By the fall of 1956, Elvis Presley was all over the radio and TV, and one record had a lock on the top of the charts. It sat at No. 1 in America for 11 weeks.
Then a slow, gentle love song finally pushed it aside. Seventy years ago this week, “Love Me Tender” reached No. 1 on Billboard for the week ending Nov 3, 1956.
Before anyone could buy it, Elvis gave the song a big TV debut. He sang “Love Me Tender” on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the famous TV variety show, on Sept 9, 1956. It’s fun to watch him sing it here, knowing the record was still weeks away from the stores.
Elvis introduces “Love Me Tender” on TV, September 1956
Fans couldn’t wait to own it. According to Wikipedia, “RCA received more than a million advance orders, making it a gold record before it was even released.”
A gold record before anyone could buy a copy. That’s how hungry people were for Elvis that year.
But to get to No. 1, the new ballad had to get past that record that had been parked at the top all season. So who was in the way?
Elvis was.
The record “Love Me Tender” knocked off was his own two-sided smash, “Hound Dog” with “Don’t Be Cruel” on the other side. Back then a single was a small record with one song on each side. People loved both sides of this one, and together they had held No. 1 for 11 weeks. Here’s the side with the bark in it.
The record “Love Me Tender” pushed out: “Hound Dog”
Flip it over and you got a completely different Elvis, smooth and bouncy, on the song that shared the top spot.
The other side of that same record: “Don’t Be Cruel”
Think about that. Elvis had a record so big it wouldn’t leave No. 1, and the only thing that could finally move it was another Elvis record.
Those 11 weeks were a big deal on their own. That run stood as the record for the longest stay at No. 1 until 1992, when the R&B group Boyz II Men held the top spot for 13 weeks with “End of the Road.” That’s 36 years of nobody topping what Elvis did with one single.
Elvis went back on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Oct 28, 1956, and sang “Love Me Tender” again. A week later it was No. 1. Catch this second performance to see him sing it on TV just days before it took the top spot.
Elvis sings “Love Me Tender” on TV the week before it hit No. 1
Once it got to the top, “Love Me Tender” stayed there for five weeks. It’s also the title song of Elvis’s very first movie, which carried the same name.
So the next time you hear that soft opening line, remember what it took to get to No. 1 back in 1956. The biggest record in America only lost its spot because Elvis beat himself, and he did it with a quiet love song after months of rock n’ roll.