Heartbreak Hotel

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Lore & Background

The song was written in 1955, by Mae Boren Axton, a high school teacher with a background in musical promotion, and Tommy Durden, a Jacksonville, Florida-based singer–songwriter. The lyrics were based on a report supposedly in The Miami Herald about a man who had destroyed all his identity papers and jumped to his death from a hotel window, leaving a suicide note with the single line, "I walk a lonely street". Songfacts.com says they were unable to locate the Miami Herald story. They labeled it an urban legend. Axton and Durden give different accounts of how the song was written. Durden's account is that he had already written the song and performed it with his band the Swing Billys before he presented it to Axton. Axton's account is that Durden had written only a few lines of the song and asked her to help him finish it. She says that the report of the suicide "stunned" her, and she told Durden, "Everybody in the world has someone who cares. Let's put a Heartbreak Hotel at the end of this lonely street". The song was written within an hour, and Durden recorded it onto Axton's tape recorder. Axton approached the popular singing duo the Wilburn Brothers, and offered them the chance to record "Heartbreak Hotel". However, Doyle and Teddy Wilburn declined, describing the song as "strange and almost morbid". Axton, however, agreed to a publishing deal with Buddy Killen. With a publishing deal in place, Axton arranged through Presley's manager Colonel Tom Parker to present the song to Presley at the annual Country Music Disc Jockey Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was to be named the most promising male country star of 1955. Axton played the demo to him in his room at the Andrew Jackson Hotel on November 10, 1955. Upon hearing the demo, Presley exclaimed "Hot dog, Mae, play that again!", and listened to it ten times, memorizing the song. After signing with RCA on November 21, 1955, Presley accepted Axton's offer of a third of the royalties if he made the song his first single on his new label. Presley performed the song for the first time on January 28, 1956, in Swifton, Arkansas, and declared to the audience that it would be his first hit.

In Their Own Story

The recording session took place at 1525 McGavock Street in Nashville on January 10, 1956. Presley arrived at the studio with the song ready to record without seeking RCA's approval, and although producer Steve Sholes was not sure that it would be a success, he recorded "Heartbreak Hotel" believing that Presley knew what he was doing. Guitar player Scotty Moore later commented, "It was a larger studio than Sun's and more regimented - they called everything by a tape number. We would sit around at Sun, eat hamburgers and then somebody would say, 'Let's try something.'" Almost immediately Sholes discovered a problem while recording Presley. RCA Victor had always insisted their performers stay still as they sang so the microphone would pick up the vocals. Sholes had told Presley to stand on a painted X on the floor, telling him "Whatever you do, don't move". During the recording of "I Got a Woman", Sholes noticed that Presley's voice and guitar were not always being picked up by the microphone. Presley explained to Sholes that he had to "jump around to sing it right. It's something that just happens—just a part of the way I sing". Sholes arranged for the whole studio to be re-miked so that Presley's voice and guitar could be picked up from anywhere in the studio, and recording continued. Following a suggestion from Presley, Sholes used a hallway at the studio to get an unusual echo for the single. When Sun founder Sam Phillips first heard "Heartbreak Hotel", he remarked that it was a "morbid mess". Most others at RCA agreed, declaring "Heartbreak Hotel" a terrible choice of song. Internal memos from the time show that every one of RCA's executive corps disliked it so much that one of them insisted "We certainly can't release that one".

Reader's Guide

Released as a single on January 27, 1956, with B-side "I Was the One", "Heartbreak Hotel" topped the Billboard Top 100 for seven weeks, Cashbox's Pop singles chart for six weeks, and the Country and Western chart for seventeen weeks as well as reaching No. 3 on the R&B chart, becoming Presley's first million-seller, and one of the best-selling singles of 1956. "Heartbreak Hotel" achieved unheard of feats as it reached the top 5 of Country and Western, Pop, and Rhythm 'n' Blues charts simultaneously. It was eventually certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Presley had first performed "Heartbreak Hotel" during a live show in December 1955 during a tour of the Louisiana Hayride; it gained popularity after his appearance on Stage Show in March 1956. It became a staple of Presley's repertoire in live appearances, last performed by him on May 29, 1977, at the Civic Center in Baltimore. In 1995, "Heartbreak Hotel" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". That year it was also included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll". A rock and roll standard, "Heartbreak Hotel" has been covered by several rock and pop acts, including Willie Nelson and Leon Russell, who recorded a duet version that topped the Country charts in 1979.

Did You Know?

• The song was inspired by a newspaper article about the suicide of a lonely man who jumped from a hotel window, leaving a suicide note with the line "I walk a lonely street."