Are You Lonesome Tonight?

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Are You Lonesome Tonight?
publication 1926
Genre (s) pop music
text Roy Turk
music Lou Handman
Publisher (s) Cromwell Music Inc./Bourne Co.
Cover versions
1927 Vaughn De Leath
1927 Henry Burr
1950 Blue Barron
1960 Elvis Presley
1974 Donny Osmond

Are You Lonesome Tonight? is a pop - ballad , which in 1926 by Lou Handman (music) and Roy Turk (text) was written. The best-known cover version is by Elvis Presley (the title Are You Lonesome To-night? Was written on the album cover, however ). The song reached number 81 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time .

history

Roy Turk , a former vaudeville artist, worked as a copywriter on Tin Pan Alley . Together with the composer Lou Handman , he wrote the song that is now considered one of the standards of the Tin Pan Alley era. One of the first recordings was published by Al Jolson in 1927, but it was not a success. It was only in the version by Vaughn De Leath , published by Edison Records , that the ballad made it onto the charts, where it reached number 4. Also in 1927, tenor Henry Burr recorded his version of the song and thus reached number 10 on the charts the song fell into oblivion for over 20 years. A recording of the Carter Family , which appeared in 1936 on Brunswick Records , was not a commercial success. In 1950, the American band leader Blue Barron recorded a big band version with his orchestra and singer Bobby Beers , which recorded a total of eight weeks in the charts and reached number 19. The piece featured a spoken passage for the first time. In the same year, Al Jolson recorded the song again, it also contained the spoken passage. In 1959 Jaye P. Morgan reached number 65 on the charts with the song.

Elvis Presley

The piece was one of the favorite songs of Marie, the wife of Presley manager Colonel Parker , which is why he asked Elvis Presley to record it. Presley liked the song and believed that in a modernized version it could well find a niche in the music of the time. The recordings were made on April 4, 1960 at four in the morning at the RCA studios in Nashville . The studio musicians were the same with whom Presley had recorded his version of 'O sole mio called It's Now or Never . They included guitarists Scotty Moore and Hank Garland , bassist Bob Moore , drummer D. J. Fontana , pianist Floyd Cramer and saxophonist Boots Randolph . The record company RCA Victors initially wanted Presley to release a rock song after the ballad It's Now or Never . At the urging of Parker and Presley, the ballad was released on November 2, 1960 with the rockier piece I Gotta Know as the B-side . It debuted at number 35 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its first week and peaked at number 1 in late November, which it held until mid-January 1961. It has been certified double platinum for more than two million units sold. The song reached number four in the German single charts in spring 1961, and in the British single charts it was number one for three weeks in February 1961.

Presley often changed the lyrics in a humorous way during his live performances. A performance in the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas in 1969 became known, when Presley sang “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there” instead of “Do you gaze at your doorstep and imagine that I am standing there” gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair ”, whereupon a few moments later, triggered by a man in the first rows with his toupee slipped, he entered Laughter broke out. In addition, he added in the spoken passage: "You know someone said that the world's a stage, and each must play a part." ("You know someone said the world is a stage and everyone has to play a role.") "All the world's a stage" is the beginning of the monologue of the melancholy Jacques in William Shakespeare's "As You Like It" in VII Scene from Act II. The audience also joined in the laughter, which was reinforced by background singer Cissy Houston ( Whitney Houston's mother), who continued to sing in falsetto , where Presley encouraged her with “sing it, baby”. This version reached the Top 30 in the UK after being released by RCA Records on the Elvis Aaron Presley box set .

Answer songs

In the same year that the Presley version appeared, several record companies released so-called Answer Songs (answer versions) with female performers and a text also by Roy Turk. The most successful production was the recording with Thelma Carpenter , which was released by Coral Records (No. 9-62241) and reached number 55 on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition to the Answer Song with the title line Yes, I'm Lonesome Tonight , written by Turk , the Capitol record company released a version with Jeanne Black (No. 4492), which deviates from Turk's lyrics by Benny Davis / Joe Burke / Mark Fisher and was titled Oh, How I Miss You Tonight . Jeanne Black was also able to place 63rd in the Hot 100.

The song was re-released several times and again reached chart positions in the UK in 1982 and 2005.

Germany

The Elvis Presley version of Are You Lonesome Tonight? was first listed on January 14, 1961 in the hit lists of the music market. It reached the best rating with 4th place and stayed in the top 50 for 16 weeks. A week earlier, the music market had the German version with Peter Alexander and the title Are you lonely tonight? included in the top 50. The version released by Germany's largest record company Polydor in December 1960 (No. 24420) also reached number four and was listed for 17 weeks. In the annual charts, Peter Alexander came 29th with this title. At the same time, Decca released a second largely overlooked version with Wyn Hoop (No. 19134). She also used the text by Kurt Feltz , the German version of which is based closely on the Presley original and also contains a spoken passage. Also like in the states there are too Are you lonely tonight? an answer song. It was titled Yes, I'm lonely tonight! also produced by Polydor and released under the number 24582 in the summer of 1961 with the hitherto unknown singer Wilma Lucini.

Web links

literature

  • Ace Collins: Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits . Chicago Review Press, 2005, ISBN 978-1-55652-565-0 , pp. 163-167 .
  • Toby Creswell: 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories and Secrets Behind Them . Da Capo Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1-56025-915-2 , pp. 31 f .
  • Patrick Humphries: Elvis the # 1 Hits: The Secret History of the Classics . Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7407-3803-6 , pp. 84-87 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.billboard.com: Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time ( September 13, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive ), accessed June 29, 2011
  2. ↑ Lou Handman ( Memento June 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) in the Songwriters Hall of Fame , accessed June 29, 2011 (English).
  3. ↑ a b Ace Collins: Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits. Chicago Review Press, 2005, p. 165.
  4. ↑ Matrix BVE-39941. Are you lonesome to-night? / Henry Burr , UCSB Libraries, accessed June 29, 2011.
  5. ^ Joel Whitburn: Top Pop Records 1940-1955 , Record Research, 1973
  6. ↑ Ace Collins: Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits. Chicago Review Press, 2005, p. 164.
  7. ↑ Toby Creswell: 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories and Secrets Behind Them. Da Capo Press, 2006, p. 31.
  8. ↑ Patrick Humphries: Elvis the # 1 Hits: The Secret History of the Classics. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003, p. 84.
  9. ↑ a b Ace Collins: Untold Gold: The Stories Behind Elvis's # 1 Hits. Chicago Review Press, 2005, p. 166.
  10. ↑ Are You Lonesome To-Night? in the German charts at OfficialCharts.de
  11. ↑ a b Are You Lonesome Tonight? in the Official UK Charts (English)
  12. ↑ SWR1 : Hits and Stories - Are You Lonesome Tonight
  13. ↑ www.besttips.de: Background song ( memento from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed June 29, 2011