
"Heartbreak Hotel": Before Elvis
The story of how “Heartbreak Hotel” came to be Elvis Presley’s first hit record is a long and fascinating tale. At the root of the saga is the friendship of music business publicist Mae Boren Axton and deejay/performer Glenn Reeves. They wrote several songs together during the early-mid 1950s focusing on the world of hillbilly music, the specific genre in which they both worked. When they discovered the music of rising star Elvis Presley in 1955, however, they had no hesitati