Speedway is the seventeenth soundtrack album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released by RCA Victor in mono and stereo, LPM/LSP 3989, in mid 1968. It serves as the soundtrack album for the 1968 film Speedway starring Presley. Recording sessions took place at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Hollywood, California, on June 20 and 21, 1967. It peaked at number 82 on the Billboard 200. Speedway took over the new low for chart position and album sales by Presley, shifting units numbered in five figures, jeopardizing his recording career. Much to his relief, it killed the soundtrack formula, this being the final Presley dramatic feature film to have a full soundtrack album. His last five movies of the decade — Stay Away, Joe, Live A Little, Love A Little, Charro!, The Trouble with Girls, and Change of Habit — concentrated on Presley the actor, not Presley the singer, with minimal song requirements. It is also the last Presley album to be released in both stereo and mono editions as mono was being phased out by the industry, thus making the rare mono pressing of Speedway a sought-after item among collectors
Background
By June 1967, while Presley was toiling at the sessions for this soundtrack, the recent release of the magnum opus by The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had the music industry in thrall. The Velvet Underground & Nico would build its influence through the decades, and Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane, the debut album by The Doors, and I Never Loved A Man the Way I Love You by Aretha Franklin were all top-selling albums. The Monterey Pop Festival had taken place just the past weekend some 300 miles up the California coast from where Presley was working. He was probably aware of some of the changes being wrought in popular music around him, but in his own increasingly isolated world he was most aware that there were more soundtrack songs to record.
Content
Eight tracks for Speedway were recorded at the sessions, with "Suppose", the only song that held interest for Elvis, dropped from the movie. Two tracks were pulled for a single, "Your Time Hasn't Come Yet Baby" with "Let Yourself Go" on its flipside, and both sides made the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100 but bombed sales-wise. "There Ain't Nothing Like A Song," rejected from the soundtrack for Spinout, was one of two songs that feature the lead vocals of Nancy Sinatra, here in duet with Presley. All her vocals, and her "Your Groovy Self," the only time a track without Elvis featured on any of his releases, were recorded at a separate session on June 26, produced by Lee Hazlewood. Three leftover tracks, including one from the May 1963 "lost album" sessions, were unearthed to round out the album.
Reissues
Three songs from this album appear on : the two sides of the single and the title track. In 2016 Speedway was reissued on the Follow That Dream label in a special 2-disc edition that contained the original album tracks along with numerous alternate takes.
