Elvis - The Stories and Songwriters Behind the Songs: Tomorrow is a Long Time - Bob Dylan

Elvis recorded Bob Dylan's Tomorrow is a Long Time in May 26th 1966 at Nashville Studio B during the How Great thou Art sessions. Robert Mathew Walker - In Elvis - A Study in Music 1979 says " we enter a new and completely different world. This was the first song by Bob Dylan that Presley recorded and it gives a tantalising glimpse of what might have been had he recorded an album of Dylan compositions instead of being side-tracked into a succession of formula films. It's a superb performance maintained over 5 and half minutes. It is softly insistent yet civilised and the half-lights of the backing contribute to Presley's restrained interpretation. This gradually exerts a hypnotic fascination. But this masterly performance was used (as a bonus song) to fill up an album of Presley's recently completed film songs - Spinout / California Holiday. It sticks out like a Mozart Quartet discovered beneath a pile of Australian drinking songs!"

Dylan once said that Presley's cover of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time" was "the one recording I treasure the most."Ernst Jorgensen said (in an interview with Ken Sharp - http://www.elvisinfonet.com/interview_ernst_kensharp.html )

" Dylan's song was done in a couple of takes." "Presley got into the song via Charlie McCoy, who had previously participated in the Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde sessions. McCoy played the album Odetta Sings Dylan before an Elvis session, and Presley "had become taken with 'Tomorrow Is A Long Time'."

Jerry Schilling
" I was really into Peter, Paul & Mary. They were really controversial down south, because they were speaking of freedom and all that type of stuff in their songs. While we were doing the movies, right in the era of '65, '66, '67, I brought Elvis this Peter, Paul & Mary album. I thought he might like it.

Early in the morning before going into the studio, while we were having breakfast, Elvis would put this album on. It had 'Leaving On A Jet Plane' and 'If I Had A Hammer'. Elvis really liked 'Leaving On A Jet Plane'. We played it for a month or so. He wound up recording some of those songs. I think half of the songs on that album were by Dylan. I don't know at that time if he thought he was recording Peter, Paul & Mary or Bob Dylan.....

Elvis would also listen to Odetta. I was in college right before I went to work for him. I was hanging out at this folk place, The Bitter Lemon [was] owned by this really weird-looking guy who taught pottery, John McIntire, who ironically made the statue in the meditation gardens overlooking Elvis' grave site. I was into Odetta, because my friend was introducing me to all of this folk music."
http://www.elvisinfonet.com/interview_jerryschilling.html

Elvis's version resembles more Odetta's blues version rather than Dylan's folksy version.