The ‘Chef’ is cookin’ with gas! +1
Even though I bit the bullet and went with Heartbreak Hotel I really loved about half of those records. I was in my mid-teens at the time and got almost all of my music from the radio. Your Hit Parade was about to fold up because their people couldn’t do creditable work with Elvis’s songs and Elvis was taking over music!
Even so, it would be another few years before American Bandstand brought in all those Elvis knock-offs and music began losing its appeal to me and I switched over to jazz.
Some great tunes but Heartbreak Hotel is a seismic song in terms of its impact and it’s still sounds scary and sexy even today.
The Great Pretender, by the Platters. I didn’t even have to think about it.
Les Baxter is underrated. Check out not only The Poor People of Paris but also Lisbon Antigua and “Quiet Village”… hmm, can’t find a non-cover version of Quiet Village by itself but it starts at 3:00 in this composite.
Not just Les Baxter but the dozens of imitators/followers from that period and years to come:
Martin Denny
Arthur Lyman
Esquivel
and many whose names and music are mentioned in Space Age Pop and/or What IS Space Age Pop?
To be fair, there are a few on here I don’t know, at least not by name. John Lennon was blown away by “Heartbreak Hotel,” that’s good enough for me.
Most of the non-rock ‘n’ roll ones were easy to ignore, though “16 Tons” is certainly a fine record in its own right. I’m also a fan of “Memories Are Made of This,” just 'cause I like Dean Martin’s style and the backing is so simple and folky as opposed to big-band bombast.
In the end, despite the other two Elvis songs being good too, “Heartbreak Hotel” is the obvious choice. It really did land like a bombshell in 1956, and was a clear signal that things would never quite be the same.
He’ll never get mine. “Singin’ the Blues” is a great song, but Mitchell’s version of it is wretched.
Seek out the original by Marty Robbins if you want to hear what it’s really supposed to sound like.
I picked “Heartbreak Hotel,” but it was a very tight decision over “Don’t Be Cruel.”
And “Honky Tonk” was #2, behind “Don’t Be Cruel”, per The Weekly Top 40 1955-2000, for the week ending: 3rd October, 1956.
Love Me Tender deserves more love. Too bad I voted for 16 tons. Again, I agree with the other contenders.
“Good enough for Casey Kasem” meant facing the loathsome truth that Pat Boone and Guy Mitchell were still hot stuff in 1955-56.
I vote for Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene”, even though it was far from his best song and was #1 on the Billboard R&B chart, not the Hot 100. Also noted: 1956 was the year Chuck released “Roll Over Beethoven”, “You Can’t Catch Me” and “Too Much Monkey Business”, all much better songs than most anything appearing on the OP’s ballot.