{"id":433753,"date":"2026-01-28T00:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/433753\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T00:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:35:10","slug":"70-years-ago-today-elvis-presley-released-an-influential-rock-track-that-one-songwriter-called-the-silliest-thing-i-ever-heard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/433753\/","title":{"rendered":"70 Years Ago Today, Elvis Presley Released an Influential Rock Track That One Songwriter Called \u201cthe Silliest Thing I Ever Heard\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a tale as old as time in the music industry: one man\u2019s \u201csilly song\u201d is another man\u2019s \u201crock \u2018n\u2019 roll revelation.\u201d And for Elvis Presley, Glen Reeves, and the future members of The Beatles in the late 1950s, the silly song in question was Presley\u2019s hit single, \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d<\/a>. Ironically, the song itself came from a story that was anything but silly.<\/p>\n

Tommy Durden first came up with the idea for \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d, which he would co-write with Mae Boren Axton<\/a>, after seeing a newspaper article about a man committing suicide and leaving a note that read, \u201cI walk a lonely street.\u201d Durden wanted to expand on this idea in the style of the blues. Axton contributed the idea of the Heartbreak Hotel existing somewhere on Lonely Street.<\/p>\n

The rest of the song wrote itself\u2014but not before a friend of Durden and Axton\u2019s offered his two cents. According to Albert Goldman\u2019s Elvis<\/a>, fellow songwriter Glen Reeves visited Durden and Axton mid-writing session. Axton told Reeves their idea, to which he said the song \u201cwas the silliest thing I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d Reeves left, and the two continued writing, neither one having any idea of the impact their song would make on rock \u2018n\u2019 roll forever.<\/p>\n

Elvis Presley\u2019s \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d Was a Massive Influence for Many Rock \u2018n\u2019 Rollers<\/p>\n

Elvis Presley released \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d on January 27, 1956. The song was his first single on his new record label, RCA Victor, and songwriters Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden had their fingers crossed for a hit. And they certainly got their wish. \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100 and the Country and Western charts. The song also peaked at No. 5 on the Rhythm & Blues Records, making it a triple crossover success.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just the States that ate up \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d. Across the pond, young lads from Liverpool were listening to the warbly croon of the American rock \u2018n\u2019 roller\u2019s voice with stars in their eyes. John Lennon and George Harrison, founding members of The Beatles, would later cite listening to \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d<\/a> for the first time as one of the more revelatory moments in their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end,\u201d Lennon later recalled. \u201cWe\u2019d never heard American voices singing like that. They\u2019d always sung like Sinatra or enunciated very well. Suddenly, there\u2019s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy background going on. We didn\u2019t know what the hell Presley was singing about. To us, it just sounded like a noise that was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

This seed of inspiration blossomed into one of the biggest, most influential rock \u2018n\u2019 roll bands of all time\u2014quite the impressive feat for a song that was written off as \u201csilly\u201d in its first few hours of existence.<\/p>\n

Photo by Bettmann\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a tale as old as time in the music industry: one man\u2019s \u201csilly song\u201d is another man\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[15762,88,216,2156],"class_list":{"0":"post-433753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-elvis-presley","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}