Once every blue moon, a career-defining, best-selling hit falls into place in a matter of minutes, changing the life of the artist, the songwriter(s), and the listeners who relate to the track. And in 1960, a blue moon must have been hanging over Elvis Presley, a quick-working songwriting team, and a young, incarcerated Barry White, with the release of Presley’s hit song, inspired by an Italian ballad, “It’s Now Or Never”.
“It’s Now Or Never” was a single-only release with “A Mess Of Blues” as its United States B-side and “Make Me Know It” as its United Kingdom B-side. According to rock ‘n’ roll legend, Presley was stationed in Germany when he heard Tony Martin’s 1949 track, “There’s No Tomorrow”. Martin’s track was based on the Italian art song, “‘O sole mio”, by Eduardo di Capua. Presley told his music publisher he wanted to write a song with a similar melody, and the publisher found Wally Gold and Aaron Schroeder.
Gold and Schroeder (with the help of Di Capua) wrote “It’s Now Or Never” in under half an hour. And amazingly, it turned into Presley’s biggest international hit. “It’s Now Or Never” topped the charts in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and Ireland, among many other countries. But one could argue that the song had its biggest impact in the juvenile detention center cell of Barry White.
How Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now Or Never” Saved Barry White’s Life
When deep-voiced crooner Barry White was a young teenager, he was arrested for stealing $30,000 worth of Cadillac tires. He spent four months in a juvenile detention facility, during which time he had a life-changing moment of clarity thanks to Elvis Presley’s 1960 hit, “It’s Now Or Never”, which was still a recent hit at the time of White’s arrest. In his memoir Love Unlimited, White recalls hearing the song floating into his cell from another inmate’s bunk down the hall. He was two months into his sentence.
“I’d heard [the song] before, I don’t know, twenty-five, thirty times,” White wrote. “But it never hit me like it did that night. It was, of all people, Elvis Presley! The song? ‘It’s Now Or Never’. It became my personal message, meant only for me. ‘Stop wasting your time, Barry,’ it said. ‘When you get out, you better change your ways. It’s now or never.’ I sat up in my cell bed, and right then and there took an oath that I would do just that—change my life.”
White said he “held onto that feeling” for the next three months until he had his court hearing. Miraculously, the judge let him go with a year-long probation and no more time served. White wrote, “I knew I was never going back in, that the life I’d known on the street, all of it was history. I was going to change everything, because the night before I’d heard the Voice and the Voice had heard me!”
“The Voice” that White refers to is a semi-spiritual guiding force that he felt directed him through his life. And for one brief moment in the spring of 1960, that disembodied voice sounded an awful lot like Elvis Presley.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images