Throwing back to the week of July 25, 1956, we find those stalwarts Pat Boone and Gogi Grant holding on to the top spots with ‘I Almost Lost My Mind‘ and ‘The Wayward Wind,’ respectively.
Hot on their heels was that young whippersnapper Elvis Presley, whose second single, ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,’ tried to replicate the success of smash hit ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ It didn’t quite make it — peaking at #3 on this chart — but it did give Elvis his first #1 on the Country chart.
We’re throwing back to the week of April 18, 1956, and the 50s just got interesting!
While Les Baxter’s instrumental ‘The Poor People of Paris‘ held on to the #1 spot for the sixth straight week, it was about to be unseated by the song at #2.
That was Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ the King’s first of 17 chart-topping hits on the Hot 100 (or the Best Sellers in Stores chart, as it was called before 1958).
By the end of the month I won’t have named every 2022 movie I watched, but I’ll have come pretty damn close.
This week I’ve covered horror, international, animation, and the movies in my 11-40. A week from now I’ll count down my top ten. So that leaves the movies on the bottom half of my 2022 list.
I won’t list or comment on all of them, but I will call out movies from three categories: Perfectly Fine Romantic Comedies, Middling Superhero Sagas, and Disappointing Efforts by Notable Directors.
‘Hound Dog,’ Elvis Presley’s top-selling song, started out as a hit for the blues singer ‘Big Mama’ Thornton. Thornton’s 1953 version was a hit in its own right, selling two million copies and spending nearly two months atop Billboard’s R&B chart.
Thornton’s version was far more sexually suggestive, depicting a Black woman giving a no-good man the kiss-off. “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, been snoopin’ ’round my door,” she sings, “You can wag your tail but I ain’t gonna feed you no more.”
‘Return to Sender’ is an Elvis Presley track from the 2002 compilation 30 No. 1 Hits. At least that’s where it lives in my music collection. It was originally released as a single in 1962 and performed in the film Girls! Girls! Girls!, a clip from which is embedded below.
The song made it to only #2 on the U.S. charts but spent three weeks at #1 in the U.K. Indeed, 11 of the #1 hits on the compilation reached that pinnacle only in the U.K.
Meet Me In Montauk 