Earlier in this thread, I have listed the Finnish lp discography. Finland is part of the Nordic countries and I thought I could also write down something about pressings from another Nordic country - Sweden. I wrote about the Swedish lp's already in the old forum but since that is long gone now, I will try to re-write the story here.
Since then, I've also been able to finally complete my collection of these lp's (yippee!) so now I consider myself to be fully eligble to write this post
The Swedish Elvis lp's 1977-80
As we know, in the 1977 there was a sudden demand for Elvis lp's, they started to sell like hot cakes. To meet the demand in the northern Europe, Swedish plant in Solna that was part of the RCA representative Grammofon AB Electra was put to the task to press some selected titles from Elvis catalogue.In hindsight, they probably picked the titles based on what had originally sold the most.
These reissues were pressed probably multiple times in 1977-80, with various label variations.
The 16 titles pressed in Sweden:
Burning Love And Hits From His Movies
Elvis' Golden Records Volume 1
Elvis' Gold Records Volume 2
G.I. Blues
Blue Hawaii
Elvis' Golden Records Volume 3
Elvis' Gold Records Volume 4
Elvis - NBC-TV Special. No mention of Grammophone or Sweden on the back sleeve but there is the tiny logo of the printing company.
Pure Gold Take Off! -cover
Blue Christmas. Ads of 4 other Swedish reissues pkus Sun Collection and Forever vol. 1, as well as text in Swedish on the back.
Elvis In Hollywood. "Stern Music " -cover.
Welcome To My World
Moody Blue. Reddish hype "sticker" printed on the front sleeve
Elvis In Concert
Elvis Forever Volume 2. Manufactured in 1980. Text in Swedish on the inside of the gatefold sleeve.
The Las Vegas Years. Manufactured in 1980. Sweden-only release. Hype "sticker" printed on the sleeve with Swedish text. Same content as record 6 on the Elvis Aron Presley box set, liner notes in English.
My collection:
How to identify them
These pressings have a tiny logo of the Swedish printing company on the back sleeve, usually on the lower right corner. (See the image below)
Most of the sleeves also had a text in the bottom of the back sleeve stating that the record was printed in Sweden by Grammophon (see the image below), although a at least Gold Records 2 did not have ny indication of Grammophon or Sweden on the back sleeve. That sleeve was printed in Germany
However, all lp's had text about Grammophon on the labels. The labels came in few different RCA Victor orange and green RCA International label variations, see the samples of labels below (page from the book How RCA Brought Elvis To Europe)..
The variations consisted of having either 2, 3 or 4 lines of copyright text eithrr on top or bottom of the label, or the text being in either black or white. But note that In all of these cases, the
text always mentions Grammofon and Sweden. As you can see below, also black label was used at least once (with Forever vol. 2)
One nice thing about these pressings is that with the exception The Las Vegas Years, they all came with inner sleeves using the US "Elvis' Great LP Catalog" inner sleeve design of 1977, although the paper that was used for them was a bit thicker. The Las Vegas Years used a Grammophon AB Electra custom inner sleeve with Swedish releases by Swedish artists.
Rarity
Based on my experiences, majority of these pressings are quite easy to find, at least in the Nordic area as well as e.g. in Discogs. It is my gut feeling that Moody Blue and In Concert are the most common, I seem to stumble on them quite often. Perhaps those two were produced in larger numbers in 1977 than the others as they were the most recently released titles then.
NBC TV Special has been the toughest to find by far while the titles in the Gold/Golden Records series,the two soundtracks and Welcome To My World come as a close second.
Out of all these,I would say that The Las Vegas Years is the most unique one with absolutely stunning cover. This is not super rare either,so warmly recommended if yiu come across a copy.
Further reading:
An excellent FTD book "How RCA brought Elvis to Europe" by Sigbjorn Stabursvik and Hans Otto Engvold has chapter dedicated to the Swedish Elvis lp's, listing label variations.
A good blog posting on the subject can be found here:
http://www.elvistodayblog.com/2021/05/t ... s.html?m=1
Some info on Grammofon AB Elektra in Discogs:
https://www.discogs.com/label/80233-Gra ... abBDHo5LqX
Wikipedia page (in Swedish) on Grammofon AB Elektra:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammofon_AB_Electra
Wikipedia page (in German) on Grammofon AB Elektra:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammofon_AB_Electra
Wow, 52 Elvis' Christmas Albums in your collection? I have got quite a few but I do not think I come close to 52 