The Fascinating Stories Behind 15 Classic Elvis Songs

This month marks 45 years since rock ’n’ roll lost its king, Elvis Presley—and he’s rarely been out of the spotlight since. This summer, his legend came back to big-screen life in director Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant hit film, Elvis. But the story of Elvis would have never had such profound and enduring resonance without the excitement and emotion in his songs. “As a singer and an artist, Elvis was revolutionary,” says Jerry Schilling, a key member of the star’s tight-knit inner circle, cheekily known as the “Memphis Mafia.” “His music came from so many sources: gospel and country, R&B and rock, or even from opera. He was able to take any kind of music and make it his own.”

“His appeal is rooted in so many factors,” says Alanna Nash, who has written four books related to the star—including The Colonel (2010), about Presley’s complicated relationship with his manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker. “The depth of his artistry, the originality of his sound, as well as his looks and his sexual daring.”

The best of Elvis’ songs and performances drew on all those elements. Here are the stories behind 15 of his songs that have meant the most.

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15 Best Elvis Songs

“Heartbreak Hotel” 1956

The single that made Elvis Presley a star had the saddest possible inspiration. The exact source for the “lonely street” walked by the singer in the lyrics (by Tommy Durden) has been attributed to a variety of events in newspaper stories over the year. One reported on a suicidal man who leapt to his death from a hotel window. Another story claimed it was an ode to a criminal who was shot dead while trying to rob a liquor store. The song’s haunting lyrics—possibly inspired by such events—were matched to evocative music by Mae Boren Axton, giving the song a dramatic flair that appealed to Elvis’ manager, Tom Parker. At the time, 21-year-old Elvis had just been signed to RCA Records and was an unproven seller, so the company’s executives initially questioned if such a morbid a song would connect with his potential teen audience. But the tune’s palatable ache made fans swoon. “The way Elvis sang it captured a rebellious loneliness,” Schilling says. “It hit in the same way that James Dean and early Brando did at that time.” Four months after it was recorded in 1956, “Heartbreak Hotel” topped both Billboard’s pop and country charts. In 1985, an actual “Heartbreak Hotel” was erected across the street from Graceland, Elvis’ iconic Memphis home. Twenty-one years later, the hotel closed, meeting its own lonely end.

“Don’t Be Cruel” 1956

This tune marked the crucial beginning of a fruitful relationship between Elvis and songwriter Otis Blackwell, who went on to pen “All Shook Up” and co-write “Return to Sender.” (If that’s not enough, he also co-wrote “Great Balls of Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis and “Fever” for Peggy Lee.) Originally, “Cruel” was slated to be the B-side of Elvis’ “Hound Dog.” But because both recordings had such zest, RCA released them as a double-A-sided single, a savvy decision that made both sides No. 1 smash hits. Ultimately, “Cruel” outsold “Hound Dog,” making it Elvis’ biggest money-maker during a year in which he racked up four other chart-toppers. Though he didn’t get credit, Presley essentially produced the song by creating its distinctly buoyant, rockabilly-tinged arrangement. “It was his idea to turn the guitar around and slap it to make that little percussive sound,” says Nash. “Cruel” turned out to be the gift that kept on giving: Thirty-two years later, it became a Top 5 smash for the rock band Cheap Trick.

“Hound Dog” 1956

Elvis wasn’t the first star to have a hit with “Hound Dog.” Three years before his version of this bluesy tune appeared, Houston singer Big Mama Thornton sold over half a million copies with her witty take. Presley hadn’t heard her version when he decided to record it. He was inspired by a campy performance of the tune by an act he had seen in Vegas: Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. The song’s authors, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, loved Thornton’s version and were less impressed with what Elvis did to the tune. “It just sounded too fast, too white,” Stoller later told Rock’s Backpages. But, eventually, Stoller came around to the King’s take. “After it sold 7 or 8 million records, it started to sound better.”

“Love Me Tender” 1956

One of Presley’s most beloved ballads had roots in America’s Civil War. The tune borrowed the plaintive melody of “Aura Lee,” which had become popular during that horrible four-year period in American history. Elvis sang the song in his film debut, also called Love Me Tender, in which he played the sibling of three Confederate soldiers. Originally, the film was titled The Reno Brothers, for the name of the family in the film; but after Elvis performed the song on Ed Sullivan’s show, two months before the movie’s release, the producers knew they had to switch the title. “Tender” is one of the few hits in that era that didn’t feature Elvis’ regular band. Instead, it showcased the Ken Darby Singers, led by the man who wrote the lyrics.

“All Shook Up” 1957

Hit songs need a certain snap just as surely as soda pop. So maybe it should come as no surprise that, according to some sources, a Pepsi bottle was the inspiration for one of Presley’s most enduring singles. Songwriter Otis Blackwell was trying to repeat his success with “Don’t Be Cruel” when he hit a wall. At that moment, one of the owners of his publishing company happened to be agitating a bottle of cola, inspiring him to suggest that Blackwell write something with the title “All Shook Up.” The result was the biggest-selling single of 1957. Other reports say Elvis himself came up with the title. Either way, he wasn’t the first person to record it; it was initially cut by David Hill, who also claimed to brainstorm the title phrase. Hill, who later moved on to acting, using the name David Hess, “shook up” many a filmgoer when he starred as a rapist and serial killer in the 1972 shock-horror film Last House on the Left.

“Jailhouse Rock” 1957

One of Elvis’ most earth-shaking songs became as well known for its visuals as its music. The staging of the song in the film Jailhouse Rock, in which Elvis starred, can now be viewed as one of the greatest proto-music videos of all time. Its energetic choreography featured Presley shaking his hips with a full cast of dancing inmates. Some of the lyrics in the Leiber-Stoller song reference real criminals, including an organization of bootleggers and hijackers known as the Purple Gang. But the most daring lyric has one inmate saying to another that “You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see.” Somehow, the winking reference to prison sex sailed over the censors’ heads. “Elvis never commented on it,” Schilling says. “And I never even thought about it.” The music itself features one of the most arresting intros in rock history, based on two slamming chords and a thunderous crack of the snare drum. That combustive beginning helped the single become the first song to ever enter the U.K. charts at No. 1.

“Hard Headed Woman” 1958

The words to this song, penned by Claude Demetrius, claim that assertive women have been a “thorn in the side” of men since the days of Delilah and Jezebel. But the full lyrics, and Elvis’ delivery, exudes far more humor than spite. Small wonder it inspired the queen of rockabilly, Wanda Jackson, to sing it with pride in her own 1961 version. (Interestingly, Jackson had dated Elvis when he was on the cusp of fame.) Later, Cat Stevens wrote a song with the same title that spoke of his love of strong women. In the ’80s, Dolly Parton’s hit “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That” inverted a key line from the original by referring to “a softhearted woman” and a “hardheaded man.” Even in the original, Elvis hardly succumbed to sexism. At the end of the song, he declares that the woman with “a head like a rock,” “If she ever went away / I’d cry around the clock.”

“It’s Now or Never” 1960

The King’s time in the U.S. Army in Germany led to the creation of one of his most dramatic recordings. While stationed overseas, he kept hearing the Italian ballad “'O Sole Mio,” written in 1898 and popularized by Mario Lanza in the 1950s. The operatic piece so enchanted him, he asked his team to devise an English version. Writers Aaron Schroeder and Wally Gold tailored the song to the singer, resulting in a record that not only went No. 1, but also displayed a new level of maturity in Elvis’ delivery. “It was Elvis wanting to grow in every way,” Nash says. “He had practiced his range in Europe and he was very proud to show it off.” Years later, his widow, Priscilla Presley, noted that he loved that song more than any he ever recorded. Its co-writer, Schroeder, later penned a most unlikely follow-up: the theme to the ’70s cartoon show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

“Are You Lonesome Tonight” 1960

Expanding on the elegant style of “It’s Now or Never,” Elvis took the advice of manager Colonel Parker and recorded this aching tune from the 1920s. It probably helped that it was Parker’s wife’s favorite song. “Lonesome” was penned by the vaudevillians Lou Handman and Roy Turk, who took inspiration from the Italian opera Pagliacci and Shakespeare’s As You Like It. They created a trio of verses linked by a spoken bridge, in which Elvis outlines a love in three acts. Elvis’ take proved so resonant, it inspired no fewer than four related songs from female artists, whose recordings all answered the title question with “Yes, I’m lonesome tonight.”

“Can’t Help Falling in Love” 1961

The melody of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” grew out of the gracious tune “Plaisir d’amour,” a French chanson from the 1700s penned by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini. The American songwriter who adapted it in 1961, George Weiss, enjoyed another roaring success that same year with an adaptation of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (recorded by the Tokens), using a melody based on a traditional song from South African artist Solomon Linda. His song for Elvis, which Presley performed in his movie Blue Hawaii, proved wildly popular, holding the film’s soundtrack in the No. 1 position on the Billboard charts for 20 straight weeks, a record that wasn’t broken until Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours smashed it 16 years later. This song, which Presley sang to close out most of his concerts, was judged by the survey company OnBuy to be the most popular selection by wedding couples for their first dance.

“Return to Sender” 1962

A close look at the lyrics for “Return to Sender” reveals something seldom remembered about the U.S. Postal Service: When the letter referenced in the song is returned in the mail, it’s marked “Return to sender” and stamped “No such number, no such zone.” What’s a “zone”? It’s the precursor to a ZIP code, a system instituted in 1963, one year after the song came out. (ZIP stands for zone improvement plan.) The lyrics were inspired by an errant letter, which contained a demo, sent by the song’s writers, Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott. The music they devised returned Elvis to his raucous rock sound of the ’50s, helping shoot the single to No. 2. Thirty years after the introduction of ZIP codes, the postal service issued a commemorative stamp featuring Elvis’ image, which inspired masses of fans to send letters with fake addresses just so they could have them returned with the song’s title line.

“If I Can Dream” 1968

Elvis usually shied away from political songs. But in 1968 he whole-heartedly embraced a piece recorded two months after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in the singer’s hometown of Memphis. The words, which echo King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech, were penned by Walter Earl Brown to serve as the closing number of the TV network special Elvis. (It later became enshrined, and known in Elvis lore, as the “’68 Comeback Special.”) Schilling was with Elvis when it was announced on TV that King had been killed. “Elvis looked down with tears in his eyes and said, ‘That man always told the truth,’” Schilling recalls. “I consider Elvis to be a writer on this song. He was talking to Brown about dreaming of a better land ‘where all my brothers walk hand in hand.’ That song was him expressing how he truly felt.”

“In the Ghetto” 1969

When country artist Mac Davis wrote this socially conscious song, he first titled it “The Vicious Cycle” to underscore the point that those born in poverty face terrible odds trying to break out. Davis later told the website SongFacts that neither Colonel Parker nor RCA Records wanted it released as a single, fearing that its strong social message would turn listeners off. “But Elvis believed in it,” Davis says. “He wanted to do a song that said something.” Fans rewarded him by making “Ghetto” his first Top 10 hit in four years, extending his late-’60s comeback. It went on to be covered by singers from Sammy Davis Jr. to Dolly Parton, as well as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and even Memphis rap group Three Six Mafia.

“Suspicious Minds” 1969

Elvis’ final No. 1 was also his first to crown the charts in seven years (since “Good Luck Charm” in 1962). He wasn’t the first to cut the song, however. Its songwriter, Mark James, recorded an unsuccessful version a year before Elvis’ take. James had been enjoying great success as a writer, having penned “Hooked on a Feeling” for B.J. Thomas and co-written “Always on My Mind,” which Presley would later cut. The song, about the scourge of jealousy, boasted one of the most innovative arrangements in Elvis’ career. It features two time-signature changes, a jangling electric guitar, spiraling strings, pumping horns and a barreling backup choir. The setting of the recording may have inspired the innovation: It marked the first time Presley had recorded in his home city of Memphis since 1955.

“Burning Love” 1972

One of the hardest-rocking songs Elvis ever recorded was created during a sad period in his personal life. He was going through a divorce with his wife, Priscilla, and was initially reluctant to record such an upbeat piece. “He was recording songs like ‘Separate Ways’ then,” Schilling says. “It’s hard to do a rock ’n’ roll song when you’re heartbroken.” But Schilling and producer Felton Jarvis pushed Presley to record it. It’s good that they did because it became his last major hit, reaching No. 2 in 1972. Weirdly, the single that kept it from No. 1 was a throw-away novelty number, Chuck Berry’s live recording of the playfully naughty “My Ding-a-Ling.” Far more memorable and enduring was the refrain in Elvis’ hit—“a hunka, hunka burnin’ love”—a phrase that became associated with him ever after.

On Nov. 11, Legacy Recordings will release Elvis on Tour, a six-CD, 1-BluRay box set that will contain music from rehearsals for his 1972 North American tour as well as four shows from that event.

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