Elvis Presley – "A Big Hunk O' Love" (1959 RCA Victor 47-7600)

When Elvis Presley entered the United States Army in March 1958, RCA Victor faced a challenge: how to maintain the commercial momentum of the most successful recording artist of the era while he was unavailable to record. Their solution was to pre-record sessions before his induction, generating a stockpile of unreleased material. "A Big Hunk O' Love," released on June 23, 1959, was one of those pre-Army stockpile recordings, and it became his eleventh number-one hit in the United States.

The Recording and Its Context

"A Big Hunk O' Love" was recorded on June 10, 1958, at RCA Victor's Studio B in Nashville. The session was part of the frantic pre-Army recording work that produced several years' worth of releasable material. The song features Elvis in an aggressive, high-energy performance that cut against the slower ballads he had been recording, a deliberate choice to demonstrate range and maintain energy while his live presence was unavailable.

The song was written by Aaron Schroeder and Sid Wyche and features The Jordanaires providing vocal backing, as was standard for Nashville RCA sessions of this era. The B-side was "My Wish Came True," a slower ballad that peaked at #12 on the pop charts.

"A Big Hunk O' Love" spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified Gold, extending Elvis's remarkable run of commercial dominance through 1959 even while he was stationed in West Germany.

The RCA Victor 47-7600 Single

The 45 RPM single was released with the RCA Victor catalog number 47-7600. The record was pressed on standard black vinyl in 7-inch single format.

Key details for the original 1959 pressing:

• Catalog number: RCA Victor 47-7600

• Label color: The label for this era of RCA Victor singles was the standard black label with the dog-and-gramophone (Nipper) logo, with specific font and design characteristics of the 1959 era

• Matrix: Original pressing matrices are hand-etched or machine-stamped in the dead wax area of the record

• Country: US pressings are the most collected; international pressings from the UK (HMV), Germany, France, and elsewhere also exist with different catalog numbers

Picture Sleeve Variants

A picture sleeve was issued with this single, making the complete package (record plus original picture sleeve) the ideal collector find. The original picture sleeve features Elvis imagery appropriate to the 1959 era, when he was already serving in the Army. Picture sleeves from this period are significantly rarer than the records themselves, as many consumers discarded them.

A complete original 47-7600 with picture sleeve in excellent condition is notably harder to find than the record alone.

Condition and Grading

45 RPM singles from 1959 are assessed using the Goldmine grading scale:

Value Guide

Elvis singles are among the most widely collected 45 RPM records, with a large and active collector community. The 1959 singles from the Army era are historically significant as evidence of the pre-recording strategy that maintained Elvis's chart presence during his military service.

Elvis's Army Period Legacy

Elvis's two-year Army service from 1958 to 1960 is one of the most significant periods in rock and roll history, largely for what didn't happen. He took a genuine break from performing, served without seeking preferential treatment, and returned in 1960 to an even larger audience than he had left. The pre-Army recordings that RCA released during this period document a singer at peak confidence, and "A Big Hunk O' Love" captures that energy completely.

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