After his enthusiasm for his gospel album How Great Thou Art made in the previous month in Nashville, the soundtrack returned Presley to the records for movies.[4]
Content
Presley had usually insisted on working in the comfortable environment of a regular recording studio, and had avoided the large movie studio sound stages, but MGM executives with an eye on budgets insisted on moving the soundtrack recordings after the first night to just such a sound stage.[5] A frustrated Elvis dutifully went along, but the final straw was having to sing "Old MacDonald," Presley storming out of the session in a huff after finishing a very short master recording of "Long Legged Girl (with the Short Dress On)."[5] That song would be issued as a single in late April, prior to the film's premiere, and would peak at an anemic number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Nine songs were recorded for the film, coming in at a brief 17:11 and far too short for a normal LP. To bring up the running time, three tracks recorded at the "lost album" sessions of May 1963, were added to push the album over the twenty-minute mark.[6] Two had already been issued as b-sides to singles, "Never Ending", the flipside to a four-year-old album track "Such a Night", and "Blue River" on the back of an eight-year-old vault track, "Tell Me Why."[7] "It Won't Be Long" was recorded for the film but was not used.
Reissues
In 2004 Double Trouble was reissued on the Follow That Dream label in a special edition that contained the original album tracks along with a selection of alternate takes.[8]
