Heartbreak Hotel is a 1956 blues, rock and roll, and rockabilly song performed by Elvis Presley. It was written by Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden, with Presley credited, and was inspired by a newspaper report about a lonely man who jumped from a hotel window. Presley recorded it on January 10, 1956 at RCA Victor Studio in Nashville with the Blue Moon Boys, Chet Atkins, and Floyd Cramer, and producer Steve Sholes used an echo effect to mimic Presley's Sun Records sound. The song was released as a single on January 27, 1956 - with B-side I Was the One - and was not originally released on a studio album, though it later appeared on Presley compilation albums. It became Presley's first million-seller and topped the Billboard Top 100 for seven weeks, the Country and Western chart for seventeen weeks, and reached the R&B top five; in the UK it peaked at number two. Heartbreak Hotel was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995, and Rolling Stone named it one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; it has been widely covered and credited with helping to shape rock and roll.
