Beware!Kernel is a snake in the grass!

sceptre wrote:

No he didn't. The song was first a hit for Vaughn Deleath in 1927. It got to number 4 on the charts. It was recorded the same year by Henry Burr. The song was written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman and it's often cited as the classic tin-pan alley song.

Now note the date that the song was a hit. Then check Elvis's date of birth. You might well find that he was born eight years after the song was first a hit and recorded the song 33 years after Deleath did.

Now to move on with the idea that Elvis never wrote a song (he didn't btw and he explicitly said this in interviews if you look hard enough), if you check the credits for all his songs you'll see his name listed on "Don't Be Cruel" and "Love Me Tender". His name was added by Col Tom as it wasn't really the thing at the time for singers who wanted to be taken seriously not to be writing songs. And there was a hell of a lot of money in it (still is, that's why only one member of Take That retired with any real money).

"Don't Be Cruel" was solely written by Otis Blackwell, who also wrote "Return To Sender" and "All Shook Up" for Elvis as well as Peggy Lee's "Fever" and Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls Of Fire". When he wrote the song, Parker told him to get it recorded by Elvis, he'd have to "make a deal". The deal was half the composer credit. Deal struck, song recorded, put on the flipside of "Hound Dog" and that's the start of a large part of recent music history.

"Love Me Tender" is actually rather worse. The song's credited to Elvis Presley and Vera Matson. Which is a complete lie on both fronts. The music comes from a civil war ballad called "Aura Lee" which was written in 1861 by George Poulton and WW Fosdick. Remained popular through the 1880s as sung by barbershop quartets and one of the anthems at West Point. Presumably by the 1950s Parker thought that most had forgotten the song (now there's a Father Ted Song For Europe moment) when he decided that the melody would be great for the star's first movie (The Reno Brothers, released as Love Me Tender), appropriately enough set in the post-civil war era. So he hired a guy to write new lyrics and arrange the song. That'd be Ken Darby, who also wrote the other three songs in the movie. Again, Parker with his 'deals' persuaded Darby to give half the credit to Presley. Because Darby was well-known for working without collaborators, Darby was credited as "Vera Matson" (Vera Matson ,incidentally, was Darby's wife) on the sheet music. He still got his cheques but only half as Parker was creaming off the other half for Elvis. Darby later said that the reason that he credited his wife instead of himself was because she didn't write anything of the song either and he wanted to make a point. The song should be correctly credited either as "Poulton/Fosdick/Darby" or "Public Domain (arr. Darby)/Darby".

edit: I didn't mention the other three songs from the movie (they're just less-well known): "We're Gonna Move", "Let Me" and "Poor Boy". Any time you see a credit for Elvis on these songs (probably Presley/Matson again) it's also a lie for the same reason (Darby wrote the lot).

AFAIK that's all the songs Elvis ever received a credit for.

This kind of thing wasn't all that uncommon at the time - music from the 50s is littered with singers getting songwriter credit for songs that never put a note or word to. Still happens - Aerosmith are right whores for using ghostsongwriters and pretending that they wrote all their songs. Celine Dion told her songwriters that they'd have to take a 20% royalty cut if they wanted a printed credit (she (unfairly obviously) gets the 20% cut of the publishing but no writer credit). Barbra Streisand has a co-credit for "Evergreen" that's complete bunkum (Paul Williams made her a present of it for using the song as the theme for A Star Is Born) whereas Rupert Holmes, who actually co-wrote the melody got no credit whatever. There are a pile of other examples, too many to spend time on.

With regard to the original topic, Elvis clearly couldn't have written "Are You Lonesome Tonight", he didn't write any of the other songs he received a credit for and if you've any sense of decency you'll pay Pighead his money and be a little more knowledgeable about bets you make in future.