Vocal backing was provided by Gordon Stoker and Ben and Brock Speer, the same group who sang on Presley’s January session, which produced “Heartbreak Hotel.” Fontana, other musicians present were Chet Atkins on guitar and Marvin Hughes on piano. ![]() In addition to Presley’s regular band of Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and D. Sholes had scheduled Elvis into RCA’s Nashville recording studio from 9 to noon that Saturday morning. When we got to Nashville, Elvis eased up to us and said, ‘We’re through with this guy.’” I think he would have jumped if he could have gotten out. Bill turned white and put his coat over his head. Both engines restarted, but it was enough to shake everybody a little bit … After we crossed the Mississippi River, we hit a bunch of turbulence. Soon as that happened the pilot reached over and threw a switch, then took over the wheel. “The pilot turned to me and said, ‘Here, hold the wheel while I get the maps out from under the seat.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how to fly a plane.’ He said, ‘Just hold it a minute.’ Just as I put my hands on the wheel, both engines sputtered and quit. Scotty explained how things got a little dicey at that point. When the refueled plane took off at dawn, Scotty sat in the copilot’s seat as the aircraft climbed to 2,000 feet. The flight plan called for a refueling stop at Little Rock, but when the plane ran low on fuel, the pilot decided to land at an emergency landing strip near Hot Springs, Arkansas. The following account of that event comes from That’s Alright, Elvis by Scotty Moore, who was a passenger on the flight. They chartered a twin engine plane and flew off into the darkness in what became a frightening experience that fueled Presley’s fear of flying for years to come. Elvis and the boys, who played Amarillo that Friday, had to find some way to get to Nashville overnight. However, after Parker bought Elvis out of his Saturday nights contract with the Louisiana Hayride, the Colonel and Sholes arranged a recording session in Nashville on Saturday, April 14. And then there was the ever-increasing number of offers for personal appearances, which, by now, were just flooding in.” ![]() In the meantime, ongoing discussions with Hollywood and various TV companies required that the singer be available on short notice. Elvis was scheduled to open in Las Vegas in late April. It wasn’t that Colonel Parker wanted to deny Sholes a new single, but his constant cautiousness and concern about overexposure were simply fed by the new opportunities he was being presented with every day: opportunities to make money, and to move into new fields. He was confident of ‘My Baby Left Me’ for the rock ’n’ roll side, but he felt he needed an original song for the A-side, and for that he needed the Colonel to let Elvis get back in the studio. “The only concern Sholes had was the next single. In his 1998 Elvis recording sessions book, Ernst Jorgensen explained Sholes’s anxiety about Presley’s follow-up to "Heartbreak Hotel."
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