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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