AboutMel Priddle Expertise For 50 years I have been listening to, buying and searching into the music of Elvis Presley. If you have a question relating to any song that Elvis recorded (officially, unofficially or privately), then I guarantee to give you an answer. Likewise with his movies. Questions relating to Elvis' private life I prefer to leave to others.
Experience Ex-cinema manager, film publicist, record merchandiser, and Elvis music lover since 1955.
Elvis recorded almost 700 songs (go on the net and put in "Elvis Presley songs alfabethicaly" or "from a to z" - and you can count them if you want)
Now, there is another thing: each song has or had many different takes (take 1, take 2, ... somethimes even over 20 and 30 - its differs from song to song)because The King wanted each song to be perfect and they recorded it till they got it right.
Beside masters and different takes there are many outtakes, rehearsals recordings,informal recordings, private recordings, recording from fans, bootleg recordings, ...
And then there are live shows: just from 1969 - 1977 there were aprox. 1250 live shows (aprox half of them were recorded - officialy and unofficialy, some of them by fans, and the sound quality differs very much)
My known number of concerts that were recorded is much over 650 different shows.
So the real number of Elvis recordings is very hard to know in all of that - could be even over 10 000?! (in a period of 23 year).
And cds?
My gues is: more then 500 official and also more then 500 bootlegs (of corse not all of them belongs to the category "important")
Elv1s forever
Answer Hello Matt,
I'm not really certain what question I'm being asked here, as it looks as someone has already answered it. But if you're asking me how many different songs Elvis recorded, then it's difficult, but not impossible to answer. If we stick to the official recordings made for the Sun and RCA record labels, plus the songs recorded for films and TV, the figure is 699.
In addition to the songs recorded for his two record companies, there are very many recordings in existance of private sessions and rehearsals, many live shows where songs would be sung repeatedly from show to show and recorded, and many instances where Elvis would just sing a line or two from songs that he never professionally recorded (much of this material has appeared on bootleg albums).
Of course there are instances of songs being officially recorded twice for one reason or another (e.g. Blue Suede Shoes, Love Letters, You Don't Know Me, One Night, Loving You, Ain't That Loving You Baby, Big Boots, Franfurt Special). Together with all the other bits and pieces already mentioned, this could easily take the figure to around the 900 mark.
I would not even consider adding in the repeated recordings of songs at live shows, as it would really be quite impossible to calculate.
