A Date With Elvis by The Cramps

A Date with Elvis, the Cramps' third full-length album, came out in Britain on Big Beat Records in 1986, and it swipes its title from an Elvis Presley album of 1959, which tells you exactly where Lux Interior and Poison Ivy's heads were at. Cut in the fall of 1985 at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood, with Steve McMillan and Mark Ettel engineering, it's their psychobilly voodoo at its most swaggering: rockabilly twang dragged through punk sleaze, with Nick Knox pounding away underneath and Candy Del Mar in the lineup.

It's also the only Cramps album where Ivy steps up to sing, on "Kizmiaz", and it's dedicated to Ricky Nelson. It became their most commercially successful release, charting abroad and cracking the UK top 40, though America didn't get it until Enigma issued it in 1990 with bonus tracks.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.