Elvis Presley never wrote a song in his life. Not one. He recorded roughly 700 of them and wrote none — and he said so himself, cheerfully: “It’s all a big hoax. I get one third of the credit just for recording it. It makes me look smarter than I am!”
Instead, he was the greatest interpreter in popular music. Here are five that already belonged to somebody else.
“That’s All Right” (1954) — a Mississippi blues singer named Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup wrote and recorded his very first record in 1946. Elvis played it twice as fast during a studio break, messing about, and accidentally invented rock and roll.
“Hound Dog” (1956) — written by two teenagers, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, for the blues singer Big Mama Thornton, who took it to number one on the R&B chart in 1953. Oddly, Elvis didn’t learn it from her version—he picked it up from a Las Vegas lounge act.
“That’s All Right”
“Love Me Tender” (1956) — the melody is “Aura Lee,” published in 1861 during the American Civil War. New words were written for the film, and the song was 95 years old before Elvis sang a note of it.
“Blue Suede Shoes” (1956) — written and recorded by Carl Perkins, who got the idea from a story Johnny Cash told him and scribbled it on a potato sack. Perkins had the hit first — then a car crash put him in the hospital while Elvis’s version took it worldwide.
“Blue Suede Shoes”
“Always on My Mind” (1972) — written by Wayne Carson with Johnny Christopher and Mark James. Elvis recorded it weeks after Priscilla left him, and Britain later voted it his greatest song of all time.
He did not write them. He just made each one sound like it had happened to him.