(Credits: Far Out / NASA / Uwe Conrad)
Fri 17 October 2025 20:30, UK
If there was any year in cultural history that embodied being on the precipice of something big, it might just be 1961. The swinging decade was underway, but no one knew what prolific heights it would go on to hit.
The rest of that era would be remembered as the time when rock and roll really took control, with the swathe of British invasion bands – along with their odd American counterpart, not to be dismissed – storming the charts and steering the ship towards a legacy roundly celebrated for being the greatest to ever grace the airwaves. But, to reiterate, that was still all in the pipeline back in 1961, because at that time, ‘The King’ was still reigning strong atop the throne.Â
In many ways, it was very easy for Elvis Presley to disregard all the noise and the mania that ensued when the new kids on the ‘60s block arrived shortly in the years that followed, because he knew absolutely that every single one of them had a hero worship over his style, his suaveness, and his songs that made him untouchable. With just one swivel of his hips, he could make them all melt – and with the decade starting out with him still at the top of the tree, nothing could ever skew his sights.
As such, in the case of the charts of 1961 – and, indeed, for the rest of time, what with him being one of the most commercially decorated artists to ever live – Presley didn’t have much to worry about. Comfortably languishing at the top of the charts in the UK for a whole six weeks in March and April of that year with his single ‘Wooden Heart’, you know that ‘The King’ was in his untouchable prime because this was just one in a long line of hit songs. The length of success wasn’t all that extraordinary in his eyes; it had just come to be expected.Â
What made ‘Wooden Heart’ so popular in 1961?
In displaying how the whims of record companies work, however, ‘Wooden Heart’ was definitely not a transatlantic hit. It was only released as an album track in the United States, as part of the GI Blues record in 1960, but the Brits clearly saw much more potential – and they were right. Scoring six weeks at the top, it became the song with the longest stint at number one over the whole course of 1961. The Americans eventually followed suit with a single release in 1964, but that was almost too little, too late.
Yet there was perhaps precedent in the British realising that the single would perform well upon their shores, given the country’s trope of traditionalism. With ‘Wooden Heart’ being based on a German classic folk song named ‘Muss Ich denn’, Presley’s famous crooning vocal paired with a dose of upmarket, old-fashioned charm ironically made all those once stiffened, wooden hearts turn into a pile of mush as soon as he uttered those first swooning notes.
Combining the forces of traditional folk from across the European sea with the undisputed ‘King’ of the world’s rock and roll imagination was clearly enough to sway the hearts and minds of those in the UK, and ultimately get shifting the numbers to boost Presley up to the top of the charts, let alone keep him there for six weeks. It was something they had done so many times before, but seemed particularly special as we retrospectively realise that the decade was about to swing in a whole different direction.
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