Elvis Presley – Heartbreak Hotel

One of the most perfect Rock and Roll songs ever. There are many different eras of Elvis. This is not the jumpsuit Elvis or even the great comeback Elvis. This is the mid-fifties Elvis, who I think is untouchable. 

This 1955 song found Elvis Presley right on the cusp. He’d already cut a few sides for Sun that shaped hillbilly music into something sharp and unruly, but this was his first single for RCA. The stakes were high, and the sound? Even higher. Everything about Heartbreak Hotel is drenched in echo. Not just the vocals, which slap back like they’re ricocheting off the walls, but the very mood of it.

Chet Atkins and Scotty Moore laid down little guitar stabs. Floyd Cramer’s piano combines with the emptiness. RCA execs weren’t sure about it. They wanted something upbeat. Something with bounce. But the public knew better, as they usually do.  The song was written by Hoyt Axton’s mother, Mae Boren Axton, who wrote the music, and a steel guitar player from Nashville named Tommy Durden wrote the lyrics. He said he was inspired by a newspaper article about a man who killed himself at a hotel and left a note that stated, “I walk a lonely street.” 

The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100 and the Country charts and #2 in the UK Charts. It also reached #10 in the UK in 1971. The first RCA sessions were held on January 10, 1956, at their Nashville studios ( The Methodist Television, Radio and TV Studios, 1525 McGavock Street, Nashville), and that’s where Elvis recorded this song. His backing musicians were his mainstays, Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass, D.J. Fontana on drums, Floyd Cramer on piano, and Chet Atkins on acoustic guitar.

Heartbreak Hotel

Well, since my baby left me
Well, I found a new place to dwell
Well, it’s down at the end of Lonely Street
At Heartbreak Hotel
Where I’ll be–where I get so lonely, baby
Well, I’m so lonely
I get so lonely, I could die

Although it’s always crowded
You still can find some room
For broken-hearted lovers
To cry there in the gloom
And be so, where they’ll be so lonely, baby
Well, they’re so lonely
They’ll be so lonely, they could die

Well, the bellhop’s tears keep flowin’
And the desk clerk’s dressed in black
Well, they’ve been so long on Lonely Street
Well, they’ll never, they’ll never get back
And they’ll be so, where they’ll be so lonely, baby
Well, they’re so lonely
They’ll be so lonely, they could die

Well now, if your baby leaves you
And you have a sad tale to tell
Just take a walk down Lonely Street
To Heartbreak Hotel
And you will be, you will be, you will be lonely, baby
You’ll be so lonely
You’ll be so lonely, you could die

Well, though it’s always crowded
You still can find some room
For broken-hearted lovers
To cry there in the gloom
And they’ll be so, they’ll be so lonely, baby
They’ll be so lonely
They’ll be so lonely, they could die

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

37 thoughts on “Elvis Presley – Heartbreak Hotel”

  2. Pingback: Elvis Presley – Heartbreak Hotel – MobsterTiger

      1. ((There’s still a vacancy in my tiny little mind about that bar/hotel song Max😑. At least not finding that slippery song ain’t keeping me up at night.💤))

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      2. Well…one good thing…we have X’d out a few songs that it’s not….I guess that is a beginning!
        Well it is me lol…no but I have faith…we will find it.

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  6. This was the real Elvis; the one who was censored on Ed Sullivan because his hips were too expressive. No white jumpsuits with a wide belt to hide his paunch, no Las Vegas glitz, just raw music and emotion.

    Sometimes all of that echo is used to hide a weak voice. In this case, it’s to set an atmosphere. And that band! Stellar, every one of them.

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    1. “This was the real Elvis” truer words have never been spoken…that is the way I feel. Before the army and Las Vegas.
      That echo fills in the gaps on this one…I would think it sounded good on AM radio back then.

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    1. Now that I would have loved to have seen! I only did Karaoke once…and I did Brown Eyed Girl and Gloria…I can do a passable early Van voice.

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  13. Classic track for sure. Dread Zeppelin does a real cool mash up of Heartbreaker by Zep and Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis called “Heartbreaker’

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  17. I can’t say I ever really got into Elvis (or found him sexy – unlike a friend of mine! – ) when I was younger but appreciate him more now. I did have one single of his back in the sixties – I think Poke Salad Annie (by Tony Joe White) – but heartbreak hotel is brilliant anyway!

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