On This Day in 1999, We Lost the Lyricist

[NinaFromCanadaEh]

https://americansongwriter.com/on-this- ... nal-words/

On This Day in 1999, We Lost the Lyricist Behind One of Elvis Presley’s Biggest Songs—Based on a Newspaper Clipping of a Man’s Final Words
By

Em Casalena

October 17, 2025 12:46 pm
On October 17, 1999, the world lost one of its most underrated songwriters. Thomas Durden, born on December 15, 1919, passed away at the age of 79 on this very day in 1999. The American songwriter and steel guitarist was responsible for penning Elvis Presley’s 1956 breakthrough track, “Heartbreak Hotel”. No matter how you spin it, Presley might not have had such a big career starting in the mid-1950s if it weren’t for Durden.

Thomas Durden was born in Georgia but spent much of his childhood in Jacksonville, Florida, where he first picked up the slide and steel guitar. He performed with the band The Westernaires in the early 1950s before joining the country outfit Smilin’ Jack Herring and His Swingbillys.

While working with that latter band, Durden started to put together the lyrics for what would become “Heartbreak Hotel”. Durden drew inspiration from a newspaper story of a man’s suicide note, namely the line where the man likens life to “a lonely street.”

When the song was half-written, he took it to disc jockey and publicist Mae Boren Axton and singer/songwriter Glenn Reeves. Reeves turned it down, but Axton offered to compose a tune to go with the lyrics. She recorded an early version of the song with Durden.

Later, Reeves recorded “Heartbreak Hotel” for Durden. Axton was working on a song for Elvis Presley at the time, and decided to present the demo to the King at a disc jockey convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Presley and his manager agreed to record it, provided Presley could receive a co-writing credit. Durden accepted, and Presley’s version of “Heartbreak Hotel” hit the airwaves in 1956. It became his very first record to hit No. 1, effectively launching one of the most famous careers in rock and roll.

After “Heartbreak Hotel”, Thomas Durden continued to write music with Axton and Reeves. Notably, he wrote “Honey Bop” for Wanda Jackson in 1958. Sadly, his subsequent works failed to reach the success of “Heartbreak Hotel”. Durden continued to write music through the end of the 1950s and later returned to playing the steel guitar for the likes of Johnny Cash, Tex Ritter, and other musicians. He recorded several albums in his later years. In 1994, he was inducted into the Michigan Country Music Hall of Fame.

Thomas Durden deserves more credit for his contribution to the world of rock and roll, in my opinion. His legacy lives on not only in “Heartbreak Hotel”, but also in his songwriting and steel guitar contributions to numerous musicians in the 20th century.

[NinaFromCanadaEh]

https://www.1057thepoint.com/episode/fr ... h-her-son/

FROM THE VAULT: How a Schoolteacher Wrote Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and Made Music History with Her Son

On July 8, 1954, Elvis Presley’s debut single, “That’s All Right,” was played for the first time on Memphis radio, marking a pivotal moment in his career and the beginning of a musical revolution. Just three years later, in 1957, his hit “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear” reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, further cementing his status as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Enjoy this POR classic from 2022 celebrating the one and only King of Rock ‘n’ Roll—Elvis Presley.

FROM THE VAULT: In the mid-50s, a school-teacher, and a former dishwasher repairman collaborated on writing a song allegedly inspired by the suicide note of a despondent man that was included in an article published by the Miami Herald. It would turn out to be for the King of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley… The song? Heartbreak Hotel. In fact the schoolteacher named Mae Axton vowed to Elvis that she would write his first #1 million seller and she did. Although Presley’s label RCA thought the song was a disaster. They hated it and predicated it would fail. It went to #1 for 7 weeks and was the biggest song of the years. Years later the school teacher who wrote it, would have a song Hoyt Axton who would write a #1 hit for Three Dog Night called Joy to the World making them the only mother and son to do so in history. Over the years the writing of Heartbreak Hotel from a newspaper article has become a mystery. Curiously, there is no evidence of such an incident in the public records of the State of Florida, nor is there any proof of a news article that was published on the alleged suicide by the Miami Herald. It’s the conflicting and mystifying story of the first #1 pop song by the King of Rock ’N Roll…NEXT on Professor of Rock.

[NinaFromCanadaEh]

WASN'T IT YESTERDAY?: Elvis and Mae Axton in 1955
by J.D. FRANCIS Oct 15, 2020


It’s quite possible a lot of people my age have never heard of or don’t remember country star Hoyt Axton.

Hoyt was more of a songwriter than a performer. I remember him being on the Hee Haw show a lot in the late ‘60s. He was famous for the songs he wrote for the band Three Dog Night such as “Joy To The World,” the Jeremiah was a bullfrog song. He also wrote “Never Been To Spain,” as well as “The Pusher” for the “Easy Rider” soundtrack.

After you figure out who Hoyt Axton is, forget I mentioned his name, for just like in his song, “he always had a mighty fine wine,” Hoyt also had a mighty fine Mom. This is going to be a story about Hoyt’s mother, Mae Axton.

I’ve lately boasted about my memory on the meaning of songs and lyrics, so I thought it was time I put my pencil where my mouth is.

Mae Boren Axton was known in the music industry as the “Queen Mother of Nashville” in the mid-1950s. Having been credited for writing over 200 country songs, for decades, Mae used her Nashville music influence to promote and contribute to the success of dozens of musical careers, including Mel Tillis, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Eddy Arnold, Tanya Tucker and Blake Shelton, to name a few.

All of the years of Mae Axton’s contributions and accomplishments to popular music were dwarfed by one singular artist and one particular song that few people are aware Mae had anything to do with. In early 1955, after hearing Elvis Presley perform, Mae determined to interview Elvis on her radio show to garner him further recognition to the public.

As a result of the interview, Mae arranged to have Elvis sign with RCA Victor records in late 1955. RCA purchased the rights to Elvis for $35,000 from Sam Phillips’ Sun Records. To date, that was the most money ever paid for the rights to an artist. This was before Colonel Tom Parker managed Elvis.

The night before the radio interview with Elvis, Mae read a newspaper story in the Miami Herald about a lonely man who committed suicide by jumping from a hotel window. In his shirt pocket was a suicide note that simply read, “I walk a lonely street.”

Mae shared that column with songwriter Tommy Durden, believing she had the inspiration to write a song about the suicide. Mae believed at the end of his “lonely street” should be a place called Heartbreak Hotel. Mae believed this would be perfect as Elvis’s first hit song for RCA Records. At the interview with Elvis the next day, she told him she was in the process of writing his first hit song for RCA and the rest is history, as they say. Mae wrote the words to Heartbreak Hotel and Tommy Durden wrote the music.

On Jan. 27, 1956, Elvis released the song on the RCA label. As Mae promised, it was a major hit and began the career of an unknown artist, young Elvis Presley.

In 1997, at the age of 82 years old, Mae Axton drowned in her hot tub in her home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, after having a heart attack. She was a legend in the Nashville music scene and respected by all.

Well, since my baby left me;

I found a new place to dwell;

It’s down at the end of Lonely Street;

At Heartbreak Hotel;


Where I’ll be so lonely, baby;

I’ll be so lonely, I could die.

(“Heartbreak Hotel,” written by Mae Axton, performed by Elvis Presley, 1956)

J.D. Francis is a Waverly businessman and developer who also writes a monthly feature called “Cattin’ Main.” He can be reached at jdfranpaint@msn.com.

[NinaFromCanadaEh]

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-ne ... reak-hotel

Carleton prof solves mystery of Heartbreak Hotel
A Carleton University professor has solved the mystery behind the song that propelled Elvis Presley to stardom.

Author of the article:By Aidan Cox • Postmedia

A Carleton University professor has solved the mystery behind the song that propelled Elvis Presley to stardom.

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Randy Boswell was at home watching an old episode from the TV show Bonanza three weeks ago when guest star Hoyt Axton piqued his interest. A serendipitous online search of the Joy to the World singer led Boswell to learn that Axton’s mother, Mae Boren Axton, one of Elvis’s songwriters back in the 1950s, famously co-wrote the hit Heartbreak Hotel.

I started looking up that (song), and that’s when I discovered there was this mystery behind the genesis of the Heartbreak Hotel,” said Boswell, a former Citizen journalist.

The explanation for its melancholy lyrics came from its songwriters, Tommy Durden and Axton, who had said in media interviews that they were inspired by a Miami Herald story of a broken-hearted man who committed suicide after a failed marriage.

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The only problem: There were no Miami Herald stories to back up their claims, Boswell said.

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“As someone who loves newspapers, but I also do research using historical newspapers … I plugged into the databases the famous phrase ‘lonely street’ to see if I could find any stories from the right time period.”

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What Boswell found was neither a story from the Miami Herald nor a story about a suicide.

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“I found at exactly the right time period a story in which another man who had died but had also described his life in exactly the term that Tommy Durden had remembered seeing (in the newspaper). I think the phrase used is ‘This is the story of a person who walked a lonely street,’” Boswell recalled.

The focus of the old newspaper article was Alvin Krolik, who was gunned down in 1954 while trying to rob a liquor store in El Paso, Texas.

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Only a year earlier, Boswell said, Krolik had gained media attention for turning his life around after walking into a police station and confessing to a series of crimes he’d committed after his marriage failed, then writing a memoir in which he penned the soon-to-be famous phrase “I walked a lonely street.”

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“Some journalist … figured out that this was the same guy from the 1953 Chicago crime confessions and so when the reporter put those two things together, as a good reporter would, it was a great tale of a person who tried to redeem himself … but ultimately failed,” Boswell said.

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After another online search, the lack of any similar theories cemented Boswell’s realization that he had, in fact, discovered something novel.

I took all this research that I gathered and I shared it with Peter Guralnick, and he is the pre-eminent Elvis biographer,” Boswell said. “He was instantly convinced that this was the answer to the mystery.”

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With all the initial research out of the way, Boswell moved on to contacting anyone who might have a direct connection to the story. Neither Krolik nor his ex-wife, Agnes Sampson, was still alive, but Boswell was able to track down Sampson’s son, who was able to share many details about his mother’s life.

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“I was delighted when he, A, confirmed that his mother was an accordionist in Chicago and, in fact, she had even told him about her brief marriage in the early 1950s to Alvin Krolik. So he actually knew the story of the guy who had been married to his mother but who had fallen into a life of crime and had gotten killed in some kind of robbery,” Boswell said.

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The only detail that might be still up in the air for Boswell is why or how the two songwriters obfuscated the circumstances of Krolik’s death.

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“My guess is (Durden and Axton) glossed over a few details of it. Not in any deceitful way. I think it was just their memory struggling to make details for it.”

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Boswell’s story, Solving the Mystery of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, is featured in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

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