Heartbreak Hotel 10th in 1955

Although Presley was given a writing credit for this work, he did not participate in its creation. The song was Durden's idea, based on a story he read in a newspaper about a man who killed himself in a hotel and had left a suicide note with the line "I walk a lonely street." Mae Axton played the song for Presley a day after she and Durden wrote it, and Presley was enthusiastic about it. He apparently agreed to make the song his first RCA release in exchange for a share of the songwriting royalties.