While Elvis was serving his country in Germany RCA Victor released "A Touch Of Gold - Volume 1". The ep was shipped on April 21, 1959 and moved 130,000 copies during its initial sales period. On June 29th it entered Billboard's "Best Selling EPs Chart", had a run of 28 weeks and peaked at number 1. Worldwide the extended player sold a million copies, which equals 150 million paid streams of the complete record. Even though the chart appearance was strong, the global sales stayed behind the expectations.

The front cover showed the king in his famous golden suit, which he had worn on tour in 1957. On the back side the Elvis himself beged his fans to ask their record dealer for a catalogue of his releases (and maybe buy one or two of them).

The ep is not available on the streaming platforms since the tracks can be found on the albums "King Creole" (1958), "50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong" (1959) and "A Date With Elvis" (1959).

RCA Victor simply took the two years old single "Don't" / "I Beg Of You" and added the 45 from Elvis' latest movie "King Creole" as well as a SUN track from 1955. At the time of this release none of these 45s had been certified with a Gold Award by the RIAA, it was the Colonel's usual marketing scam.

The singer tries to prove his theory, that hard headed women are the root of all evil with several episodes from the Bible. The lyrics are funny, the melody and rhythm are straight rock'n'roll. The brass-element adds something unique to the song. Elvis performs it with a lot of power, almost aggression. It's a very good track and certainly one of the king's best movie tunes. It was written by Claude DeMetrius and recorded by Elvis on January 15, 1958. The king needed ten takes to archive a satisfactory master. RCA Victor released "Hard Headed Woman" on a single (1958) and on the boxed set "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970). The single peaked at number 2 of Billboard's "Hot 100" and sold three million copies.

The singer asks a girl out for dancing, but the subtext clarifies, that dancing isn't the only thing he wants to do with the lady. "Good Rockin' Tonight" was written by Roy Brown, who also recorded it in 1947. Elvis followed him on September 10, 1954 at SUN Records in Memphis/Tennessee. Five years after the release of this single, RCA Victor re-released the track on the longplayer "A Date With Elvis". In 1976 "Good Rockin' Tonight" was also included on the album "The Sun Sessions". For me, this is one of the king's best SUN recordings. However, it was less successful than his debut "That's All Right".

The ballad was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Elvis recorded it on September 7, 1957 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood/California, take 7 was selected as master. From today's point of view the lyrics are somewhat creepy, but back then "Don't" was supposed to be a serious love song. RCA Victor released it on the  long player "50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong - Elvis' Gold Records Volume 2" (1959) and the boxed set "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970).

The b-side of "Don't" was re-released on the same records. Before RCA Victor issued it on a single, it had been in the vaults for quite some time. Elvis had recorded this nice, uptempo popsong on January 13, 1957 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood/California. Even though he had chosen the 12th and final attempt as master, he didn't like the result too well. So he tried again on February 23rd and recorded another 22 takes. Producer Steve Sholes simply continued the numberation and labeled the new recordings as takes 13 to 34. Finally Elvis revoked his first choice and selected take 34 as master.