Chart Rewind: In 1956, Elvis Presley Was No. 1 With Two Songs on Three Charts

One of the best known recording deals in history transpired in November 1955 when independent Sun Records, financially challenged to keep up with the fast success of Elvis Presley, sold his contract to RCA for $35,000.

Four months later, in the March 31, 1956, issue of Billboard, the King used singles from both companies — Sun’s “I Forgot to Remember to Forget” and RCA’s “Heartbreak Hotel” — to sew up the No. 1 position on all three of the era’s country charts. “Forgot” closed a five-week run atop Most Played in Juke Boxes, while “Hotel” occupied the penthouse suite on Best Sellers and Most Played by Jockeys. A week later, “Hotel” supplanted “Forgot” at the Juke Boxes summit as Presley racked up nine more nonconsecutive weeks of a No. 1 country trifecta.

During that run, Presley similarly accrued streaks of three to eight weeks atop four pop charts — the Top 100, Best Sellers, Juke Boxes and Disc Jockeys — including three weeks, May 12 through May 26, in which he commanded all four simultaneously. Subsequently, when he appeared on the June 5 edition of Milton Berle’s NBC-TV show, the host presented him a pair of Triple Play awards for his Billboard chart-topping prowess in both genres.

In that same window of time, Presley also scored top five appearances in the three parallel R&B lists.

Later that year, the so-called Hillbilly Cat scratched out another country chart triple, owning all three lists on Sept. 29 and Oct. 6 with his double-sided single “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Hound Dog.”