Introduction
The Night Elvis Presley Gave Back a Legend
In March 1960, a dusty Ford pulled up to the music gates of Graceland at three in the morning. Inside sat twenty-three-year-old Roy Orbison and his writing partner, Joe Melson. Skinny, nearsighted, and deeply insecure about his career after being released by Sun Records, Orbison believed his singing journey was essentially over. In the backseat lay a battered acoustic guitar containing a newly written masterpiece titled “Only the Lonely.” Believing his own unusual, operatic voice lacked commercial appeal, Orbison had driven three hundred miles to give the song away to Elvis Presley, hoping the biggest star in music could turn it into a hit.
Despite the late hour, Elvis welcomed the broke songwriters inside his music room. Sitting nervously at the piano, Orbison sang the ballad. As his voice climbed into a soaring, emotional falsetto, Elvis listened in total silence. When the song finished, Elvis did not accept it. Instead, he looked at Orbison and firmly refused the gift. Elvis recognized that the track’s vulnerable, soaring vocal range was unlike anything else in popular music and insisted that no one else could ever perform it justice. Emerging from his own military service with artistic doubts, Elvis urged Orbison to trust his unique talent and record the track himself.
Taking the King’s advice, Orbison returned to Nashville and recorded “Only the Lonely” with producer Fred Foster at RCA Studio B. Released that spring, the song rocketed up the charts, reaching number two in the United States and number one in the United Kingdom. It transformed the shy Texan into an international sensation overnight, paving the way for classic hits like “Crying” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.”
For years afterward, Orbison maintained a lighthearted ritual by mailing an annual one-dollar check to Graceland as payment for “the song you gave back.” Each January, Elvis consistently returned the check uncashed, accompanying it with humorous handwritten notes.
Sixteen years later, in December 1976, the two icons reunited backstage at the Las Vegas Hilton. During his performance earlier that evening, Elvis had playfully attempted Orbison’s signature falsetto on stage, only for his voice to humorously crack on the highest note. Turning to the audience, Elvis shouted, “I told him in 1960 I couldn’t sing it!” When Orbison handed him one final dollar check backstage, Elvis flipped it over and wrote: “Pay to the order of Roy Orbison for the best song I never sang.” Elvis had rejected the track not out of pride, but to inspire a struggling fellow artist to believe in his own remarkable voice.