How A Suicide In Miami Gave Birth To "Heartbreak Hotel" And The Rise Of Rock n' Roll

 

Miami is a world famous Mecca of sun, sand, sex and fun outlandish decadence. It’s also a very dark town, haunted by real life zombies, third world-esque poverty and a long history of racial segregation and violence. Because of this entropic mix Miami boasts an impressive musical resume, birthing a mix of pirates, tropical wanderers and wayward sons that over the decades have created some of the most groundbreaking, influential and varying musical styles. With a long history of music innovation and violence, it’s no wonder that Miami shows up as the spark that helped create Rock n’ Roll – in the form of a Suicide note. 

Late one night in some neon faded Art Deco beach hotel, an anonymous man killed himself leaving behind only a crumbled note in one of his jean pockets. On the note where the words “I walk a lonely street” his last ode to a cruel world. Little did he know his sacrificial death would soon give birth to a whole new generation of music lovers. His unidentified corpse was shown on the cover of the Miami Herald with the headline asking, “Do You Know This Man?” 

 

 

When exactly this suicide happened can’t be confirmed and a search of the Miami Herald Digital Archives hasn’t provided any help. We know that it was sometime in 1955 when Steel-guitar player, singer-songwriter and failed dishwasher repairman Tommy Durden read the Herald suicide article while working a gig in Jacksonville, Florida. Durden believed the suicide note’s line had a dark blues quality and scribbled it down as a future song lyric. He showed the article and the lyric to his friend Mae Boren Axton, herself a songwriter, TV personality, radio host and publicist. Mae immediately was drawn to the lyric, deciding that naturally at the end of a lonely street one would find a “Heartbreak Hotel” and with that verse, a light bulb of creativity exploded in the warm Florida air. 

Mae wrote the rest of the lyrics while Durden worked out the melodies on his guitar. Within an hour the duo had composed one of the most important songs in the history of music. But Mae was more than just a schoolteacher and part-time songwriter; she was a visionary who saw the ‘big picture’ before anybody else. That ‘big picture’ was Elvis Presley and way before the Colonel turned him into a money making machine, Mae Axton was convinced that Elvis was going to be the biggest thing to hit America since the Model-T Ford. 

 

Mae first encountered Elvis during a tour she helped set up in Jacksonville, Florida when the relatively unknown Memphis singer was a last minute replacement booked to open for country recording star Hank Snow. As Elvis began his set, Mae Quietly blended in with the crowd at the Gator Bowl, and watched in awe as twenty-year old Elvis completely blew the audience away with his mix of hillbilly swag, bluesy crooning and pelvic shaking lunacy. After his performance, teenage girls chased Elvis back to the dressing room while managing to completely tear off the young stud’s shirt. The forty-year old Mae had never seen anything like that in her entire life. Nobody had. She quickly helped get Elvis booked for a return show on July 28, 1955, which caused excessive lines of teenage girls waiting to get inside and irate local preachers screaming about the dangers of Elvis’s shaking hips. 

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Reposted with permission.