Don't look for a Robert Goulet album in Elvis Presley's record collection. It was Goulet who once inspired Elvis to shoot out a TV set at Graceland. But, from Chuck Berry to Bobbie Gentry to Beethoven, Presley was a fan.

It was Presley's synthesis of gospel, blues, soul, country and rhythm and blues that helped construct rock and roll in the 1950s, and his record collection reflects the far-ranging tastes that followed him into the 1960s and 1970s.

Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises have cataloged the collection with 1,000 albums and singles filling up a 24-page list top-heavy with the "big voices" and "clear and distinctive" styles that were a magnet for Presley.

Elvis Presley Enterprises, which owns the rights to all things Elvis in the United States, allowed only a cursory look at the list. "We do not release archival lists in their entirety," said Graceland spokesman Todd Morgan. A partial copy of the list will be released this month as a perk for members of the Elvis Presley Collector's Club, formed by Graceland as an insider's view of the King's things.

"He used to say, 'I can appreciate the best of everything,' " says Elvis friend and disk jockey George Klein, who once asked Elvis why he liked opera stars Mario Lanza and Enrico Caruso.

There is only one opera recording (by Lanza) in the Elvis collection, which Morgan says "leans heavily to black rhythm and blues and to black and white gospel." Graceland archivists cataloged the recordings by title and last names of artists, so exact numbers in each category aren't readily available. That's because many of the groups and solo artists who began as gospel singers crossed over into pop and rhythm and blues and later returned to their gospel roots.

But Elvis friends said they did not need to see a list to know that gospel recordings were Elvis's favorites and the music that Elvis most often played for friends. "He loved close harmony," says former Memphis Mafia member Red West, who lived at Graceland. He says Elvis's favorite groups were the Harmonizing Four and Golden Gate and his favorite gospel singers included Jimmy Jones, Jake Hess (who sang with the Statesmen and later formed the Imperials) and Mahalia Jackson.

It was that close harmony that also made him a big fan of the Ink Spots and The Platters, especially love songs, says West. But Elvis's tastes were also guided by his personal views, so that the flower-power draw of The Mamas and the Papas, one of the biggest close-harmony groups of the '60s and '70s, was too liberal for his tastes, says West.

Gospel groups in Elvis's collection include The Blackwood Brothers, the Imperials, the Statesmen Quartet, the Stamps, the Harmonizing Four, the Revivalaires, the Jubil-Aires and the Oak Ridge Boys.

Soul and rhythm and blues performers are another major part of the collection, and it was a handful of them who would be at the top of Elvis's all-time favorite solo artists, Klein says. Former church choir singer Roy Hamilton, whose big baritone voice turned him into a major rhythm and blues artist who crossed over into pop in the '50s, may have been Elvis's No. 1 favorite singer. He especially loved Hamilton's version of Unchained Melody and later recorded it himself.

"In Elvis's version you can hear Roy Hamilton (his style) all the way through it," says Klein. Hamilton also influenced Jackie Wilson, Elvis's other all-time favorite, says Klein. Wilson's Night and Lonely Teardrops were two of Elvis's favorite songs.

Memphis Mafia member Marty Lacker, who lived at Graceland and later founded the city's music commission, says singer Jimmy Jones of the Harmonizing Four gospel group was another Elvis favorite. At dinner one night in the Graceland dining room, Elvis told him the people who "really influenced" him were big-band and pop singer Billy Eckstine, rhythm and blues singers Brook Benton and Arthur Prysock and gospel singer Hess.

But Elvis's tastes were always varied, says Memphis Mafia member Jerry Schilling, former head of the Memphis and Shelby County Music Commission. While he owned several Frank Sinatra records, he was an even bigger fan of Dean Martin. Schilling also remembers Hamilton as an all-time Elvis favorite, but also lists Mario Lanza, the Ink Spots, the Blackwood Brothers, the Prisonaires, The Platters, The Drifters and The Jackson 5. "We followed the Jackson 5 in Lake Tahoe once when Lisa (Lisa Marie Presley) was 6 years old. That's when she first met Michael Jackson."

Rock bands are a rarity in the collection. There were four Beatles albums and albums by Chicago and the Turtles, but West says Elvis preferred soloists. West, a songwriter, once tried to turn Elvis on to the song Green, Green Grass of Home, but Elvis wasn't interested. When Tom Jones recorded it, Elvis was returning to Memphis on a tour bus. "When we got within range of Memphis, he kept stopping every few minutes to call George Klein (at WHBQ radio) and got him to play it every few minutes from Little Rock to Memphis.'' Jones and Presley later became good friends, often visiting each other backstage after their Las Vegas shows.

There are relatively few female singers in the record collection, but Elvis's friends say his favorites included Anne Murray (for her "clear and distinctive voice"), Vicki Carr (It Must Be Him), Mahalia Jackson, Della Reese, Dionne Warwick, Bobbie Gentry, Leslie Uggams, Timi Yuro, the Andrews Sisters, the McGuire Sisters and his former backup group The Sweet Inspirations. His record collection includes a duet album between Memphis father and daughter Rufus and Carla Thomas.

Elvis, the rocker and balladeer, was not a fan of jazz , but he had an album by Duke Ellington, Newport 1958, in the collection. There was also only a small sampling of classical music - Brahms's Symphony No. 1, Beethoven's Konzert Fur Klavier Und Orchestra No. 5 and Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor.

- Michael Lollar: 529-2793