The latest single of the king was released in May 1961 and featured "I Feel So Bad" as well as the title song of Elvis' current movie. On May 15th "I Feel So Bad" entered the "Hot 100" at number 43, enjoyed a stay of nine weeks and peaked at number 5. "Wild In The Country" was listed for the first time on July 5th at number 73, had a run of five weeks and reached number 26. On the same day "I Feel So Bad" also entered Billboard's "R&B Chart". Here it had a stay of three weeks and peaked at number 15. The RIAA honored the domestic sales in 1983 with a Gold Award. The British fans preferred "Wild In The Country" and made the track a number one hit. Globally RCA Victor is able to retail 2.5 million units, which equals 375 million paid streams. Without doubt "I Feel So Bad" / "Wild In The Country" was a commercial success, nevertheless the sales had dropped by more than 50% compared to the mega seller "Surrender" / "Lonely Man".

The single is not available on the streaming platforms, but the songs can be found on the albums "Elvis' Golden Records - Volume 3" (1963) and "Elvis' Gold Records - Volume 4" (1968). In 2016 the complete Presley catalogue was restored and remastered by Vic Anesini for a boxed set of 60 compact discs called "The Album Collection". Sony Music Entertainment provides the streaming platforms with the same versions of the individual tracks, albeit in 24 bit/90 khz flac. That means, if the platform of your choice supports high resolution audio, you can enjoy the songs in the same quality Sony used to scan and master them. On Spotify, which has a market share of approximately 30% and is the only platform that publishes streaming figures, "I Feel So Bad" accumulates 1.5 million streams, "Wild In The Country" even misses the million mark. So both tracks appear to be almost forgotten.

The cover photo was taken by 20th Century Fox to promote the motion picture "Wild In The Country". Of course the sleeve advertised the movie, too.

The song was written by Chuck Willis, who also released it in 1954. On March 12, 1961 at RCA Studio B in Nashville/Tennessee the king needed just two takes for his cover version, mainly because he copied Willis' performance almost note for note. RCA Victor re-released the track on the album "Elvis' Golden Records - Volume 3" (1963) and on the boxed set "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970). Even though the king delivers a great performance of this fast blues song, it doesn't meet my taste.

The ballad was the title song of Elvis' latest movie and was written by Hogo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and Geoge Weiss. Elvis recorded it on November 7, 1960 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood/California within 19 takes. I like this slow ballad very much, for me it's one of the king's best movie tunes. In 1971 RCA Victor re-released the track on the boxed set "The Other Sides - Worldwide Gold Award Hits Volume 2".