12 January: All Shook Up

On this date in 1957 Elvis Presley recorded All Shook Up. 10 facts about the song:

1. It was written by Otis Blackwell. The story goes that the song was inspired by a bottle of Pepsi which Al Stanton, one of the owners of Shalimar Music was shaking in the office one day in 1956. He joked to Blackwell, “why not write a song about being all shook up?”

2. That’s one story, anyway. As it happens, Elvis himself has a co-writing credit on the song, which had happened before with Don't Be Cruel, a demand made by Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis claimed in an interview at the time that this was the only time he’d ever had an idea for a song, inspired by waking up shaken from a disturbing dream. He told Blackwell about it and the song came from there.

3. Elvis wasn’t the first artist to record it. The first was actually David Hill, which was the stage name of an actor called David Hess. His version was titled I’m All Shook Up. Hill, too, claimed to have come up with the title of the song and that Elvis only got a writing credit so that he would record it.

4. The B side was That's When Your Heartaches Begin.

5. The song was number one on the US Billboard chart for nine weeks. It also reached the top spot on the R&B and country charts. It was Presley’s first number one single in the UK, occupying the top spot for seven weeks.

6. The backing music was provided by two bands called The Blue Moon Boys and The Jordanaires.

7. The Beatles allegedly performed the song a lot in their early days when they were still called the Quarrymen, with Paul McCartney singing lead vocals, but there’s no known recording of it. Len Garry of The Quarrymen wrote in his memoirs that this was one of the songs Paul McCartney and John Lennon played together on the day they first met, and although they did record it at the time, the tape was later erased.

8. Only two other artists to date have covered the song and had a hit with it. The first was Suzi Quatro, who first played the song on an episode of Happy Days in 1977, and Billy Joel, who recorded the song for the movie Honeymoon in Vegas in 1991.

9. The song was the basis for a musical called All Shook Up which opened on Broadway in 2005. It featured various Elvis Presley songs and had a plot line based on the Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night.

10. In 2009 The Performing Rights Society announced this was the most-played Elvis song in public places in the UK.

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