RCA 47  6420        Black Label – Dog On Top

 Side A.  Heartbreak Hotel

Side B.  I Was The One

Heartbreak Hotel made Billboard's Hot 100 chart on February 22nd 1956, it became Elvis' first national number 1, it remained on the chart  for twenty seven weeks and stayed at number 1 for seven weeks. On the same day it reached number 1 on the Country charts also for twenty seven weeks. It made the Rhythm & Blues chart on April 4th 1956 at the number 5 slot, it remained on this chart for thirteen weeks. I Was The One reached number 23 on the Hot 100 chart on February 29th 1956, and stayed on the chart for sixteen weeks.

This 45 was released in the UK in March 1956 on His Master's Voice Label, catalogue
No.7m 385, it had gold lettering on a purple label, and was later done in silver lettering and reached the number 2 slot after entering the chart on May 17th 1956.

Matrix numbers: G2WW-0209-1S A1 / G2WW-0218-1S A1

Elvis' first recording session for RCA kicked off a 2pm on January 10th, they started the session with "I Got A Woman", and had the master after 8 takes. Elvis moved to Mae Axton's song, it would be hard to say what genre "Heartbreak Hotel" was written in, it was probably more blues than anything else, Elvis and the band had been doing it in live shows for a few months, so they knew the feel of the number, and after 7 takes they had the master in the bag and the A-side for their first RCA single.

The flipside would be a song Elvis would often recall "as one of his proudest moments of his early RCA career", "I Was The One", has a simple arrangement and some tricky vocals for Elvis to deal with.

 Some of the early pressings have the misspelling of the writer Axton as Axpon this may have only existed less than a month. The original recording information from January 10th 1956 has the writer correctly spelled as Axton. A later 1S pressing is corrected. The March release of Elvis' Golden Records has Axton correctly spelled. This is a very tough variation to find.

Released in 1956 by RCA Records on 78 RPM
Re-released by RCA Records on 45 RPM on the Gold Standard Series label.

Recording Dates

 Heartbreak Hotel - Recorded January 10th 1956, RCA Studio’s Nashville, Tennessee

Musicians:-

Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore, Chet Atkins - Guitar

Bill Black - Bass   D.J. Fontana - Drums   Floyd Cramer - Piano    The Jordanaires - Vocals

 Release Date:-

US:- January 27th 1956

UK:- March 1956

 Billboard Chart Position:-

US:- 1

UK:- 2