mood any when the next song Elvis embarked upon ( and the one that would occupy the remaining two hours of the session ), “ Heartbreak Hotel ,” was one that Elvis had brought into the studio himself , a strange , gloom-laden eight-bar blues that had been inspired by a newspaper story about a suicide . This was the song that he and his manager , Colonel Parker , insisted would be his first single .
To Sholes it made no sense . Leaving aside his own musical preferences , “ Heartbreak Hotel ” was altogether different in mood and form from the sunny , upbeat sound of Elvis ’ five Sun singles , and its downbeat lyrics were only amplified by the RCA engineer ’ s clumsy attempt ( albeit at Sholes ’ and Chet Atkins ’ direction ) to replicate the warm artificial echo of the Sun sound by placing a mike and an amp at opposite ends of the long hallway at the front of the building and feeding the echo into the main room . The result was a harsh , clattery sound that only made the difference in both feel and choice of material all the more evident . When they reconvened in the evening , they spent the entire three-hour session on a single r & b cover before finally getting around to two of the ballads that Sholes had submitted the next day . But even these were spoiled , in Elvis ’ view ( though this was communicated more indirectly than directly by the questions Elvis asked ), by the slapdash make-up of the vocal backing trio .
It was , all in all , an unpromising start , made all the more so by the reception that Sholes got when he returned to New York with the tapes .
His superiors were so put off by what they heard , Sholes said , that they wanted him to turn right around and head back to Nashville . “ They all told me it didn ’ t sound like anything , it
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