Payments to Presley for each film amounted to between $225,000 to $1,000,000 up front, often half the budget for production, with a 50% share of the profits.[5] These movies were being shot in sometimes as little as three weeks, with the complete scoring and recording of the soundtrack albums taking no more than two weeks.[5] It fell to Freddy Bienstock, the assistant of Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, to ensure that the soundtrack songs fit into the profit equation with the publishing controlled by Elvis Presley Music or Gladys Music, the Hill and Range Publishing companies owned by Presley and Parker. As a result, successful writers such as Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott, and Don Robertson lost interest in adhering to the needs of the grind.[5] It was interlocking self-promotion, causing one MGM employee to remark that the movies "didn't need titles. They could be numbered. They would still sell".[5]
Blackwell and Scott in fact submitted a candidate for the title track, "I'm a Roustabout" recorded on March 3, only to find it substituted by a song from a different team of writers.[6] This recording was eventually released by RCA on the 2003 compilation 2nd to None.[7]
Presley and his coterie of top session musicians gamely plowed through all of this, and eleven songs were recorded for the twenty-minute soundtrack LP. Four songs from this album appeared on the 1995 soundtrack compilation, The Essential 60s Masters II: "Roustabout", "Little Egypt", "Poison Ivy League", and "There's a Brand New Day on the Horizon".[8]
^ ab"Pop Albums". Elvis Presley: Official Site of the King of Rock 'n' Roll. Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc. 2013. Archived from the original on October 26, 2014. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
^"Searchable database". RIAA. Recording Industry Association of America. 2013. Retrieved May 21, 2013. Note: Enter search for "Roustabout"
^ abcdJorgensen, Ernst. Elvis Presley A Life in Music: The Complete Recording Sessions. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998; p. 198.
