Blue Velvet is a retitled reissue of
Bobby Vinton's album
Blue on Blue, originally released earlier in 1963. Sporting a theme inspired by
Vinton's hit "Blue on Blue," every song on the album has the word "blue" in its title. The sobbing balladeer style heard later on hits like "Mr. Lonely" hadn't quite developed at this stage, so the songs are quite diverse. A few rockers find
Vinton copping some of
Bobby Vee's vocal mannerisms, and the finger-snapping renditions of pop standards like "Blue Skies" and "My Blue Heaven" are pretty neat but completely unlike his later lushly orchestrated ballads.
Vinton covers fairly recent hits like
Don Gibson's "Blue Blue Day" and
the Fleetwoods' "Mr. Blue," but most of the songs were already oldies in 1963. The title of the album was changed to
Blue Velvet to promote the "Blue Velvet" single, which became
Vinton's second number one hit a few months after the album was first released.