French EP's
During all of my years of collecting Elvis I have found few countries with an equally interesting
catalogue of Elvis EP's than the french one. France is probably the only country in the world
were the EP's are more common than the standard 45 single. This is absolutely true for the early
years up until the mid 60's. During this period most singles (standard 45 tours) were made for
jukebox
purposes and
the EP's (super 45 tours) was prefered by the general public. From the mid 60's the regular 45
singles became more and more common and at the end of the 60's all new releases was regular
singles. The EP backcatalogue were discontinued in 1970 and replace by the well known
"Hit parade" series with their famous hard covers that we all love because of the
great picture sleeves.
Another interesting aspect when collecting the french EP catalogue is all those different picture
sleeves that are quite uniqe for this country. Even those that has an US counterpart are often
different, with another backgound colour or a completely different layout. And if this isn't
enough some of the reissues do sometimes appear with a completetly new design. And if you
are a label
freak like me you can collect for years as most EP's if not all can even be found on the
orange RCA label (1969/1970). The prices are still affordable even though they have been
rising quite a bit the last 5 years. Happy hunting!!.
E-mail jarle_jensen@yahoo.com © Jarle Jensen 2000 |
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