On this day in 1956, just two days after his twenty-first birthday, Elvis Presley recorded his first million-seller for RCA Records. Lyrically dark and drenched in echo, Heartbreak Hotel was both a departure from his earlier Sun cuts and unlike anything in the Pop charts at the time. Inspired by a newspaper article reporting the suicide of a lonely man who jumped to his death from a hotel window, the song was written by Tommy Durden and Mae Boren Axton. Dubbed a morbid mess by Presleys erstwhile mentor Sam Phillips, RCAs New York office urged producer Steve Sholes to return to Nashville and have the Hillbilly Cat cut something more chart-worthy. Fortunately both he and Presley understood the magic of what theyd created.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 21:25:09 +0000
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