Elvis Presley sang his songs for millions of people. Otis Blackwell wrote them. And somehow the two men never once stood in the same room.
That sounds like a scheduling mix-up, or maybe plain bad luck. It wasn’t. Blackwell stayed away on purpose, and the reason he gave years later is a lovable bit of superstition.
First, a little about the man. Otis Blackwell was a songwriter and singer born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1931. If you’ve ever tapped your foot to “Don’t Be Cruel” or “All Shook Up,” you’ve heard his work. Elvis also recorded his songs “Return to Sender” (written with Winfield Scott), “One Broken Heart for Sale” and “Paralyzed.”
He didn’t only write for Elvis, either. Blackwell wrote “Great Balls of Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis, and he co-wrote “Fever” under a made-up name, John Davenport.
Here’s how it all got rolling. In 1956, Steve Sholes of RCA played Elvis the demo of “Don’t Be Cruel,” and Elvis loved it right away. From then on, he learned Blackwell’s songs straight from the demo tapes and tried to stay close to them. American Songwriter even says Elvis “may have borrowed some of his vocal mannerisms.”
So when you watch Elvis sing this one on national TV that same year, you’re hearing a little bit of Otis in there too.
Elvis singing “Don’t Be Cruel” on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956
With hits like that piling up, you’d think the two would have become fast friends. Elvis’s camp certainly gave him the chance.
In a 1979 interview with Time Barrier Express magazine, Blackwell was asked if he had ever met Elvis. “I had the chance a couple of times, I was invited down by the Presley people,” he said.
He just never went.
By then, Blackwell was “considered one of the top writers and was doing a lot of records.” Things between him and Elvis were going so well that he didn’t want to touch a thing. “I figured that if I split,” he explained, he might lose it. So he stayed right where he was and kept writing.
Years later, in a 1989 interview, he put it even more simply: “We had a great thing going and I just wanted to leave it alone.”
Some folks have a lucky shirt they won’t wash during a winning streak. Otis Blackwell’s version of that was simply staying away.
He even owned up to it on television. As a guest on “Late Night with David Letterman,” he said it plainly: “No, I never met Elvis.”
Here’s your chance to see the man behind all those hits for yourself, sitting down with Letterman in January 1984.
Otis Blackwell as David Letterman’s guest in 1984
Three years later, Blackwell was back on the same show, and this time he did more than talk. He sang “Don’t Be Cruel” himself, and it’s a real treat to hear the song in the voice of the man who wrote it.
Otis Blackwell singing “Don’t Be Cruel” on Letterman in 1987
Listen closely and you can hear where some of that famous Elvis bounce may have come from.
The music world did take notice of Blackwell in the end. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991.
By his own account, he never did take the Presley people up on that invitation.