On FECC,I posted an article about a bunch of lp's that were pressed in Sweden around 1977-81. Most of my text was based on the excellent FTD book "How RCE brought Elvis to Europe". Along the years, I have bought many of them and that collecting them all still an ongoing project of mine.
Continuing on the same Nordic theme,this time I decided to post about official Elvis lp releases from another Nordic country, Finland. One of the reasons is that the list is very short and I believe my collection is complete
Since the 1950's, Elvis records were imported to Finland mainly from Germany. In some random cases, also pressings from other European countries were imported. Beginning in the 1970's, UK pressings started to be imported as well,and after Elvis's death, Camden and International pressing started to dominate the record store shelves, which I seemed to be the case in rest of Europe too. So there was no shortage of Elvis lp's, and the record industry did not see a point in making any Finnish pressings. But luckily for a collector,there were some exceptions.
Here is a list of Elvis lp's that were pressed in Finland, in chronological order:)
Elvis Gospels, NS 4115 (1980)
Made by K-Tel in cooperation with Ab Discophon Oy (RCA's representative in Finland).
Issued on the budget K-Tel label. A beautiful sleeve artwork on this one. Like title suggests,contains a good,cohesive track list with songs from the three all-gospel albums that Elvis recorded in his lifetime plus a couple of additional inspirational tracks. The back sleeve has a text about the Finnish sleeve designer plus the Finnish printing company that printed the record.
Some (if not all) copies came with a beautiful large poster with the same 1961(?) b/w image as on the sleeve,and hype sticker in Finnish on the sleeve mentioning the poster. Complete with both the hype sticker and a poster, I would say that this lp is quite rare, and without them much easier to find.
This lp has been also issued in one of the Benelux countries if I remember correctly. I wonder if anyone knows whether those came with a poster as well?
Guitar Man, PL 13917 (1981)
Made by Ab Discophon Oy.
This is the usual orange label RCA Victor Guitar Man design that we all know of,almost a duplicate of a UK pressing. But the back of the sleeve says it was printed in Finland and label mentions Helsinki,Finland.
Love Songs, NE-1062 (1981?)
Made by K-Tel in cooperation with Ab Discophon Oy.
Again, a K-Tel release, with text on the back of the sleeve with contact details of K-Tel in Finland. As this same title was also released in the UK, this seemed to be a successful release with many copies printed and easily found still today. Most copies are pretty beaten up which tells that "love songs" of Elvis sure had an appeal back then and this lp was spun quite a bit
Movie Songs, EM-7030 (1982)
Made by K-Tel in cooperation with Ab Discophon Oy.
This is a unique release for Finland only,again in K-Tel label. In my opinion,the sleeve is very cool and has many pics from the 1968-69 era. Ironically,not containing even one movie photo!
The sleeve has hype texts in Finnish and again the back of the sleeve says it was made Finland.
Sentimental, SIN-1057 (1989)
Made by Euros in cooperation with Ab Discophon Oy.
This one was released on more obscure record label,but clearly was done in cooperation with BMG. Contains pretty nice 70's track listing and a nice back sleeve that is using the same "letter" type of layout that 1976 lp "From Elvis Presley Boulevard" was using. That would suggest that there was some fan input when designing this one. A nice one and not that hard to find,either.
I checked my record collection, and it isn't there. I'm pretty sure I sold it after the DF release came out when i got rid of some of my other green labels as well. I did that because I was able to replace them with older US pressings from the 60's via then new thing called Ebay.
