www.elvis-presley.website

The ultimate site about the king of the analogue age

 

On March 26, 1968 RCA Victor released "We Call On Him" / "You'll Never Walk Alone", even though the king's previous single was still in the top 40. "You'll Never Walk Alone" entered Billboard's "Hot 100" on April 20th at number 90, but never climbed any higher and vanished into thin air after just two weeks. The supposed a-side didn't chart at all. Obviously it was planned to repeat the success of "Chrying In The Chapel", but with global sales of 500,000 copies "We Call On Him" was a staggering 3.25 million units behind the paragon. According to the RIAA the equivalent of paid streams for this sales disaster is 75,000. At least Elvis received some artistic recognition when the Academy Of Recording Arts And Sciences nominated his performance of "You'll Never Walk Alone" for a Grammy Award.

The single is not available on the streaming platforms, but Sony Music Entertainment has included the tracks on the digital version of the album "How Great Thou Art" (1967). 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, "We Call On Him" accumulates 1.4 million streams, "You'll Never Walk Alone" clocks in at 18 million. Just like in the case of the "Guitar Man" single, the streaming figures are showing a better reception of the tracks while the phyiscal sales of the time did not.

The cover photo showed the king in formal style (the picture had been made by MGM to promote the movie "Speedway"), the backside advertised the gospel albums "His Hand In Mine" (1960) and "How Great Thou Art" (1967) as well as the gospel ep "Peace In The Valley" (1957).

 

We Call On Him

Fred Karger, Ben Weisman and Sid Wayne had written the ersatz-hymn for the movie "Easy Come, Easy Go", but finally it wasn't used for the project. And so Elvis recorded it on September 11, 1967 at RCA Studio B in Nashville/Tennessee for next year's Easter release. The king did the best he could, but even he wasn't able to raise "We Call On Him" above the level of an average movie tune. CAMDEN used the track in 1971 on the budget album "You'll Never Walk Alone".

You'll Never Walk Alone

You won't be surprised to read that CAMDEN released the song on the same album. Elvis recorded "You'll Never Walk Alone" right after "We Call On Him" and delivered one of his very best performances. He seems to loose himself in the song, his voice is full of emotion and he sounds absolutely stunning. The master is a splice of takes 1 and 8. "You'll Never Walk Alone" was written by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II in 1945 for a musical called "Carousel". In the same year Frank Sinatra also recorded a version of this classic.

 

Verdict

Maybe the mediocre "We Call On Him" was put on the a-side because it was published by Gladys Music and Elvis got a quarter of the royalties. However, "You'll Never Walk Alone" is so great, I would have given this release the full rating even if the other side of the single had been blank.

 (C) RCA Victor