.
Elvis Presley Signs His Historic RCA Deal
RCA quickly began reissuing Elvis’s Sun singles under its own label. At roughly the same time, Elvis entered an agreement with publishing giant Hill and Range, which established Elvis Presley Music, Inc. The arrangement allowed Elvis to share publishing ownership in songs acquired for him to record, adding another business layer to the career Parker was rapidly building around him.
The real test came on January 10, 1956, when Elvis entered an RCA studio in Nashville for his first recording session with the company. One of the songs recorded that day was “Heartbreak Hotel.” RCA executives were initially nervous about its unusual sound, but within months those fears disappeared as the record climbed to No. 1 and became Elvis’s first million-selling single.
See What RCA’s Gamble Turned Into With “Heartbreak Hotel”
The second video shows exactly why that expensive contract soon looked like a bargain. “Heartbreak Hotel” spent eight weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s pop chart, while Elvis’s first RCA album also reached No. 1 and stayed there for 10 weeks. Within only months of leaving Sun, the young regional performer Parker had sold to RCA was becoming a national phenomenon.
Elvis Presley would go on to record “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Suspicious Minds” and countless other classics for RCA. But one of the biggest turning points came before most Americans even knew his face: a record company agreed to pay an unheard-of price for a 20-year-old singer from Memphis. A few months later, “Heartbreak Hotel” proved the gamble had changed popular music.