{"id":573136,"date":"2026-04-09T04:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/573136\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T04:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T04:06:10","slug":"elvis-presleys-biggest-hit-was-written-in-20-minutes-and-inspired-barry-white-to-change-his-life-in-juvie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/573136\/","title":{"rendered":"Elvis Presley\u2019s Biggest Hit Was Written in 20 Minutes and Inspired Barry White to Change His Life in Juvie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s hit song, inspired by an Italian ballad, \u201cIt\u2019s Now Or Never\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Now Or Never\u201d was a single-only release with \u201cA Mess Of Blues\u201d as its United States B-side and \u201cMake Me Know It\u201d as its United Kingdom B-side. According to rock \u2018n\u2019 roll legend, Presley was stationed in Germany when he heard Tony Martin\u2019s 1949 track, \u201cThere\u2019s No Tomorrow\u201d. Martin\u2019s track was based on the Italian art song, \u201c\u2018O sole mio\u201d<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Gold and Schroeder (with the help of Di Capua) wrote \u201cIt\u2019s Now Or Never\u201d in under half an hour. And amazingly, it turned into Presley\u2019s biggest international hit. \u201cIt\u2019s Now Or Never\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

How Elvis Presley\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Now Or Never\u201d Saved Barry White\u2019s Life<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 1960 hit, \u201cIt\u2019s Now Or Never\u201d, which was still a recent hit at the time of White\u2019s arrest. In his memoir Love Unlimited<\/a>, White recalls hearing the song floating into his cell from another inmate\u2019s bunk down the hall. He was two months into his sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d heard [the song] before, I don\u2019t know, twenty-five, thirty times,\u201d White wrote. \u201cBut it never hit me like it did that night. It was, of all people, Elvis Presley! The song? \u2018It\u2019s Now Or Never\u2019. It became my personal message, meant only for me. \u2018Stop wasting your time, Barry,\u2019 it said. \u2018When you get out, you better change your ways. It\u2019s now or never.\u2019 I sat up in my cell bed, and right then and there took an oath that I would do just that\u2014change my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

White said he \u201cheld onto that feeling\u201d 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, \u201cI knew I was never going back in, that the life I\u2019d known on the street, all of it was history. I was going to change everything, because the night before I\u2019d heard the Voice and the Voice had heard me!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Voice\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once every blue moon, a career-defining, best-selling hit falls into place in a matter of minutes, changing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[175693,15762,88,216,2156],"class_list":{"0":"post-573136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-barry-white","9":"tag-elvis-presley","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-rock-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573136","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=573136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}