The Campaign Behind the Record
In August 1956, RCA Victor unveiled the largest single release program in the label’s history to that point:
“Showcase in Sound,” a Best Buy promotion built around 28 brand-new albums arriving in record stores that September — 14 pop titles and 14 Red Seal classical titles.1 The pop lineup ran from Julius La Rosa and Perez Prado to Coleman Hawkins and the Hollywood Presbyterian Church Choir — a deliberately wide net meant to give every dealer something to sell that fall.
SPL-12-29 is the record RCA built to sell that program: a 12-inch “Highlighter” sampler carrying selections from the new releases, intended to sit on the counter and do the salesman’s job for him.
Two Ads, One Push
RCA backed the September release with a two-pronged advertising campaign, and the surviving print pieces show exactly how the two audiences were pitched differently.
The trade press. A three-page spread ran in the August 25, 1956 issue of Billboard, aimed squarely at record dealers and distributors.2 The headline called it “The Once-in-a-Lifetime Promotion Package Record Dealers Dream About!” and laid out all 28 titles in a grid with full catalog numbers, wholesale-friendly pricing, and a rundown of the point-of-sale kit dealers would receive: a 3-piece counter display, ready-made ad mats for local newspapers, and three separate Highlighter samplers (a 45 EP Pop Highlighter at 98 cents, and 12-inch Pop and Red Seal Highlighters at $1.49 each) built specifically to “earn you normal profits.” A companion page detailed the “new packaging” angle RCA was using to justify the $3.98 list price on select titles — deluxe albums like Paris, the Sounds, the Sights (with a 16-page Melachrino Orchestra booklet by Esquire travel editor Richard Joseph) and La Traviata (bundled with the complete Dumas novel Camille) — plus the media buy backing it all: spots on Monitor and The Bob and Ray Show, ten NBC television spectaculars, and print ads running in Life, The Long Player, Schwann, Down Beat, High Fidelity, Saturday Review, and American Record Guide, among others.
The consumer press. The Cash Box announcement had promised “a pop and jazz campaign in Life Magazine” to run alongside the trade push, and that ad appeared in the September 17, 1956 issue of Life (Vol. 41, No. 12, p. 60).3 Where the Billboard spread spoke to dealers about margins and floor displays, the Life ad spoke straight to record buyers: a grid of 14 album covers with retail list prices only ($3.98 for each 12-inch LP, $2.98 for two-record 45 EP sets, $1.49 for a single EP), plus the same consumer hook that anchored the whole promotion — a $3.98-value Highlighter sampler, “12 selections from these great albums on one 12″ Long Play record,” for just $1.49, packaged in a transparent sleeve with a full-color catalog and a coupon good for up to $20.44 off future purchases.
Both ads point to the same 14 pop titles carried on this sampler: Julius La Rosa (with the Joe Reisman Orchestra), The Hawk in Hi-Fi (Coleman Hawkins with Billy Byers’ orchestra), Mediterranean Cruise (Frankie Carle Orchestra), Music for Bachelors (Henri René Orchestra), Paris — The Sounds, The Sights (The Melachrino Orchestra), We Could Make Such Beautiful Music (George Williams Orchestra), Havana, 3 a.m. (Perez Prado), The Birdland Stars on Tour Vols. 1 & 2, Hollywood Presbyterian Church Choir, The Big Sound (Ray Bohr at the Pipe Organ), Though Not a Word Was Spoken (The Voices of Walter Schumann), The Drum Suite (Manny Albam and Ernie Wilkins), and The Follies of Paris.
Why It Matters to Elvis Collectors
The sampler’s booklet-style gatefold cover — 15 albums pictured on the front, 24 more on the back — doubled as a miniature RCA Victor catalog. Its inner pages promoted a roster of 16 vocal artists across the label, LPM-1254 Elvis Presley among them, placing him alongside labelmates like Perez Prado and the Hollywood Presbyterian Church Choir in the same September 1956 push.
Cover Front: Catalog number upper and RCA Victor logo upper right. Pink background featuring 15 albums.
Cover Back: Pink background featuring 24 albums.
This is not a typical cover. It is a booklet featuring images of many RCA releases of that era.
Pages 1 and 2: Featuring the contents of this release plus 16 Vocal artists, including LPM-1254 Elvis Presley.
Pages 3 and 4: Featuring a spread in pink of Mood Music from 32 different albums.
Pages 5 and 6: Featuring a green spread of Dance, Band and Jazz from 40 different albums.
Disc: Long Play. Black label.
Side 1: G2PP-4478-10S A1 / Side 2: G2PP-4479-12S B1 (machines stamped) (Rockaway pressing)
Review
A trade-press spotlight on the release ran in the August 25, 1956 issue of Billboard, part of the magazine’s “Packaged Records Buying Guide.”4
Inner Sleeves
Generic RCA sleeve.
- RCA Victor Officials, quoted in “First Time Offers Dealers Samplers At Normal Discount As Feature Of ‘Showcase In Sound’ Best Buy Program,” Cash Box, Aug. 18, 1956: 1, worldradiohistory.com. ↩
- “RCA Victor’s Showcase in Sound,” Billboard, Aug. 25, 1956: 23–25, worldradiohistory.com. ↩
- “Sound Ideas for September: 14 New Pop Albums from RCA Victor’s Showcase in Sound,” Life, Sept. 17, 1956: 60. ↩
- “Packaged Records Buying Guide,” Billboard, Aug. 25, 1956: 22. ↩