“Wake Up To Music” (1956)
By Ger Rijff / Bob Pakes
In 1956 RCA Germany released the ultra rare Wake Up To Music (47-6712).
I once had a copy and did a little story about it for The Man And His Music magazine.
A while later I featured this release on an Elvis site. Another collector responded by posting an unknown white label promo from the USA.
But the story doesn’t end here.
Not long ago yet another promo was discovered, this time from Canada.
And shortly after we published this article right here on Echoes, Chris Giles responded by mentioning that a regular commercial USA pressing also existed.
Chris was so kind to scan his copies of this mega rare title for us, and we are proud to present the most complete collection for the first time anywere!
‘Wake Up To Music’: echoes of years gone by.
47-6712
Here we have the single from Germany.
It included a picture sleeve.
47-6712
The single from the USA.
DJ-22
The promo EP from the USA.
It has the Wake Up single on one side (47-6712), and another RCA release (47-6719) on the other.
47-6712
The promo single from Canada.
Wake To Music Month
While going through some vintage Billboard magazines from November 1956, these interesting fullpage articles turned up.
The Wake To Music campaign was (according to Billboard) a “Huge Success”.
It’s goal apparently was to sell radio announcements to sponsors.
Even though Elvis was the hottest thing around by the end of ’56, his face can not be seen in these two articles. This raises the thought that RCA Victor was not involved in the campaign from the start.
In the article from the 24th of November, in the special NEWS FLASH section (also to the right —>), we can read that RCA Victor has now also jumped the Wake Up bandwagon calling their promotion Wake Up To Music (adding the word ‘Up’).
The Elvis-related Wake Up To Music single and EP pressings from RCA in the USA, Germany and Canada clearly were never meant to be regular commercial releases. They were only pressed in order to be sent to DJ’s. This would further explain their extreme rareness.
Below to the left we have the fullpage article from November 17, 1956.
And to the right the article from November 24, 1956.
The artwork for the German release was by Will Eisner, comic book illustrator supreme!
His most famous strip character was named ‘The Spirit’. To this day his work, dating back to the 40’s and 50’s, is still in print.
The Steve Allen photo is copyrighted by A. Wertheimer.
I had to dis-allow the Comments for this article since a ton of Spam entered the Echoes-site daily through here.
But if you would like to leave a message, please use Echoes’ email-address at the bottom of this page, and I will add your Comment to this article.
Thanks!
Comments are closed.
Very interesting to see another mega rare record appearing.
It doesn’t end there !! I have the German Pic Sleeve as shown above, also the Canadian 45 as shown BUT this 45 & EP were also Issued in the USA on the Regular Blk Lbl Dog on Top – these have never ever been mentioned in any USA Discography to my knowledge – I will be sending pics to Ger.
Sounds good Chris.
Mucho gracias mister Giles, for the great scans received from you this afternoon!
Bob will expand this topic with the new images a.s.a.p. Bob, on the double!
Great comeback my friend.
Bruno
Thanks Bruno. Good to see you made it to this place!
And you know me: all my comebacks and departures come with
a bang!
Looks great Ger & Bob, at last a site with megacool items, records and pictures.
I wished I had the German release of this single.
Nice to see all these pieces of Elvis’ history here.
Great to see you back on the net, Ger!! :-))
Old soldiers never die, Jeroen!
And to you all, wanting rare old records to be featured in Echoes: we’re working
on it, that’s a promise. Difference will be we don’t just throw them all together in
one section like we did in the past on other sites. These days we want it to be
different. For example the Japanese items (on line soon as possible) start at the
beginning (end of ’55) and we will slowely build it up. Of course, with the help
from the great Chris Giles. He’s got a lot!
Doing Echoes, daily, is very much time consuming. On top of that, Bob has got a
full time job and a family life to deal with.
So true Ger! :-) Enjoying the hell out of this site. It’s like a new online Ger Rijff book ;-)
Take care, hope to talk to you soon.
Excellent to have all the labels together in one topic! It’s a first, thanks of course
to Chris who supplied the new scans. His help on our upcoming Japanese Victor
releases topic (sometime this week we hope) is not to be underestimated
either! It’ll be a long running series displaying many goodies. Some for the first
time ever. While others are presented in excellent to perfect quality. It’s gonna be
a feast for the eyes. Not your -run of the mill- turning the record boxes upside down,
and have them scattered all over the topic pages.
Hi Ger,
Excellent articles, good to have you back.
From all your asian fans!
Sis
Hello Ger
We didn’t meet for quite some time. It’s good to know you’re doing great. We will always cherish the good times we had together and the nice books you published over the years. Great to have you on the net. We published your address on our website yesterday. Hope you will have lots of viewers.
The best from Belgium to Holland.
HV – Elvis Presley Society.
Nice to hear from you Hubert. The years fly by … don’t they?!
Now for something completely different: Echoes is a two men partnership between
Bob and me. If it wasn’t for his hard work, day in, day out, there would be no
Echoes Of The Past. He’s the brains behind Hollywood Revisited and Everything 50s,
and putting our material up in a real kool matter. He’s an Ace. Half of ALL the credits
should be addressed to him. Cheers Bob!
Looking forward for us to kick ass again next week. We’re both suffering from
a bit of a burn out at the moment… We need to upload our batteries and get back
in shape. It’s been a killing two weeks since we went online! Bare with us, okay?!
Well Bob and Ger keep up the good work … the Elvis world is glad to enjoy both of your knowledge … I’m keeping my eyes on you two!